Jagoda Marinic talks to Michel Friedman about her novel "Hotel Dalmatia", which is being republished. Marinic's "Gentle Radicalism", which will be published in October 2024, will also be a topic on this evening.
Jagoda Marinić's novel "Restaurant Dalmatia" was first published ten years ago. Highly acclaimed by the press, it addressed migration, integration and the different generations of so-called guest workers in Germany in literary terms - and was way ahead of its time. Only today do his motifs and themes resonate in current social discussions, which is why the novel is being reissued. When the Wall came down, one of the larger minorities was the people from the former Yugoslavia, they conquered German unity - while their country fell apart...The novel tells the story of Mia, whose success as a photographer leads not to happiness but to a blockade, and who sets off to Berlin at the time of the fall of the Wall to rediscover the place of her youth. Jagoda Marinić captures in an inimitable way the attitude to life of the second generation of migrants, who are torn between the country of their parents and the search for their own roots and identity.
Gentle radicalism Jagoda Marinić has been committed to building a more diverse society for over ten years. In Heidelberg, she helped set up the Intercultural Center Heidelberg and co-designed the International Welcome Center. Against the backdrop of these experiences, she now makes suggestions on how we can move away from this radical approach. How can change happen on the ground? What possibilities does our time offer beyond positioning on Instagram tiles, how do we people become subjects of action again instead of losing ourselves in the outrage spirals of social media?
Based on terms such as "seeing", "identity" and "dispute", which we use to talk about society and describe processes, she explains how it became possible to turn her ideas into reality and inspire people for her dream - with gentle radicalism.
Jagoda Marinić, born in 1977, is a writer, journalist, presenter and podcaster. She presents the program "Das Buch meines Lebens" on "arte" and the podcast "Freiheit de luxe" on HR2. Together with Katrin Eigendorf and Golineh Atai, she hosts the ZDF podcast "Brave New World". She also writes columns for "stern", "taz" and "Deutsche Welle" and publishes internationally in the "New York Times". She studied political science, German and English and has worked abroad extensively, for example in Croatia, the USA, Canada and Romania. She now lives in Heidelberg, where she established the Intercultural Center as a cultural manager and has been the director of the Heidelberg Literature Festival since 2023.
Michel Friedman, born in Paris in 1956, is a lawyer, philosopher, publicist and presenter. From 2000 to 2003, he was Deputy Chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and editor of the weekly newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, as well as President of the European Jewish Congress from 2001 to 2003. He has been an honorary professor since 2016 and headed the Center for Applied European Studies at Frankfurt University, which he co-founded, until 2022. Among other things, he presents the program "Auf ein Wort" on Deutsche Welle and "Friedman im Gespräch" at the Berliner Ensemble.
"Restaurant Dalmatia", 256 pages and "Sanfte Radikalität", 112 pages, will be published by S. Fischer Verlag on 09.10. 2024