Max Czollek
Reading at the Lyrik Kabinett
Kritzolina, Munich, 2016

Max Czollek (born 6 May 1987 in East Berlin) is a German writer, lyric-poet, stage performer and curator. He is a member of the "G13" authors' collective.[1][2]

Life

Czollek was born in Berlin in 1987. His paternal grandfather was a German Jew who survived several concentration camps, lived in exile in China for several years, and then returned to East Germany in the late 1940s. His only surviving Jewish relative is his paternal aunt.[3] Max Czollek attended the Jewish Upper School Jüdisches Gymnasium Moses Mendelssohn (JGMM) in Berlin, passing his school finals (Abitur) in 2006. During his time at school he took a year abroad in Texas.[1] Between 2007 and 2012 he studied political sciences at Berlin. Then, from 2012 to 2016 he worked on his doctorate at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (TU Berlin) and at Birkbeck, University of London. He was supported with a stipend from the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund.[4] Since 2016 he has been a member of the producers' collective "Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart" ("Yalta - Positions on the Jewish Present").[5]

Czollek has been part of the lyric-poetry collective G13 since 2009. In 2013 he initiated the international "Babelsprech" lyric-poetry project, in order to network a young German language "lyric scene".[6]

Since 2014 he has teamed up with the novelist Deniz Utlu to organize the literature series "Gegenwartsbewältigung"[note 1] at the Maxim Gorki Theater (Studio Я). Together with Sasha Marianna Salzmann he was co-instigator of the "Disintegration Congress" (2016)[7] on contemporary Jewish thinking and of the "Radical Jewish Arts Days" ("Radikale Jüdische Kulturtage" 2017).[8] During 2016/2017 he was co-leader with Esra Küçük of the Maxim Gorki Theater's "Young Berlin Council" project.[9]

Controversy about Jewish identity

Czollek self-identifies as Jewish. In 2021, Jewish writer Maxim Biller accused Czollek of appropriating a Jewish identity, as, according to the halakha, Czollek is not a Jew, having only one Jewish grandfather.[10] In his column in the newspaper Die Zeit, Biller compared Czollek to Benjamin Wilkomirski, a Swiss writer who had confabulated his alleged Jewish origins.[11]

Notes

  1. ↑ a wordplay with Vergangenheitsbewältigung, loosely "struggle to overcome the [negatives of the] present" (instead of past)

References

  1. 1 2 Christine Schmitt (13 July 2006). "Max, der Denker". Philosophie und Ausland: Wie ein junger Mann an der Jüdischen Oberschule ein Einser-Abi schaffte (in German). Jüdische Allgemeine, Berlin. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  2. ↑ "Dichter am Erfolg". Mit Jan Wagner war erstmals ein Lyriker für den Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse nominiert. In der Lyrikszene sorgt das für Aufregung – nicht nur im Positiven. (in German). taz Verlags u. Vertriebs GmbH , Berlin. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  3. ↑ "In Germany, a Jewish Millennial Argues That the Past Isn't Past". The New York Times. Retrieved 2023-12-24.
  4. ↑ Max Czollek (18 May 2016). "Das Antisemitismus-Dispositiv" (in German). Academia.edu. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  5. ↑ "Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart" (in German). Neofelis Verlag GmbH , Berlin. Archived from the original on 22 October 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  6. ↑ "Babelsprech International" (in German). Literaturbrücke Berlin e. V. Archived from the original on 30 January 2019. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  7. ↑ "Desintegration". Ein Kongress zeitgenössischer jüdischer Positionen kuratiert von Max Czollek und Sasha Marianna Salzmann (in German). Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
  8. ↑ "Radikale Jüdische Kulturtage" (in German). Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
  9. ↑ "Open Call zum Jungen Berliner Rat" (in German). Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  10. ↑ Keßler, Katrin; Ross, Sarah M.; Staudinger, Barbara; Weik, Lea (2022-08-22). Jewish Life and Culture in Germany after 1945: Sacred Spaces, Objects and Musical Traditions. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. pp. 195–197. ISBN 978-3-11-075081-2.
  11. ↑ "ZEIT ONLINE | Lesen Sie zeit.de mit Werbung oder im PUR-Abo. Sie haben die Wahl". www.zeit.de. Retrieved 2023-07-18.
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