Monday, 3 March, 4 to 7 pm
Freifunk consultation hour, TIETZ Edition
Location: Central Library, BibliotheksLabor
Admission: free of charge
Freifunk Chemnitz e. V. meets in the middle of one of its largest installations and shows in a cosy environment what is possible with WLAN today.
From a simple router that you place by your window to complex event planning, you can come along with your questions or set up your first Freifunk router together with us.
Tuesday, 4 March, 10 a.m., 11.30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. (duration approx. 1 hour)
Introduction MediaLab
Location: Central Library, LibraryLab
Admission: free of charge
Registration: www.stadtbibliothek-chemnitz.de/biblab-c/veranstaltungen
Do you have records and audio/VHS tapes at home that you want to finally have in your digital playlist? Then use the technology in the BibLab-C! Today we'll show you how to do it, tomorrow you'll be digitising your collections yourself.
Tuesday, 4 March, 10 a.m., 11.30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. (duration approx. 1 hour)
AudioStudio introduction
Location: Central Library, LibraryLab
Admission: free of charge
Registration: www.stadtbibliothek-chemnitz.de/biblab-c/veranstaltungen
Have you always wanted to produce a podcast or radio play? Are you looking for a space to digitally record and mix your own composition? Then use the technology in the library lab! Today we'll show you how to do it, tomorrow you'll be sending your voice and your songs out into the world.
Wednesday, 5 March, 3 p.m.
Reading club - together you read less alone
Location: District library in the Vita Centre
Admission: free of charge
We talk together about books that have currently impressed and inspired us. Readers who would like to share and discuss their reading experiences with others are very welcome.
Thursday, 6 March, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Open day - to marvel and discover
FaBi - the new travelling library for Chemnitz
Location: TIETZ forecourt
Admission: free of charge
FaBi, the Chemnitz City Library's new mobile library, an electrically powered vehicle, will be rolling through the streets of Chemnitz from 10 March after the winter holidays. The new mobile library will mainly be used in Chemnitz school playgrounds and in neighbourhoods without library facilities and, as a mobile library, is an important factor in giving as many Chemnitz residents as possible access to the city library's wide range of services.
11.30 am and 2 pm there will be a juggler programme for children with Djanko Lemon.
Friday, 7 March, 7 p.m.
Opening of the Literature Days LESELUST GOES EUROPE - CHEMNITZ 2025
Radio night with Jurij Andruchowytsch & Karbido
Venue: Weltecho, Annaberger Straße 24
Admission: 8 euros, pupils and students free of charge
A dramatic author's evening that combines performative readings and electro-acoustic improvisation music. Jurij Andruchowytsch and the multi-instrumental Karbido Trio juggle with contemporary aesthetics, genre patterns and the sound-creative memory of the musical avant-garde to create a musical-literary experiment. The theatre evening is a musical interpretation of texts from the novel Radio Nacht, read performatively by the author. It is the story of an opponent of the regime who imitates his own radio programme in a hiding place (perhaps in prison). The background to the plot is the time of the pandemic, climate protests and Russian aggression - a time of burgeoning hopes for radical change.
Saturday, 8 March, 10 am to 3 pm
Workshop "JelGi - Everyone learns the guitar"
Location: Central Library, study room
Admission: free of charge
In the JelGi course, you will learn in a short time how to accompany children's and folk songs, popular songs and songs without any previous knowledge. The strings of the guitar or ukulele are tuned to C major so that only one fingering needs to be learnt with the left hand. There are many different fingerings for the right hand. Please bring a guitar or ukulele and a footrest approx. 20 cm high.
The non-profit association "JelGi - Jeder lernt Gitarre" organises the JelGi courses on a voluntary basis. A donation towards expenses is requested on site. Registration takes place directly via the website of the JelGi association: https: //www.jelgi.com/jelgi-kurse/chemnitz-08-03-2025/
Saturday, 8 March, 11 am to 2 pm
Open text workshop of the Free German Authors' Association
Location: Central Library, BibliotheksLabor, OpenSpace
Admission: free of charge
Editing your own texts. Those coming for the first time can also just listen. Joint event with the Free German Authors' Association.
