Eröffnung der Europäischen Literaturtage
Animals and Other PeopleMichael Köhlmeier (Hohenems and Vienna) and Anne Sophie Meincke (Vienna) in discussion with Katja Gasser (Vienna)
German (Simultaneous interpretation into English)
Also available as livestream
Past event
Description
In the book Wenn ich ein Mensch wär, sagte der Rabe, with illustrations by Monika Helfer, Michael Köhlmeier poses a question whose response makes us take notice: the crow and would-be human aspires to being someone small, a person aware of his vulnerability as much as his potential to hurt others. Animals consistently appear as characters in Köhlmeier’s narratives. In his novel Matou, the eponymous cat is even the narrator, a Homer of the animal world, a philosopher and storyteller. Köhlmeier’s stories of and about animals are declarations of love for animals and people.
The fact that animals can think in such narratives may be configured as a narrative trick, and yet it is much more besides. The philosopher Anne Sophie Meincke would argue in defence of Köhlmeier’s Homer-cat that, as we now know, human language is not necessarily a precondition for thinking; that complex languages evidently also exist among animals, indeed, that animals even have a mind.
The author Köhlmeier and the philosopher Meincke discuss people and animals that tell stories, as well as the themes of language, dignity and free will among humans and animals.
***BIOGRAPHIES***
Michael Köhlmeier
b. 1949, is an Austrian writer. He has received numerous awards for his collected oeuvre, including the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (2017) as well as the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize, and the Ferdinand Berger Prize in 2019. Recently published: Frankie, 2023
The idea that literature is permitted everything and thus also cherry-picks from history and shapes it, Köhlmeier has always excluded himself from this poetic freedom. He is a narrator by grace and one who is more concerned with the stories than with history.
Sandra Kegel, FAZ
Anne Sophie Meincke
b. 1979, is a German philosopher. Her specialist research interests are the philosophy of life sciences, of feminism, the mind and action. She is a researcher at the University of Vienna and contributes to the Junge Akademie Blog in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, among others, Können Tiere denken?