Torschreiberin am Pariser Platz 2022: Farah Abdi

The author and activist Farah Abdi, who was born in Somalia in 1995, is the laureate of the Torschreiber Fellowship 2022 awarded by the Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor.

At the age of 12, Farah Abdi fled from Kenya because of her sexual orientation and gender identity. At the age of 16, the life-threatening journey from Central to North Africa to Malta followed. Abdi started writing when she was 7 years old to reflect on her everyday life and her thoughts. During the escape, she first kept a diary of her experiences for herself and published the texts in 2015 in the novel "Never Arrive".

"I am extremely honoured to have been selected to be the new Torschreiber Fellow and I am looking forward to telling the stories of transgender refugees who have found themselves in Berlin through no fault of their own and now call this eclectic city home.“ (Farah Abdi)

Press release Torschreiber am Pariser Platz 2022 (German)

Torschreiber Fellow 2022: Farah Abdi

Discover our current fellow’s life and work in Berlin in a sensitive video portrait by film director Sophie Gmeiner.

Direction and concept: Sophie Gmeiner
Camera: Simon Dallaserra
Production: Schiefer Film

Call Torschreiber am Pariser Platz

A Stipend for Writers in Exile offered by the Allianz Cultural Foundation and the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor

Where: Berlin

When: ongoing

With: Stiftung Brandenburger Tor

Application deadline: 20.09.2021

Cultural and intellectual life in the city of Berlin has always been shaped by people who immigrated, newcomers arriving from the outside. For centuries, the only way to gain access to the city was via the city gates. There, travellers encountered the royal gate scribes, who not only collected taxes and duties, but also recorded the identities of the newcomers. They decided who could enter the town – and at the same time, they admitted people who would have a lasting and transformative influence on the city’s society.

One of them was Moses Mendelssohn, who came to Berlin at the age of 14 in 1743. At the Rosenthal Gate, the only gate which Jews could use in the north of the city, he managed to enter the city with some effort. He would leave his mark on an entire epoch of Berlin’s social life and Jewish-German history.

The fellowship “Torschreiber am Pariser Platz“ (Gate Scribe at Pariser Platz) has been initiated by the two foundations headquartered on Pariser Platz, tying in with this memory and commemorating the permanent transformation of urban society through new biographies and stories. With a change of accent: while the function of the gate scribe in former times was exclusionary – he decided who gained access and who didn’t – today it is an invitation. The city opens up, becoming a place of refuge for writers.

The Fellowship

The fellowship enables one author to work on their own literary projects of choice for six months, starting in November 2021. A later start may be arranged after consulting. The foundations aim to help the fellow network with the city’s literary life. In consultation with the author, an individual side programme of events will be developed, including readings and cultural encounters.

Fellows receive a monthly stipend of 2,000 Euro for six months. In addition, there may be a lump sum for in-kind costs.

Target Group

Applications are open to writers from Europe and the Mediterranean Region who are threatened or persecuted in their country of origin or residence. In the light of current events, the foundations have decided to extend the scope of this year's program to include applications from Afghanistan. We invite Afghan writers who have had to leave their country to apply for the fellowship.

Fellows of this programme may be one of the following:

• Persons holding a residence permit enabling them to do freelance work in Germany

• Asylum seekers in the process of applying for asylum holding a residence permit or proof of arrival in Germany

Application Documents

Applications may be submitted in German or English. Please format and label your documents as described. Mandatory application documents (maximum size 10 MB):

CV in table format including prizes and fellowships (max. 2 A4 pages, file format: pdf. Please choose the following filename: Name_First Name_CV)
Brief description of your personal situation (max. 2 A4 pages, file format: pdf. Please choose the following filename: Name_First Name_Statement)
List of published and unpublished works (file format: pdf. Please choose the following filename: Name_First Name_Catalogue_of_Works)
Reading sample (selected text of max. 2,000 words, file format: pdf. Please choose the following filename: Name_First Name_Sample)

Umlauts, special characters and blank spaces are not permissible in file names.

The application deadline was September 20, 2021.
A jury has decided in November 2021 on the recipient of the fellowship.

Our jury

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Ingo Držečnik

Ingo Držečnik is the publisher of Elfenbein Verlag in Berlin, which has already been awarded the Kurt Wolff Prize and twice the German Publishing Prize. He studied German, history and political science in Heidelberg and Berlin and was co-editor of the journal metamorphosen from 1994 to 2000.

Basil Kerski

Basil Kerski is a cultural manager, political scientist, author, and publicist and director of the European Solidarnoćś Center/European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk. He grew up in Iraq, Poland and Germany, and has worked for the German Council on Foreign Relations, the German Bundestag and the Aspen Institute Berlin, among others. Since 1998 he has been editor-in-chief of the German-Polish magazine Dialog.

Kader Konuk

Kader Konuk is a professor of Turkish studies at the University Duisburg-Essen. In 2017, she founded the Academy in Exile, which offers over 37 scholars at risk fellowships to continue their research in Berlin and Essen. Trained as a comparatist, her work examines cultural practices that evolve in the context of East-West relations.

Thomas Sparr

Thomas Sparr is editor-at-large at Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin and member of the advisory board of the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor. After studying literature and philosophy, he worked at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, then at the German Literature Archive in Marbach/Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach.
In the fall of 2021, his new book will be published at Berenberg Verlag.

Jackie Thomae

Jackie Thomae works as a journalist and writer, as well as a scriptwriter for television programs. In 2015, her debut novel “Moments of Clarity” was published by Hanser. With her second novel, “Brüder” (Brothers), she was shortlisted for the 2019 German Book Prize and awarded the 2020 Düsseldorf Literature Prize.
She lives in Berlin.

Our fellows

Torschreiber am Pariser Platz 2019: Galal Alahmadi

The Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Foundation Brandenburger Tor have awarded the 2019 grant Torschreiber am Pariser Platz to the Yemeni author Galal Alahmadi, born in 1987 in Saudi Arabia.
Galal Alahmadi has worked as a journalist and editor for several newspapers and magazines in the Arabic world, he has published four anthologies of poetry until today. For his work he has received the Mohammed-Afifi-Matar-Prize in Cairo, among others.
In 2020 a selection of his poems will be published in German translation. Galal Alahmadi participates at several writing projects such as Weiter Schreiben (Writing On).

Press release Torschreiber 2019 (in German)

Torschreiberin am Pariser Platz 2018: Rasha Habbal

For the first time, the Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Foundation Brandenburger Tor have awarded their joint scholarship Torschreiber am Pariser Platz to the author Rasha Habbal.

Rasha Habbal was born in 1982 in Hama, Syria, and lives since 2015 in Trier, Germany. Up to now she has mainly appeared as a poet. In 2014 a selection of poems was published in Arabic under the title "Little of you... Much of the salt".
She contributes on a regular basis to several anthologies and magazines in Germany and Poland, among others.

Press release Torschreiber am Pariser Platz 2018 (in German)