Saturday, 8 March, 3 p.m.
LESELUST: Take up the pen, Chemnitz! #2
Unpublished works from the Chemnitz Opera's writing workshop
Venue: TIETZ, Central Library, Event Hall
Admission: free of charge
From April to November 2024, writers from Chemnitz and the surrounding area met to process biographical experiences, lived history and their personal view of the present day in literary form. The workshop was led by Arna Aley, the first literature scholarship holder of the city of Chemnitz. In October 2024, texts from the writing workshop were presented for the first time at Chemnitz City Library. The response from the audience was great. Now the continuation follows with further insights into the diverse literary work of the participants.
The writing workshop is part of the Capital of Culture project "Rummelplatz" organised by Chemnitz Opera in cooperation with Chemnitz City Library, Chemnitz Adult Education Centre and Dom Literatury w Łodzi.
Monday, 10 March, 6 pm
LESELUST: A New Shift/ Nová šichta - film and discussion
Moderation: Christina Frankenberg
Venue: Weltecho, Annaberger Straße 24
Admission: free of charge
"A New Shift/ Nová šichta" (CZ 2020, 91 min., OVR, director: Jindřich Andrš)
Tomáš Hisem is a miner with all his soul. He worked underground for more than twenty years before the mine in Paskov in northern Moravia was closed for economic reasons. Tomáš and his colleagues are not immediately out on the street; they are offered retraining in the aptly named "New Shift" training programme. After all these years in the pit, the forty-four-year-old decides to retrain as an IT programmer. But does he really have a chance of succeeding in this field amidst all the young digital natives who have also completed a university degree? Czech director Jindřich Andrš's first feature-length film is an observation that is as calm as it is captivating. Andrš accompanies his likeable protagonist in a gentle manner and succeeds in portraying his difficult life situation with dignity. The film has also won several international awards for this, including the MDR Film Prize and the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig 2020.
Tuesday, 11 March, 6 pm
LESELUST: Leaving to arrive: Stories of the post-reunification period
Reading and discussion with Sabine Rennefanz and Petr Šesták
Moderation: Christina Frankenberg
Venue: TIETZ, Central Library, Event Hall
Admission: 8 euros, pupils and students free of charge
Just like Kathleen, the first-person narrator in Sabine Rennefanz's novel Kosakenberg (2024), Josef, the protagonist in Petr Šesták's book Kontinuita parku (2021, tr. The Continuity of the Park), left his home, which had become too small, after the fall of communism. Both want to gain experience in the big world. And both then return. During their mother's visits to Brandenburg, the world that Kathleen actually wanted to escape unfolds an unexpected force and seems to want to clutch the fugitive. Josef also finds himself confronted with unexpected forces in his home town. He wanted to change it with new ideas and culture, but this proves to be extremely difficult.
Sabine Rennefanz and Petr Šesták tell intelligent stories of two people in search of their identity, which is essentially characterised by their childhood and youth behind the Iron Curtain, in the field of tension between their small homeland and the big world, leaving and arriving. At the same time, not without humour, they tell of two places in the political East in the years of change and afterwards.
Wednesday, 12 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: "That a good Germany may flourish..."
Life in the post-war period 1945 to 1949
Musical reading with Roman Knižka and the OPUS 45 wind quintet
Venue: TIETZ, Central Library, Event Hall
Admission: 10 euros
"Dass ein gutes Deutschland blühe ..." uses literary texts, reports and contemporary testimonies to tell of a country between apocalypse and awakening, of the arrival of the victors, of the confrontation of the Germans with the atrocities of the Nazi regime, the fate of Jewish concentration camp survivors who wandered through the land of the perpetrators as "displaced persons" after their liberation, of hunger winters, displaced persons and war returnees. Political caesuras such as the Potsdam Conference, the Nuremberg Trials, the currency reform or the Berlin Blockade are addressed, as are the often questionable practices of denazification procedures in everyday life. Literature and music after 1945: The programme also deals with cultural awakenings and new beginnings. Whether or how one should still write after the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and the catastrophe of the Second World War was hotly debated by writers of the time. Roman Knižka recites from works of post-war literature by Wolfgang Borchert, Bertolt Brecht and Nelly Sachs.
