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Berlin's answer to the Edinburgh Book Festival? Or rather its Hay-on-Wye?
Gregor Dotzauer takes us through the literary labyrinth of Berlin's International Literature Festival Berlin, that monstrous and bankrupt wen, is, for literature, a veritable Aladdin's Cave. It is home to the highest density of writers in the whole of Germany - because of its cheap rents, among other things. Every evening it offers a range of readings and discussions exceeding even what the most dedicated of event-hoppers can cope with. Through the artists' programme set up by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the German Academic Exchange, it can draw on one of the most highly effective means of spotting important writers. And with institutions like the Wissenschaftskolleg (an internationally respected institute for private research) or the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (Centre for Literary and Cultural Research) also at hand, it benefits from an infrastructure that focuses not only on the sponsorship of literary work but also on its academic assessment. But there was one thing Berlin lacked until six years ago: its own literary festival. Then Ulrich Schreiber, formerly director of the Peter Weiss Foundation, irrupted onto the scene. Though he had made no particular mark in his previous job, this was to be something completely different. He would defy all resistance. He would show 'em. And he has. The Literature Festival was big from the word go - too big, perhaps. Unlike the Berlin Film Festival (the Berlinale), which Schreiber adopted as his model, it was not able to grow over time. It had to be blown up into a huge event straight away. For anyone attending the sixth festival, which took place this year from 5 to 16 September, the sagest advice he or she could receive before plunging into the twelve-day tumult would still have been, Get your doppelgänger out of the cupboard! Divide yourself into bits! True, Schreiber had noticeably thinned out the programme compared to the previous year. Instead of 313 events with 179 authors from forty-nine countries, this time a mere one hundred authors were in the line-up, among them the Caribbean poet and essayist Edouard Glissant, who opened the festival, and stars such as Jostein Gaarder, Doris Lessing, Jorge Semprun and Frank McCourt. And behind them were the volunteers, without whose commitment the whole shebang - focusing on francophone literature this year - would have been unworkable. They must constitute the largest army of interns in town, and every year they are on display when Schreiber invites them to join him on stage at the opening. To take the film festival as its yardstick was, of course, unrealistic from the start. First of all, the Berlinale is centred around a competition and isn't reliant as such on the lucky dip principle. Secondly, it is as much a market-place for the industry as an event for the public. And thirdly, it has had time to evolve. The predilection for all things big that Schreiber habitually displayed - here another poetry slam, there a film screening - was, in the circumstances, truly alarming. This year's careful trimming wasn't only necessary, it was inevitable, not least because the Berlin International Literary Festival does not stand alone in its field. For seven years it has been competing for more or less the same audience as that targeted by the Literaturwerkstatt-hosted Poetry Festival, with Thomas Wohlfahrt at its helm and born out of Literaturexpress (a project which saw over one hundred authors from forty-three countries traversing Europe from West to East, physically and metaphorically, by train). While this festival, as its name implies, is of course dedicated primarily to poetry and its performance, it is very much open to other genres as well, whether music (a performance by Laurie Anderson), dance, or an offering from ZEBRA, the Poetry Film Festival. And then, of course, there is Berlin's all-the-year-round carousel of events already mentioned. What's on offer at the five municipally-subsidised literary institutions alone is enough to make one's head spin. The Literarisches Colloquium Berlin at the Wannsee, the Literaturhaus in Fasanenstrasse (Charlottenburg), the Literaturwerkstatt in the Kulturbrauerei (Prenzlauer Berg), the Literaturforum in the Brechthaus and LesArt - the centre for children's and young adults' literature - all these host readings and discussions, each with its own slant. Then there's the state-funded Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) and, with increasing influence, foreign cultural institutes from the British Council to the Indian Embassy, the Collegium Hungaricum, the representative bodies of the German Länder, the political party foundations, the American Academy, as well as private initiatives such as Britta Gansebohm's Salon, local literary festivals, 'Open Mike' (the competition for budding new talent), not to mention the wealth of publishers' events and other reading platforms. To rewind to the opening of the first-ever International Literature Festival, on a cool June evening in 2001. The American poet Charles Simic, in his inaugural address, began by speculating on which locations might be considered the most suitable sites for Utopia and came up, as leading candidate, with a corn field in Iowa. It could, of course, have been a rape-seed field in Brandenburg. But, concluded the speaker, where could it be, in fact, if not in literature itself? And hence, fittingly, was born the nomadic nature of the festival, which has always had the ambition of spreading itself throughout the whole city - with a succession of sponsors and financial backers following in its wake. The charm of the early years, which saw the wonderfully crumbling Sophiensäale in Berlin-Mitte as the event's main venue, could not be trumped. Nor could the organisational chaos. But look, said Greg Gatenby, director of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto and the man cited as Schreiber's inspiration, if you're talking of teething troubles, just think of Bayreuth. This world renowned festival has now been going for well over a hundred years and they are still having major problems. And Martin Mooij, director of Amsterdam's International Poetry Festival, seconded this defence. The following year Schreiber decamped to the Berliner Ensemble, Bertolt Brecht's old theatre on Schiffbauerdamm. A year later it was back at the Sophiensäle. And then it relocated again, this time to the three stages of the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre - HAU 1, HAU 2 and HAU 3. Through its move now to the Berliner Festspiele, an organisation that operates full-time to serve pretty much the full artistic spectrum from theatre to music, the festival has hopefully found a permanent base - and the backing of an institution that also provides a solid financial foundation. Festivals live from the fact that people wander from event to event, taking in what they would not necessarily encounter elsewhere. The disadvantage of this can be a lack of emphasis on literary connections or links - they can just get lost in the mass. The various strands of the Berlin festival - 'Literature of the world', 'Kaleidoscope' or 'Scritture Giovani' - makes a particular thematic focus difficult to achieve. In this colourful, confusing situation only one element of the programme stands out as truly distinct: the 'International Children's and Young Adults' Literature' section, which thrives because most of its events are backed by schools. The idea is that eleven jury members, among them the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Norwegian Jon Fosse, the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai and the Indian Shashi Tharoor, each nominate two of their own favourite writers in this field, and this brings authors to Berlin who may so far be little known outside their own countries. In this respect you just occasionally get the impression that Ulrich Schreiber doesn't always put literary excellence first, and that, when the chips were down, an unknown Malaysian poet would win his vote!
Such a cosmopolitan ideal is, none the less, to his credit. Look, by way of comparison, at the 'lit.COLOGNE' event. There, every spring, occurs a meanwhile nine-day literary firework display that also offers little-known authors a wonderful launch-pad. This festival works as a successful single event and has a good reputation among publishers as a showcase for new talent. And it consistently pulls in the crowds. Last spring even a reading by the SPIEGEL online columnist Bastian Sick ('The Dative Is the Death of the Genitive') filled the arena with a 15,000-strong audience. With a more fluctuating public Berlin could not hope to match this. Yet it is equally possible to be turned away at the door there for a sold-out event, or, by contrast, to find yourself sharing an author with just two other listeners. The International Literary Festival is, and will remain, an adventurous enterprise, and no one in Berlin would be without it.
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