The Jewish Element in Anna Segher’s Work
Panel Discussion
On the occasion of the 125th birthday of the writer Anna Seghers, born Netty Reiling, the Jewish Museum Berlin has received a very special gift from her two grandchildren, Anne and Jean Radvanyi: a handmade leporello created by their grandmother with illustrations of the Purim story, which she presented in 1924 to her fiancé and later husband László Radványi.
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.
Netty and László Radványi, Berlin, ca. 1925; Academy of Arts, Berlin, Anna Seghers Archive, no. 4887_025
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Netty and László Radványi, Berlin, ca. 1925; Academy of Arts, Berlin, Anna Seghers Archive, no. 4887_025
qAubrey 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.
Jean Radvanyi; photo: Tibor Radvanyi
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