The OPUS 45 wind quintet will perform works by the post-war avant-gardists György Ligeti and Karl Amadeus Hartmann as well as other compositions on the pulse of the times by Dmitri Shostakovich and Hanns Eisler and other composers.
An event organised by the Evangelisches Forum Chemnitz in cooperation with the Chemnitz City Library, sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
Thursday, 13 March, 3 to 6 pm
Let's play - gaming in the library
Location: Central Library, GamingArena
Admission: free of charge, target group: recommended from 12 years of age
We play new games together on the PlayStation5, Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and try out the VR glasses Meta Quest.
Friday, 14 March, 7 p.m.
LESELUST: Literary insights into precarious working environments
Reading and discussion with Heike Geißler and Anna Beata Háblová
Moderation: Stefanie Bose
Venue: Stadtwirtschaft, Jakobstraße 46
Admission: free of charge
The author Heike Geißler, who grew up in Chemnitz, and the Prague writer Anna Beata Háblová tell the story of women who have to earn their living with monotonous jobs at a supermarket checkout or in a huge warehouse. During their humdrum work, they reflect on their lives, dreams and goals. Both authors provide knowledgeable insights into the working world of those who make mass consumption possible and transform them into often astonishingly poetic literature.
In 2014, Heike Geißler published Saisonarbeit, a fictionalised account of her six-week stint as a temporary worker at Amazon. She describes the depersonalised world of work so vividly that you feel like you're standing right next to her as you read. Anna Beata Háblová lets her protagonist Petra speak in her prose text Směna (Engl. "The Shift") from 2022. She is a young artist
full of self-doubt who doesn't feel up to the arrogant art world and therefore works as a cashier in a supermarket. But here, too, she faces a daily struggle.
Saturday, 15 March, 5 p.m.
LESELUST: What does the war in Ukraine mean for us?
Observations by city writers Ira Peter and Sonya Winterberg
Moderation: Nikita Filippenkow
Venue: Chemnitz University Library of the TU Chemnitz, Straße der Nationen 33
Admission: free of charge
The City Writers Programme of the German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe enables an annual stay of several months in a city in Central and Eastern Europe with special links to Germany.
Ira Peter was in Odessa, the Ukrainian harbour city on the Black Sea, in 2021 and experienced the reality of the war that Russia had already unleashed in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Sonya Winterberg was in Memel/Klaipėda, the Lithuanian harbour city on the Baltic Sea, in 2022 and observed the Lithuanian population's resolute support for Ukraine immediately after the invasion of Russian troops.
In conversation with Nikita Filippenkov, the two journalists report on their impressions and discuss the significance of the war for us in Germany.
Monday, 17 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: Everything's Fine, Potatoes in Line / Všechno v pořádku, brambory na řádku &
Coal in the Soul / Ženy SHR - films and discussion
Moderation: Christina Frankenberg
Venue: Weltecho, Annaberger Straße 24
Admission: free of charge
"Everything's Fine, Potatoes in Line / Všechno v pořádku, brambory na řádku" (CZ, PL 2022, 14 min., OmeU, Director: Piotr Jasiński)
The Turów open-cast mine in the Czech-Polish-German border region is causing tensions. For the Polish side, Turów is a source of livelihood, while the Czech side fears a lack of drinking water and other environmental damage. Against this backdrop, Teresa from Poland takes part in a Polish-Czech competition for the best potato salad. But this is about much more than just salad.
"Coal in the Soul / Ženy SHR" (CZ 2010, 57 min., OmeU, Director: Martin Dušek, Ondřej Provazník)
Hana and Liběna are two headstrong women whose lives are characterised by open-cast lignite mining in northern Bohemia. They live in the same town, know each other and are similarly determined - but the open-cast mine has completely divided them. Environmental activist Hana has dedicated herself to the fight against it and fights for the preservation of the landscape and cultural monuments. On the other side of the barricade is Liběna. She is a spokesperson for Czech Coal, has adopted the arguments of her employer and is vehemently defending the open-cast mine. It is so important to her that she even puts up with arguments with her own children, who do not share her mother's point of view. The film, with its unique perspective between irony and empathy, has been shown at several international festivals.
