SPEAKERS AND ABSTRACTS
Hester Baer (University of Maryland, USA)
Collaborative Representation and Individual Self-Determination: Queer-Feminist Film Collectives Imagine Democracy
- Baer examines how queer-feminist film collectives transform German-language audiovisual culture by linking collaborative production with political imagination. Against a backdrop of post-2008 precarity, austerity, and intensified scrutiny of race, gender, and sexuality, these collectives pursue collective authorship, improvisation, crowdfunding, and cross-platform work. Focusing on OKNO Berlin’s FREIZEIT, and Kollektiv KINOKAS’s Wie wir wollen, the paper shows how hybrid documentary-fiction forms stage democratic participation, solidarity against neoliberal competition, and reproductive justice. It argues that these practices embody democratic values by facilitating new encounters with difference and resisting both neoliberal media structures and resurgent right populism.
Anna Citkowska-Kimla and Piotr Kimla (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Individual Crisis and Social Crisis. Juli Zeh on the State of Contemporary Democracy in her Novel Über Menschen
- This paper reads Juli Zeh’s Über Menschen as a diagnosis of contemporary democracy grounded in competing visions of human nature embodied by its characters. Drawing on Gehlen, Plessner, Schmitt, Arendt, and Habermas, it reconstructs these anthropologies to analyze polarization, civil society, and deliberation. Small-town Bracken becomes a microcosm where dialogue across political divides, reflective judgment, and communicative action appear as remedies to populism and disinformation. The authors ultimately argue for a cautiously optimistic vision of democracy as a fragile but open-ended project based on trust in human rationality and the possibility of renewed civic engagement.
Jörg Esleben (University of Ottawa/Université d'Ottawa, Canada)
How Welcoming is Democracy? How Democratic is Welcome Culture? Theatre with and by Newcomers in the German-speaking World
- Esleben proposes to examine theatre involving refugees and newcomers (e.g. postmigrant ensembles, Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen, and diverse documentary projects) as a key site for negotiating democracy in German-speaking countries. The presentation engages scholarly debates about whether such productions foster inclusion, integration, and civic participation or instead reproduce othering and exoticization. By analyzing a range of projects and practices, it traces how theatrical collaboration can become a space for local, national, and transnational democratic engagement. The contribution asks how “welcome culture” itself is structured, questioning both the democratic quality of such theatre and the democracy implied by policies and aesthetics of welcoming.
Florian Gassner (University of British Columbia, Canada)
German Discourses on Censorship: The Example of documenta
- This contribution examines contemporary German debates around censorship and freedom of expression using documenta 14 and 15 as key examples. He recounts the Parthenon of Books and the creation of the Kasseler Liste as interventions that sparked discussion about “good” versus “bad” censorship. The antisemitism scandal around Taring Padi’s People’s Justice at documenta 15 then foregrounded conflicts over artistic freedom, antisemitism, and protective restrictions. Presenting media reactions, scholarly arguments, and public opinion, the paper situates these controversies within broader academic debates on censorship, asking when restrictions undermine or safeguard democratic culture.
Carolin Gluchowski (Universität Hamburg, Germany)
Meritocracy as Democratic Imaginary: Scripts of Deservingness in Contemporary German Culture
- Gluchowski argues that contemporary German culture imagines democracy through “scripts of deservingness,” where civic inclusion is tied to Leistung, credentials, and rank. The paper stages a debate between Sandel, Markovits, Wooldridge, and Piketty to show how meritocracy both legitimizes democratic procedures and undermines solidarity. Through Stelling’s Schäfchen im Trockenen, Beck’s Paradise City, and Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun, it analyzes middle-class moral economies, algorithmic governance, and datafied bodies as cultural encodings of worth. Combining close reading and discourse analysis, it shows democracy oscillating between promise and risk as meritocratic metrics naturalize exclusion, shame, and hierarchy.
Lara-Marie Hägerling (Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany)
The Chancellor’s Memory: Angela Merkel’s Memoir and the Politics of East German Identity
- Hägerling’s paper offers an analysis of Angela Merkel’s 2024 autobiography as a major intervention in GDR memory politics and debates on East German identity. The paper argues that Merkel reframes her GDR socialization as foundational to her democratic leadership, explicitly linking her political style—including “alternativeless” decision-making—to experiences under dictatorship. Using Sabrow’s three “memory landscapes,” it examines Merkel’s Geschichtsbild and her emphasis on individual freedom, protective spaces, and insouciance as resources for democratic agency. The memoir thus becomes a cultural artifact that contests simplistic East–West binaries and shows how autobiographical writing shapes contemporary constructions of democratic legitimacy in unified Germany.
Sabrina Huber (Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany)
Museums Narrating Democracy. Exhibitions as Narrative Agents in the Political Field
- Huber analyzes recent German exhibitions on democracy that were conceived as part of the 2021 project “Museums as Active Spaces of Democracy”. She explores these exhibitions as narrative agents that stage democracy through immersive formats and reads them as “committed interventions” in political and cultural discourses on the crisis of democracy. Using narratology and democratic theory (Bal, Mouffe, Rancière), she asks how institutional self-narratives, exhibition diegesis, and visitors’ movements construct stories of democracy as conflictual or consensual, open or didactic.
Christina Kraenzle (York University, Canada)
Time-Travel, Spectral Pasts and Political Futures in Laura Laabs' Rote Sterne überm Feld
- Kraenzle reads Laura Laabs’ film Rote Sterne überm Feld as a transtemporal exploration of the ties between historical memory and democratic life. Moving between World War II, late GDR/Wende, the 1990s, and the present, the film rejects linear progress narratives in favor of Benjaminian constellations and ruptures. Through shifting aspect ratios, collage-like montage, reenactments, and archival inserts, it dramatizes memory’s unpredictability and the coexistence of the unresolved legacies of fascism, state socialism, and post-reunification disillusionment. The paper argues that democracy requires ongoing negotiation of contested memories and highlights how the film’s narrative approach and egalitarian production practices themselves model democratic cultural work.
