Anna Świrszczyńska »Ich habe eine Barrikade gebaut«. Lesung und Gespräch mit Peter Oliver Loew, Anna Kołszko und Julia Dillmann

In the organizer's words:

Venue: Polish Institute Düsseldorf, Citadellstr. 7, 40213 Düsseldorf

Anna Świrszczyńska's poems about the Warsaw Uprising are extraordinary. She had experienced the uprising of the resistance movement against the German occupiers first-hand as a medic in 1944. In her lyrical reflections, published in Polish in 1974, she shows the fragility of human existence in the midst of a great human drama. With clear, matter-of-fact language, she draws portraits of ordinary people, of men, women, children and old people - "building the barricade", in a hail of bullets, making love and dying.

"This volume occupies a special place both in Polish poetry and in world literature, as a poetic reportage of an event that is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century."

Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, on "I Built a Barricade"

Anna Świrszczyńska, born in Warsaw in 1909, poet, prose writer, author of stage works and radio plays. She was a medic during the Warsaw Uprising. In her poetry, she created a unique, direct poetic language with which she described the everyday dimension of death and femininity. In Poland, she is considered one of the most important authors of the women's movement. She died in Krakow in 1984. "I have built a barricade" is one of her best-known works. The poems are a moving testimony to her experiences during the Warsaw Uprising.

Peter Oliver Loew, born 1967 in Frankfurt am Main, author, editor and translator of academic monographs, non-fiction books, poetry and prose (including Leopold Tyrmand and Maria Kuncewiczowa), Director of the German Poland Institute in Darmstadt since 2019.

A joint event by the Gerhart Hauptmann House Foundation, Polish Institute Düsseldorf, German Poland Institute Darmstadt, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw Rising Museum)

Program accompanying the exhibition "The Warsaw Uprising 1944"