Tuesday, 18 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: Digging into the past
Reading and discussion with Patricia Holland Moritz and Petra Klabouchová
Moderation: Christina Frankenberg
Venue: TIETZ, Central Library, Event Hall
Admission: 8 euros, pupils and students free of charge
In their novels, Petra Klabouchová, who comes from Prachatice in southern Bohemia, and Patricia Holland Moritz, who was born in Chemnitz, then Karl-Marx-Stadt, explore the question of how the history of Central European border regions affects the lives of their inhabitants. In her Šumava crime thriller Prameny Vltavy (2021), Petra Klabouchová traces the background to the murder of a schoolgirl who is found dead in striped pyjamas with a Jewish star all the way back to the Second World War, interweaving real events with fiction. The name "Moldauquellen" also stands for a top-secret camp for Soviet prisoners of war, who were allegedly supposed to build an underground weapons factory during the Second World War. Patricia Holland Moritz, who has also written crime novels, paints a picture of an industrial town in the mid-1970s at the foot of the Ore Mountains, at the end of the world so to speak, in her social novel Kaßbergen (2021) about the girl Ulrike. When her boyfriend Gonzo, a punk who refuses to conform, is arrested, she too has to confront her family's past and her town in order to find her own way.
Wednesday, 19 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: Stories between grey and mica
Reading and discussion with Lenka Elbe and Tina Pruschmann
Moderation: Christina Frankenberg
Venue: Chemnitz Industrial Museum, Zwickauer Straße 119
Admission: free of charge
Two extraordinary novels are set in the Ore Mountains, in the towns of Tann and St. Joachimsthal/Jáchymov, whose history was characterised by uranium mining, but also by the operation of spas, and whose authors combine the real with fairytale and fantastical elements.
The life of Ida is at the centre of Tina Pruschmann's novel Bitter Waters (2022). Ida's parents work in the GDR state circus, her mother is a trapeze artist and her father trains elephants. Ida is also in the circus ring. When she starts school, however, she is sent to live with her grandparents in Tann, where Wismut mines uranium. After reunification, when the mine is closed, Ida leaves. Something drives her to the Ukraine.
Around the same time, the Englishman Henry Robotham sets off on his journey to Jáchymov in Lenka Elbe's novel Uranova (2020). This is where the last trace of his girlfriend Angela, who travelled to Czechoslovakia in 1968 to search for her Czech ancestors, was lost. Henry Robotham arrives in a place that is eerily deserted, with glamorous spa hotels on one side and the remains of Stalinist penal camps on the other, where prisoners were forced to work themselves to death in uranium mines. Amidst these contrasts, a breathtaking battle between good and evil unfolds.
Thursday, 20 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: "Carbon. A Song of Donetsk" - A poem about the coal pot of Ukraine
Reading and discussion with the author Svetlana Lavochkina and the translator Diana Feuerbach
Venue: smac - State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz,
Admission: free of charge
Donetsk, the black jewel of Ukraine - Eden and Sodom at the same time, a crucible seething with coal, an inevitable fate in Eastern Europe. In her book, Ukrainian author Svetlana Lavochkina tells the story of a heroic and sore region, created from steel and coal, with brilliant poetic vigour.
In her work, the two narrative strands of the blacksmith Alexander and the linguist Lisa entwine around a complex, mythological and hyperreal image of Donetsk, the city of coal, and its history from 1964 to the Russian invasion of Donbass in 2014.
Thriller, love story, life story, historical wind rose, craftsman's song, ontology of the East Ukrainian soul - Carbon is all of this at the same time, a prayer in polyphonic verse for the beloved, maltreated city.
Saturday, 22 March, 3 pm
LESELUST: Literary journeys
Reading and discussion with Roswitha Schieb and Marcin Wiatr
Moderation: Ariane Afsari
Venue: TIETZ, Central Library, Event Hall
Admission: free of charge
The art historian Roswitha Schieb and the historian and German scholar Marcin Wiatr will use their literary travel guides to the Bohemian Spa Triangle, Wrocław, Lower Silesia, Upper Silesia and Galicia to show how cities and regions can be explored through their respective, sometimes specific, sometimes overlapping literary landscapes.
