Judith Hermann: “Happiness Is Always the Moment Before”—40th Freiburg Literary Forum: Opening Reading and Retrospective with Insa Wilke

Opening Remarks: Roland Meder, Mayor for Culture, Social Affairs, and Integration of the City of Freiburg
Moderator: Insa Wilke

“My first and only visit to a therapist cost me my red coral bracelet and my lover.”

An unforgettable opening line, followed by many more unforgettable lines. With Judith Hermann’s debut novel *Sommerhaus, später* (1998), a new tone made its way into German-language literature. Sober, laconic, almost taciturn, the author succeeded in describing the density and intensity of moods, unfolding an entire attitude toward life between the lines.
From these style-defining beginnings, four collections of short stories and two novels have emerged to date. Looking back from “Wir hätten uns alles gesagt” (2023), her Frankfurt Poetics Lecture, the first sentence of the story “Rote Korallen” sounds like a hint that already points to everything to come. A style of writing that thrives on gaps, on the “precision of the approximate” (F.A.S.), with which Hermann approaches her subjects, in a tentative movement between truth, invention, and mystery. And on her unique gift for preserving such mystery.
“I write about myself. I write based on my own life; I know no other way of writing,” says Judith Hermann. Tonight, the multi-award-winning author will trace this path through her work in a conversation with literary critic Insa Wilke.
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Photo: Andreas Reiberg

Sponsors: City of Freiburg Department of Culture, Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer Foundation, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank
Cooperation partners: XML-PH-0009@deepl.internal Cultural partner: SWR Kultur

Date: November 4, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Location: historical merchants' hall, Münsterplatz 24
Admission: 16/8 euros

Literary discussion
Off-site