Eine Gegend, in der Menschen
und Bücher lebten
('An area where people
and books lived')
'Chernivtsi is not merely a city, it is the whole world.'
Nora Gray
From the 18th century onwards, Chernivtsi, the historic centre of the Bukovina region, became an important hub of European culture with a multicultural population of Jews, Germans, Romanians, Ukrainians and Poles. At that time, when the city was called Czernowitz, belonged to Austria-Hungary and its residents were mainly German-speaking, particularly the Jewish culture blossomed there. A culture that was abruptly destroyed by the Holocaust and other 20th century 'breaches of civilisation', as they either annihilated its protagonists or scattered them all over the world. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chernivtsi became part of a now independent Ukraine.
Important poets who wrote in German, such as Rose Ausländer, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger and Paul Celan, spent their childhood and youth in what was then Czernowitz in the early 20th century. Their memories, preserved in personal stories and documents that are read out aloud by Martina Gedeck and Jens Harzer, let this special place and its wonderful European culture come to life again in a literary way.
Martina Gedeck is one of the internationally successful and celebrated actresses. She has appeared in more than 80 cinema and TV productions, but she can also be seen in the theatre. Joint programmes with musicians occupy a special place in her artistic work.
The actor Jens Harzer worked at the Münchner Kammerspiele theatre, the Schaubühne in Berlin and at the Residenztheater in Munich before he joined the company of the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 2009. He has been the bearer of the Iffland-Ring since 2019.