Monday, 24 March, 6 pm
LESELUST: Eurodonbas, Yevrodonbas - film and discussion
Moderation: Ariane Afsari
Venue: Weltecho, Annaberger Straße 24
Admission: free of charge
Ostheim, Liebenthal, New York, Blumenfeld, Bunge, Marienthal - did you think these places were in the Donbas? Or that the now heavily contested region was once populated by 10,000 Belgians and was referred to as the "10th province of Belgium"? The film is a multi-layered exploration of the early history of industrialisation in eastern Ukraine by Belgian, French, German, Welsh and American entrepreneurs. At the same time, it deconstructs Soviet and Russian myths about the Donbas as a product of the Stalin era. Afterwards, Ariane Afsari will talk to the director, who will be speaking from Ukraine.
Tuesday, 25 March, 6 pm
LESELUST: Spurwechsel - 150 Jahre Literatur über Züge, Strecken und Bahnhöfe im östlichen Europa, scenic reading with publicist Roswitha Schieb and actor Alexander Ganz-Kuhl
Moderation: Ariane Afsari
Venue: Saxon Railway Museum, Frankenberger Straße 172
Admission: free of charge
The literary collage written by Roswitha Schieb with an introduction and historical embedding of the selected quotations reflects the development of the railway: from the 1830s, trains became a common means of transport and travel throughout Europe. The first connections not only revolutionised travel, but the rails also connected an entire continent - politically, culturally and literarily. Some contemporaries at the time hailed trains as technical guarantors of international understanding, progress and peace. Others saw the fast, smooth glide as a loss and mourned the slow disappearance of carriages. Experiences of space and time were altered, even levelled, by the railway; the landscape and the perception of the landscape were transformed by tunnels, aisles, cuttings and viaducts. The railway station has become a symbol of the 20th century, especially in Eastern Europe.
Wednesday, 26 March, 6 p.m.
LESELUST: As if the past had been erased
Reading and discussion with Karin Lednická and Kati Naumann
Moderation: Arna Aley
Venue: Kohlewelt Oelsnitz, Pflochenstraße 28, Oelsnitz/Erzgebirge
Admission: free of charge
In their captivating novel chronicles 'The Longing for Light' (2022) and Šikmý kostel (2020 - 2024), authors Kati Naumann and Karin Lednická tell the story of the lives of two mining families over several generations. Both authors have a gift for bringing the past back to life. They tell fictional stories, but have researched the historical background in detail. The Schlema Valley in the Ore Mountains is home to the Steiner family, whose story Kati Naumann follows from 1912 to the present day. It all begins with the search for a missing great-uncle, and little by little many secrets come to light. Karin Lednická dedicated three novels to the eventful life of the Pospíšil family, which became bestsellers in the Czech Republic. They are set from 1894 in Karwin on the present-day border between Poland and the Czech Republic, where political and nationalist upheavals occurred time and again. Wars, crises and mining disasters not only claimed human lives, but entire landscapes were also destroyed. All that remains of the old Karwin, an important centre of coal mining, is a small leaning church. Where the village centre of Oberschlema once stood, there is now a park. The transformation of these two places is so complete that it seems as if their past has been erased.
Wednesday, 26 March, 3 p.m.
Reading time - together you read less alone
Venue: District library in the Yorck Centre, Scharnhorststraße 11
Admission: free of charge
No more lonely reading at home! Our reading mentor Petra Lory has once again selected interesting books for adults and will read from them.
Thursday, 27 March, 3 to 6 pm
BibLab: Driving licence/introduction to 3D printers
Location: Central Library, LibraryLab, Maker area
Admission: free of charge
Registration requested at: https://www.stadtbibliothek-chemnitz.de/buchen
How does a 3D printer work? Where can I find ready-made models? What do I need to set up?
