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Editor:
Presscouncil City of Chemnitz
Pressrelease: 530

4th Stefan Heym Talk

"But I crossed the border"

The 4th Stefan Heym Talk, on Tuesday 29 September at 7 pm in the Villa Esche, will focus on Stefan Heym's early poems. Read and commented on by Inge Heym and others, it will look back on the beginnings of his career as a writer, which began 85 years ago in Chemnitz. His wife Inge Heym, Dr Ulrike Uhlig and Michael Müller from the International Stefan Heym Society will embark on a literary search for clues based on the volume of poetry "Ich aber ging über die Grenze", published to mark his 100th birthday.

It begins during Heym's school years in Chemnitz and Berlin, continues through the National Socialists' seizure of power in 1933 and his flight from Germany to the years of his exile in Czechoslovakia and the USA.

During this time, Stefan Heym wrote around 300 poems, many of which were published - including in the "Weltbühne". These were often political works that were critical of the times and sometimes still astonishingly topical, which were later almost forgotten in the shadow of his great novels. Other poems, some of them very personal, were only rediscovered after his death.

Admission to the event costs 8 euros per person (concessions 5 euros)