Program

On Wednesday, 3. August, the Institute für German Studies and Comparative Literature of Paderborn University and the Archbishop’s Diocesan Museum invited the interested public to undertake a literary and cinematic journey back in time. From 6.30 p.m. onwards, students presented the Nibelungen saga and its numerous adaptions to the visitors. The focus was on Felicitas Hoppe’s novel “The Nibelungen. A German silent film”, which tackles the myth on various levels and with a number of different intermedial references.

“Last year Felicitas Hoppe, winner of the 2012 Büchner Prize, examined the Nibelungen myth and its reception in literature and the cinema. Her novel is both playfully amusing and stimulatingly critical. It asks questions about power and violence, about subterfuge, love and death, and artistic possibilities in the light of this national narrative,” said Prof. Dr. Lothar van Laak, Professor for New German Literature at Paderborn University, who developed the event together with students from a summer semester project in the context of the educational partnership between the museum and the university.