Are you looking for a way to print small, useful things? Then use the technology in the library lab! Today we'll show you how it works, tomorrow you'll be realising your own projects. Introductory event for those interested
Thursday, 27 March, 3 to 6 pm
Let's play - gaming in the library
Location: Central Library, GamingArena
Admission: free of charge, target group : recommended from 12 years of age
We play new games together on the PlayStation5, Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and try out the VR glasses Meta Quest.
Saturday, 29 March, 6 pm
Jonas Jonasson: "The moonshiner in love and how he saw the world"
Moderation, interpreting, reading of the German translation: Grit Thunemann
Venue: University Library, Straße der Nationen 33
Admission: free of charge
The author of the bestseller "The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared", Jonas Jonasson, takes a detour from the Leipzig Book Fair and talks to Grit Thunemann about Småland, business acumen and drops against gloomy thoughts.
Småland 1852: Algot Olsson, the son of a pig farmer, is left with nothing but a potato field and a still for domestic use after the death of his father. But Algot has brains, business sense and an idea: Algot distils really good schnapps for the railway workers who are laying the first railway tracks and, like all Swedes, are only used to horrible booze, and is so successful that the begrudging Count Bielkegren sabotages him by any means necessary. Fortunately, Algot has good friends at his side: the master printer Helmut, who has fled Bavaria and sometimes doesn't take the truth too seriously, and his pretty and resolute daughter Anna Stina. Together, they defy the count's intrigues, and so Algot's moonshine quickly becomes "Apothecary Otterdahl's Drops for Dull Thoughts" - another bestseller and, as it turns out, a true miracle cure that not only cures the king's toothache, but even thwarts wars. But does it also help with hopeless infatuation?
An event organised by the Swedish Embassy in Germany in cooperation with the University Library of Chemnitz University of Technology and Chemnitz City Library.
Monday, 31 March, 2.30 pm
Reading time - Together you read less alone
Location: Central Library, Culture & Countries section
Admission: free of charge
No more lonely reading at home! Our reading mentor Regine Klinger has once again selected interesting books for adults and will read from them.
Recurring events
Tuesdays, 1 to 3 pm
Refugees welcome in the library!
Location: Central Library, Culture & Countries section
Admission: free of charge
Learning mentors help with learning German and with homework for the DaZ and DaF courses (German as a second / German as a foreign language).
Thursdays, 2 to 5 pm
E-book consultation hour
Location: Central Library, Science & Technology section
Admission: free of charge
Please register at www.stadtbibliothek-chemnitz.de/bibliothek-digital/ebook-sprechstunde
or by telephone on 488 4222
Do you want to know how the eLibrary works or do you have a new device on which you want to use the eLibrary? We'll help you set it up and borrow it for the first time.
Are you already using the eLibrary, but have problems with your e-book reader, reading on your tablet or don't know why you can't borrow e-media?
We are happy to help.
Tuesdays, 3 to 6 pm
Specialist work consultation hour Specialist work / Complex performance? Don't panic!
Location: TIETZ, Central Library, Science & Technology section
Admission: free of charge
Please use the online booking to make an appointment: https: //www.stadtbibliothek-chemnitz.de/angebote-medienpaedagogik/schuelerinnen/facharbeitssprechstunde
We will help you with your literature research: We will introduce you to library catalogues and online databases and show you how to find suitable sources for your topic. Participation in the research paper consultation is free of charge. Library membership is required.
Read aloud
On quiet soles... Stories to listen to
read aloud for everyone with pricked ears
Our reading mentors read the latest children's books, classics, "bestsellers" from their own childhood or even texts they have written themselves.
Admission is free of charge.
The dates are
Tuesdays, 4, 11, 18 and 25 March, 4.30 pm each day
Location: Central Library, Children's World
Saturdays, 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 March, 11 a.m. each day
Location: Central Library, Children's World
Saturdays, 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 March, 10.30 a.m. each day
Location: Vita Centre District Library, Wladimir-Sagorski-Straße 22
Tuesdays, 4, 11, 18 and 25 March, 4 p.m. each day
Location: Einsiedel District Library, Einsiedler Hauptstraße 79b
Tuesdays, 4, 11, 18 and 25 March, 4.30 pm each day
Location: District library in the Yorck Centre, Scharnhorststraße 11
Subject to change due to current events.