Poetry Cabinet: Freedom Won Through Struggle

Hard-won freedom: Writing despite repression, imprisonment, and exile

Writing can be life-threatening. This evening brings together voices for whom writing was or is directly linked to existential questions of freedom: What does it mean when words become dangerous? How does imprisonment change thinking, Language, memory? And how can a new public sphere be found in exile?

Yirgalem Fisseha Mehbratu from Eritrea, interned there as the voice of the opposition, in exile in Germany since 2018, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian author and dissident, in Berlin since 2027, and Turkish-Kurdish author Meral Şimşek, brought to Germany by PEN in 2022 immediately before her conviction in Turkey, are examples of literature as testimony, as resistance, and as a form of self-assertion.

The discussion will be moderated by author and journalist Elke Schmitter and complemented by Songs of Freedom by Meral Şimşek, who composed the songs especially for the 2026 Literature Festival and will perform them with two musicians.