

Berliner Korrespondenzen - a joint project of Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Gorki Forum – in cooperation with the Humboldt University Berlin and funded by the Federal Foreign Office – is a forum to debate the truly big questions of our times.
Since its inception in 2016, the lecture series Berliner Korrespondenzen at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin has been a mainstay in the German Capital’s cultural calendar.
Each event brings together two cutting-edge thinkers and artists of vastly different biographical and disciplinary backgrounds. In surprising, boundary-pushing constellations, they develop ideas and incentives to find ways out of seemingly desperate situations.
Among the past guests of the Berliner Korrespondenzen are Nobel Laureates in Literature Svetlana Alexievich and Herta Müller, winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Navid Kermani, as well as philosopher Achille Mbembe, constitutional judge Susanne Baer and sociologist Eva Illouz.

Break-Up, the 2021-22 edition of Berliner Korrespondenzen, looks at the tensions and cracks in the social fabric of post-Covid Europe, asking how younger generations organize protest, voice discontent, take responsibility and imagine alternative futures. To really engage with the next generations’ dreams and grievances, each event combines the screening of an exclusive documentary short film by talented filmmakers with intense debates featuring high-profile thinkers, artists and activists.
Review 2019-20 edition: (Dis-)Orders in global Europe



Nationalism, digitalization, migration, climate change: in the face of major challenges, Europe seems to be plagued alternatively by short- and farsightedness. Political Europe remains in the mode of crisis management, shunning a genuine new approach. Cultural Europe on the other hand discusses apocalyptic and utopian visions. It is high time to break out of this double distortion, to cross external and internal perspectives, and seek answers to pressing questions beyond the divisions of politics and culture.
Can Europe still produce impulses for mastering the great challenges of our time? Can algorithms save the climate? What does transcultural identity mean in times of neonationalism? What will the reality of working life look like in the future? And what about a time after Europe?
After dealing with questions of (dis-)orders in a world in political and social upheaval as well as with struggling perceptions on historical narratives in their first two seasons, in 2019/20 the lecture series Berliner Korrespondenzen (Berlin Correspondence) dealt with translocal perspectives on Europe.
