In the small Uckermark village of Warnitz, there is an old-school inn named Gasthof Deutsche Eiche – the “German Oak Guesthouse” – that serves Bouletten, homebrewed beer and the house special: schnitzel with an egg and potatoes. Perhaps surprisingly, this inn is also home to one of Berlin-Brandenburg’s most interesting literary event series, serving up well-attended monthly readings with local authors as well as those who make the 80-minute train ride from Hauptbahnhof.
Ten years ago, the Uckermark was not widely known, and houses were cheap. Things have changed greatly since then.
Organised and moderated by the acclaimed literary critic Cornelia Jentzsch – born in Saxony in 1958 but long since active in Berlin’s literary scene – the Warnitzer Lesungen have become an institution over the last 10 years. The programme includes poets, novelists and nonfiction authors as well as translators, editors and publishers.
It is almost always in German – though James Joyce’s Ulysses is celebrated on Bloomsday each June. We met up with Jentzsch, who splits her time between Berlin and the Uckermark, for coffee in Prenzlauer Berg.
What inspired you to begin this reading series? Is there a lot happening in the region?
Yes, and there is always more. I think it’s great that ambitious art and culture is being brought to the Uckermark. In Berlin, you can find such an incredible range of concerts, readings and theatrical performances. Thoughts are exchanged; critical issues are addressed. You get really good information and it inspires you to think.
In the countryside, though, it’s always been a little more difficult to make this happen – especially with authors who are more widely known. There are some festivals, but they only happen every one or two years, and usually it’s a matter of Berliners coming out to the countryside for an experience. “We’re bringing culture to the country,” the organisers say, but really it’s more for the Berliners, and then it goes quiet again afterwards.
When I started the Warnitzer Lesungen, I wanted firstly to bring really good authors out. At first it was just readings, no discussion, but more and more people started asking if we could also have a discussion – so I figured, alright then. Secondly, I wanted it to take place regularly, ideally monthly, so that the series makes a continuously good offering to people in this rural area. And that’s what has happened.
How has it changed over the last decade?
I’ve held the readings at different venues, but now it’s been at the Deutsche Eiche for five or six years. This is an old inn in Warnitz, run by locals – a classic village inn that has football trophies in the dining room and a wonderful fieldstone hall with three great oak pillars inside.
When you enter, you see an old set of knight’s armour and all kinds of stuffed animals on the walls, from wild boars to badgers. Since that became the venue, I think the inhibition threshold for locals has gone down: more and more are now coming along. And the series has also taken off such that I can now just ask the very best authors to come and read.
Why do you think they like to come?
Authors have a certain curiosity about the Uckermark. And the word has got around that our audience is absolutely amazing. They ask a lot of questions, they’re well informed. They don’t necessarily come from a literary background or have literary experience, but they’re curious, they like to read and they’re open to inspiration.
Sometimes they show up even if they don’t know the authors, because maybe they find the topic interesting. I get such great support from the district, from the village and the mayor. I am particularly grateful to the Landkreis, the Brandenburg Literature Council and the Potsdam Literature Office, who contintually support our honorariums.
This year the Landkreis even gave us a sound system with a projector so that now everyone can hear in the big room we use; we can also play films and music. Another important cooperation partner is the UNESCO Club Joachimsthal. And the Deutsche Eiche let me have the room for free – although in exchange they know our visitors will eat and drink. This is important because more and more inns are closing down.
How do you navigate the relationship between Berlin and the Uckermark? I’ve read some discussion of rural gentrification – creatives or professionals moving out to the countryside to live in a parallel world or to start projects that don’t include the locals at all…
Ten years ago, the Uckermark was not widely known, and houses were cheap. Things have changed greatly since then. Many Berliners have bought houses there, in part because of older Uckermarkers passing away – and now the locals can hardly keep up with the prices. Many places, like my own town, have very good transport links to Berlin: Autobahn nearby, regular trains.
So a lot of people buy a weekend house, or if they work freelance or remotely, they can just relocate and commute occasionally into town. The quality of life is very high. The region is beautiful. My village has a wonderful local market, a village doctor, good emergency services. And we have a lot of culture in the area.
I have realised that I should trust my curiosity. What do I want to know? What do the people here want to know?
The violinist Georg Kallweit from the Akademie für Alte Musik, who has lived in the Uckermark for a long time, had the idea of holding summer concerts in Melzow’s church with brilliant international musicians. Thanks to donations from the guests, the church has since been totally renovated.
A lot of people helped out, both Berliners and locals, so there has always been good cooperation. And when the locals see Berliners not just coming for the weekend but integrating themselves into local life and showing curiosity and talking to people, then that mutual respect can grow.
