Ulrich Schreiber

Ulrich Schreiber (born in 1951 in Solingen, Germany) is a cultural manager, curator, editor and promoter of international literature. He studied philosophy, political science and Russian at Freie Universität Berlin. He founded the International Literature Festival Berlin (ilb), which he directed from 2001 to 2023. Under his leadership, the festival developed into a global platform, bringing together more than 3,600 authors from around 120 countries, including winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer and Booker Prizes.

Schreiber is the author of Die politische Theorie Antonio Gramscis (1982, fourth edition 1994) and has edited several publications on the work of Peter Weiss and cultural policy in Hamburg. Between 2001 and 2023, he edited anthologies and catalogues for the ilb, as well as publications addressing contemporary literary and social issues. In 2011, he established Graphic Novel Day at the ilb in collaboration with EUNIC, having initiated Worldwide Readings in 2006 and Worldwide Screenings in 2020. In 2012, he brought literature and political debate together through the programme “Europe Now” and published an anthology that was described as a “Literary rescue umbrella”. Between 2016 and 2022, he also edited the four volumes of Refugees Worldwide: Literarische Reportagen, exploring the experiences of refugees and the relationship between literature, migration and human rights.

In 1989, he founded the International Peter Weiss Society, which he chaired until 1998. In 2005, he was involved in founding the PEN World Voices Festival in New York and, in 2007, directed the International Literature Festival in Mumbai. He became a member of PEN Centre Germany in 2010 and was subsequently one of the initiators of PEN Berlin, of which he remains a member. Together with Swiss cultural manager Hans Ruprecht, he founded the International Literature Festival Odesa, launched in Ukraine in 2015. Since 2022, the festival has been held outside Ukraine because of the war, most recently in Chișinău in September 2026.

Together with Norbert Kron, he produced the films What Matters (2017), dedicated to the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Voices on War (2022) and Voices at War (2023), both addressing the war in Ukraine. From 2015 to 2023, he was a member of the General Assembly of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. More recently, he founded Bebelplatz e.V., of which he is chairman. Ulrich Schreiber lives in Berlin with his wife, Claudia Benker-Schreiber. In 2015, he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in recognition of his contribution to promoting art and literature in France and internationally.