30 JAHRE EDITION MEMORIA MIT THOMAS B. SCHUMANN

Moderation: Thomas Kliemann

A small publisher with a big task: Since 1995, Thomas B. Schumann has been publishing German exile literature and art in his Edition Memoria - i.e. works whose authors were forced into exile by the National Socialist tyranny. Among the 40 or so published authors are well-known names such as Judith Kerr, Elisabeth Mann Borgese and Georg Kreisler. There are also numerous others, such as Jo Mihaly and René Halkett, who - especially in view of today's flight and exile scenarios - have yet to be discovered by the wider public.

Moderated by Thomas Kliemann, art historian and head of the feature section of the Bonn General-Anzeiger, Thomas B. Schumann will talk about 30 years of publishing history: How it all began with an early encounter with Katia Mann, about the challenges of his one-man business and what role his collection is to play in the "Forum Exilkultur" planned by the city of Bonn.

Thomas B. Schumann, born in Cologne in 1950, worked in the book trade and studied German literature and history in Bonn, Cologne and Munich. He is an editor, publicist, lecturer and exhibition curator and has worked as a journalist for the FAZ, NZZ and Die Zeit, among others. He owns what is probably the most extensive private collection on German exile culture (various estates, pictures, books, manuscripts, documents). In 2017, the PEN Center Germany honored him with the Hermann Kesten Prize. Schumann's Edition Memoria celebrates its 30th birthday in 2025 and is the only German publishing house that exclusively publishes exile literature.