(East German) small towns between past and future: Simon Strauß in conversation
| Begin |
22. April 2026 -
18:00 Uhr |
| End | 22. April 2026 - 22:00 Uhr |
Is the small town a place of the future: a place where the shape of society can be both read and initiated? Long neglected politically and by the media, the 'provinces' in particular - villages and small and medium-sized towns in rural areas - are now experiencing a surge in attention. As if under a magnifying glass, explosive questions and problems can be observed here that are driving societies and transformations: be it demography and services of general interest or migration and social cohesion; be it dealing with one's own past, the importance of community or the relationship between East and West, city and country, center and periphery.
But how and from what perspectives do we look at the living environments of small towns? What can we learn from the experiences of small-town dwellers for social issues as a whole? We will address these and other questions at the Apollo together with author and FAZ journalist Simon Strauß on the occasion of his latest book In der Nähe - and bring literary, social and planning science perspectives into conversation with history and the present.
18:00 Welcome and introduction: Utopias and dystopias of the small town - literature, planning, society
18:15 Marc Weiland: Fictions of manageability. Small towns in literature and the media
18:30 Heidi Pinkepank: Short distances, multifunctional places, social manageability - the small town from an urban planning perspective
18:45 Julia Gabler: Presence: in proximity from a distance. Sociological commentary
Break
19:30 Simon Strauß reads from "In der Nähe. The political value of an East German longing"
Followed by a panel and audience discussion
Julia Gabler is a sociologist and has been researching structural change processes and regional development at the Institute for Transformation, Housing and Social Spatial Development at Zittau-Görlitz University of Applied Sciences since 2015. She has led several research projects and initiated participation processes. In her PhD thesis, she wrote about shrinking industrial cities.
Heidi Pinkepank is Managing Director of the Institute for New Industrial Culture INIK GmbH. She studied landscape planning in Erfurt and Vilnius and World Heritage Studies at the BTU Cottbus. At INIK, Heidi's research interests include post-mining landscapes in Lausitz, returnees in small towns and the importance of culture in structural change.
Simon Strauß is a writer and journalist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He studied Classics and History in Basel, Poitiers and Cambridge and is a co-founder of the Arbeit an Europa group. His most recent literary texts are Sieben Nächte (2017), Römische Tage (2019) and Zu Zweit (2023). In der Nähe (2025) is his first non-fiction book, for which he conducted intensive research in the small Brandenburg town of Prenzlau.
https://www.klett-cotta.de/produkt/simon-strauss-in-der-naehe-9783608502718-t-9294
Marc Weiland is a deputy professor of literary studies at the Zittau-Görlitz University of Applied Sciences and has been working on literary and media narratives of rural spaces for several years. He is the founder of the book series Rurale Topografien (Rural Topographies ) at Transcript-Verlag and has published the books Topografische Leerstellen (2018), Kleinstadtliteratur (2020) and Die Zukunft auf dem Land (2022), among others.
https://f-s.hszg.de/personen/professorinnen-der-fakultaet/vertr-prof-dr-marc-weiland