What led you out of the city to the Uckermark? You were deeply involved in Berlin literary life…
I spent all my childhood holidays at my grandmother’s farm, where I was involved in everything from feeding animals and helping with the harvest to preserving cucumbers and butchering pigs. So I have always had an affinity for rural life. I feel quite at home in Warnitz. It also gives me peace and quiet to get my work done – in Berlin, there are sometimes too many distractions and enticements, and the big-city energy has become too hectic for me.
I feel really privileged in my current situation that I can have both: my children, friends and partner live in Berlin, which means I can commute in as well and do whatever I have to do work-wise here. I will never leave the city entirely. But I really do live in the countryside, and I want to keep living there.
Some people say that they couldn’t live in such a town because everything is too small and people are always watching you. Well, it’s true, they do watch you. But it also has the advantage that if I fall over in the garden, my neighbour will see it. When I had first moved there, and I was lying in bed with a cold, a neighbour came over with soup.
Something I find interesting is that, in a village, whenever there are conflicts, you have to work them through. In the city you can just decide to turn away – the city is big enough. In a village, you have a different kind of social responsibility. Of course, the far-right has a major presence in the country, which brings problems.
But you can also understand much more clearly the economic and political structures that people like that think within. At the Warnitzer Lesungen, I invited Maximilian Steinbeis to read from his very important book Die verwundbare Demokratie. The room was full and it showed what great demand there is for such discussions.
Has there ever been a single moment when you really thought, ‘Okay, this is why I do all the hard work?’
I actually have that feeling after every one of the readings, because after every reading there is someone who comes up and says, ‘You absolutely have to keep this going, please don’t stop.’ And then I think, well, alright, I’ll carry on. Sometimes it really is a lot of organisational work, and so far I’ve done almost everything on my own – inviting people, coming up with concepts, applying for funding, invoices, designing and printing the posters, maintaining the website.
I also moderate the readings myself, which usually takes two or three days’ preparation. But there really is the demand for it. And I’m actually already planning for 2027: next year is already booked up because there are so many ideas, so many inquiries, so many great titles on the market.
You’ve done moderation work for many years. What, in your experience, makes a good moderator?
When I started moderating events, back in the day in Berlin, I prepared like crazy. I wanted to ask intelligent questions and to be knowledgeable about the subject – and to appear knowledgeable too. Those were my first gigs, and they turned out rather wooden. I didn’t want to forget anything or say anything superfluous. And the pressure was high: with audiences, demanding audiences, you must not embarrass yourself.
Now, out in the Uckermark, it’s all a bit more familiar to me. I’m actually very relaxed about moderating. And I’ve realised over the years that a good moderator does not need to know everything – they just need to be able to ask the right questions. They have to be able to tease things out of the author. I have realised that I should trust my curiosity. What do I want to know? What do the people here want to know? What I’ve learned as a moderator is just to ask questions out of curiosity, questions that draw answers out of people.
What kind of questions?
You know, if I asked an author in Berlin, ‘Why do you write?’ – well, for God’s sake, you can’t ask that, it’s way too banal. But in Warnitz, someone in the audience asked that to a well-known poet. Why do you write? I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh no, let’s see what he says’. And then he gave a very long, very earnestly thoughtful response, because he realised that it was a genuine question. It occurred to me, then, that you can get different answers out of authors out in Warnitz.
Finally: there’s a lot of poetry on your programme, and as a critic, you’ve written a lot about poets from Germany and abroad. What motivates you to stay engaged with poetry, even as the art form has lost a bit of its popularity?
People often think that poetry is about having a romantic outlook – beauty, nature, contemplation and so on – but that is not it at all. Even the Romantic movement was never espousing a poetry that was oblivious to the world. Romantic poetry actually emerged against a very serious background.
Poetry became a sort of linguistic self-assurance as a reaction to the onset of industrialisation and the acceleration of life, which went hand in hand with the disappearance of spirituality. When I came to poetry, I found that it really engaged with language, even more than novels do, because poetry lives in an absolute clarification, an absolute precision, of language.
Poetry is a critical coming-to-terms with language. I lived for many years in Prenzlauer Berg, including under the DDR, right in the heart of its cultural scene. And the Prenzlauer Berg poets back then, like Bert Papenfuß, Stefan Döring, Andreas Koziol or Jan Faktor, they dealt with language very precisely, and they wrote great literature, much of which has now been lost since the fall of the Wall – which is a shame because it was very high-quality and not just relevant to East Germany.
That was when I came to see how much poetry has to do with a precise vision of society, and of how language can be used manipulatively. Poetry can intensify your understanding; it can change how you see the world. When you read it, there are no longer any borders.
- More info and dates at warnitzerlesungen.de
