"Between us and Weimar is Buchenwald"

In the summer semester of 1949, the German scholar Richard Alewyn, who had just returned from American exile, opened his Goethe lecture with the sentences: "Buchenwald lies between us and Weimar. There is no getting around that." Since then, Alewyn's sentence has often been quoted but rarely taken to heart, probably because it is not easy to state what it can mean for philological work. The lecture understands it in such a way that it explores the meaning Goethe has in the texts of former Buchenwald prisoners.

Stephan Pabst studied modern German literature and philosophy in Halle/S., London and Berlin. He now teaches and researches as a professor of modern German literature at the MLU Halle/Wittenberg. In recent years, he has worked intensively on the literary history of the Buchenwald concentration camp. His most recent publication is the volume: Buchenwald. Zur europäischen Textgeschichte eines Konzentrationslagers (Berlin/Boston 2023).

An event of the Goethe-Gesellschaft in Weimar e. V.