An evening of literature and music with Elysium that reflects on the past while asking the urgent question: What do we do with the freedom we have gained? 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, a turning point in world history. When the guns fell silent on May 8, 1945, Europe lay in ruins, cities were reduced to rubble, and the scars of war ran deep. The atrocities of the Nazi regime--including the murder of six million Jews, as well as the persecution of Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and people with disabilities--had left a lasting wound on humanity. How did Austrian writers experience the end of the war? How did they confront the horrors of the past and the challenge of rebuilding a democratic society? This special program explores these questions through the words of Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, Franz Theodor Csokor, Milo Dor, Michael Guttenbrunner, Ruth Kluger, and Hilde Spiel--authors who captured the trauma, reckoning, and hope of this historical moment. Their texts, reflecting the perspectives of Holocaust survivors, resistance fighters, and civilians, illuminate the struggles of an era that still resonates today. In his novel Dead Men on Leave, Austrian-Yugoslav author Milo Dor has a partisan proclaim: "We have set liberation day as our final goal. That was a big mistake. Hence the disappointment. Liberation is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning. What matters now is what we do with the freedom we have gained." Accompanying these literary reflections is a moving selection of songs by Paul Dessau, Hanns Eisler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Frederick Schreiber, Vally Weigl, and Kurt Weill--composers whose music embodies both the sorrow and resilience of the time.
New York City, NY; NYC