The Jewish Anna Seghers
Panel Discussion
On the 125th birthday of the writer Anna Seghers, the Jewish Museum Berlin receives a very special donation: Seghers' grandson Jean Radvanyi hands over to the museum a handmade leporello with pictures related to the Purim story, created by his grandmother. Anna Seghers had given it in 1924 to her fiancé and later husband, Laszlo Radvanyi.
Mon 8 Dec 2025, 7 pm
Where
W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)
This object provides an opportunity to explore the Jewish aspects in the life and work of Anna Seghers: Seghers, born as Netty Reiling, the only child of an orthodox family from Mainz, devoted herself in her younger years to Jewish topics – for example in her dissertation on Jews in the work of Rembrandt, in her letters to Laszlo Radvanyi, and also in later stories.
Aubrey Pomerance, head of the JMB archive, speaks with Jean Radvanyi and the literary scholar Ulrike Schneider about the history of the Reiling family, Anna Seghers' connections to Judaism, and her “Jewish writings.”
With the kind support of Berliner Sparkasse.