Michel Mallet (Université de Moncton, Canada)
Weaving Democracy from Its Negation: Texts, Textures, Textiles in Herta Müller’s Oeuvre
- Mallet’s paper offers an exploration of how Herta Müller’s prose, collages, and political essays use textile metaphors and fragmentation to warn against authoritarianism and defend democratic vigilance. Rooted in Müller’s sewing practice and trauma under dictatorship, collage becomes a way of cutting, stitching, and reassembling words and images to deconstruct oppressive ideologies. Reading works such as Niederungen, Herztier, Atemschaukel, and Der Beamte sagte, the paper traces motifs of fabric, weaving, and colour as figures of memory, surveillance, oppression, and resistance. It argues that Müller’s interwoven literary and political oeuvre constitutes a sustained critique of totalitarianism and a call to protect fragile democratic and humanist values.
Maria Mayr (Memorial University, Canada)
Between littérature engagée and Ideology: The Role of Literature in Fostering Demokratiefähigkeit
- Mayr investigates how contemporary German literature navigates between engagé writing and ideology to foster “Demokratiefähigkeit.” Building on discussions of Bodrožić’s Poetische Vernunft and Sanyal’s Antichristie, she highlights literature’s potential to foster awareness of and tolerance for complexity and ambiguity. Further exploring the relationship between literary and political expression and activism, focuses on open letters and the volume Trotzdem sprechen. The contribution argues that such texts defend art as a non-ideological space for differentiation and restraint, while also probing the limits of dialogic complexity amid accusations of genocide, complicity, and cancellation.
Maria Roca Lizarazu (University of Oxford, UK)
Writing and Righting – Literary Responses to Right-Wing Terrorism in Post-Unification Germany
- This paper concerns itself with literary and performative responses to right-wing terrorism targeting mainly Turkish and Kurdish communities since the 1990s. In a context of systemic racist non-recognition and inadequate legal redress, Lizarazu analyzes memoirs by victims’ relatives alongside experimental projects like Dischereit’s Blumen für Otello, Dündar’s türken, feuer, and Röggla’s Laufendes Verfahren. The paper focuses on how these works create mnemonic and testimonial interventions, recalibrate affect through grief, and form counter-publics where justice beyond the courtroom can be imagined. It asks what written and performed texts can do when democratic processes fail, and how such interventions challenge conventional notions of literature.
Daniela Roth (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Social Criticism, Political Satire, and Authorial Posture in Ingo Schulze, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre and Juli Zeh
- How do Ingo Schulze, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, and Juli Zeh connect literary satire and political commentary with their public roles as intellectuals? Situating them within broader expectations for “author-as-conscience” figures in German-speaking Europe, Roth reads selected novels alongside public interventions. Using Meizoz’s concept of “literary posture” and the “Subjektform Autor,” it analyzes how these writers stage themselves as critical voices contributing to democratic debate. The study argues that the renewed significance of authors’ public personas, after the “death of the author,” is central to understanding literature’s role in times of social tension and polarization.
Katlyn Rozovics (University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, USA)
A Tale of Three Bellottos: Restitution in the Model Democracy
- The 2019 restitution of two Bellotto paintings from German collections to Max Emden’s heir is a case study in democratic negotiation of historical responsibility. Examining the Limbach Commission’s reasoning, public debate, and the contrasting U.S. non-restitution of a third painting, the paper shows how legal, moral, and political considerations intersect. By recognizing Emden as a victim despite his Swiss residence, the Commission broadened definitions of Nazi persecution and Germany’s obligations. The case exemplifies how restitution debates become arenas where property law, Schlussstrich discourses, and “anti-woke” backlash meet Germany’s ongoing commitment to reckon with Nazi and colonial injustices within a democratic framework.
Brangwen Stone (University of Sydney, Australia)
Zukunftsmusik: Imagining Democracy at the Maxim Gorki Theater
- This paper explores how the Maxim Gorki Theater, under Shermin Langhoff, reactivates the German tradition of theatre as a nation-building institution while centering migrant and marginalized perspectives. Drawing on Langhoff’s statements and scholarship on German Stadttheater, it situates the Maxim Gorki Theater within a history that links stage, national discourse, and democratic imagination. The theater’s programming and the biennial Herbstsalon expand the national narrative through diverse casts and explicitly political, often immersive, formats. The paper argues that the Maxim Gorki Theater simultaneously represents and critiques democratic processes, modeling forms of participation and alliance-building aligned with the Ratschlag der Vielen’s vision of a resilient, defensive democracy.
Tilman Venzl (LMU Munich, Germany)
Toward a New Understanding of Democratic Literature in Contemporary Germany: Demokratie. Wofür es sich jetzt zu kämpfen lohnt and the Public Debate on Democracy
- Venzl discusses the anthology Demokratie. Wofür es sich jetzt zu kämpfen lohnt as evidence that democracy has become a central literary concern in Germany. He notes that while the volume links democracy to humanistic values and shared narratives, it sidelines issues such as distributive justice, representation, institutions, and democracy’s entanglement with nationalism. The paper critiques this narrowing of democracy’s semantic range as symptomatic of an oversimplified public discourse that may hinder democratic vitality. Venzl proposes “democratic literature” as a heuristic term to think more broadly about how contemporary texts engage crises, conflicts, and ongoing democratization efforts.