Widerstand und Übermut. Gespräch mit Nadia Brügger und Madga Birkmann

In the organizer's words:

In the 1970s, literary production by women in Switzerland increased rapidly. Among the female authors who made their debut at that time were Gertrud Leutenegger, Maja Beutler, Laure Wyss, Erica Pedretti, Hanna Johansen and Claudia Storz. Some names are still remembered, others have been forgotten.

Why is that? Nadia Brügger and Valerie-Katharina Meyer asked themselves this question. In their book, they bring the authors and their texts to light and show how they changed the Swiss literary landscape. The women writers networked with each other and sought their own paths beyond the systematic devaluation of "women's literature" - partly within and partly outside the women's movement of the time. They addressed topics that had previously been kept secret and tried out new ways of writing. The founding of the Edition R+F publishing house by Ruth Mayer also played an important role. With an annotated collection of texts by women writers from the 1970s and 1980s.

On this evening, literary mediator Madga Birkmann will talk to author and literary scholar Nadia Brügger about her book and about writing as feminist work on resistance.

Nadia Brügger is a literary scholar, gender researcher and author. She researches, writes and speaks about feminist movement history, gender-specific violence and repressed female authors, among other things. Brügger studied German, philosophy and gender studies and completed her doctorate at the University of Zurich on feminist perspectives on the promise of happiness in the 1970s. Brügger is involved in various feminist causes and co-initiated the first research project on femicide in Switzerland, for example.

Magda Birkmann loves to share her enthusiasm for literature, first for seven years as a bookseller in the Berlin bookshop Ocelot and more recently as the person responsible for press and public relations at the Lettrétage literature house in Berlin and as a freelance literary mediator and moderator. Together with Nicole Seifert, she publishes the book series rororo Entdeckungen with novels by neglected female authors of the 20th century for Rowohlt Verlag. In 2024 she was a member of the jury for the German Book Prize and in 2025 a member of the jury for the BücherFrauen Literaturpreis.

An event organized by the Fritz Hüser Institute in cooperation with the Literaturhaus Dortmund.

Price information:

Free admission - registration via the link in the ticket store.