The association Bebelplatz e.V., founded in October 2023, aims to focus its activities at home and abroad on the pressing global political and cultural questions of our time. International scholars and artists are invited to contribute their perspectives on these issues. The association will also commemorate and address the book burning of May 10, 1933, as well as other events that restrict freedom of expression and speech both nationally and internationally, turning them into subjects of cultural activity. It will continue event formats that were launched in recent years, such as the international literature festival odessa, which, due to the war, took place in Kraków this year (founded in 2015 by Hans Ruprecht and Ulrich Schreiber); the Worldwide Readings and Screenings; and the Word Alliance, a network of over 50 international literature festivals around the globe. Bebelplatz e.V. also aims to break new ground – for example, by initiating a new literature festival at the place where Franz Kafka met his last great love, Dora Diamant, in 1923, and where many writers such as Erich Kästner, Robert Musil, Uwe Johnson, and Walter Kempowski spent time.

The 1st international literature festival graal-müritz will take place from August 29 to September 2, 2025. From March 25 to 29, 2026, the association will host the literature days lisbon, which will include an international congress to address current topics and challenges within the literary world, while also presenting outstanding international authors through readings and discussions. Additionally, a congress is planned focusing on Varian Fry, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, and others who, at the onset of the Vichy regime until 1941, saved the lives of many Jewish refugees, artists, and intellectuals by issuing visas and passports that enabled them to travel through Spain to the port of Lisbon. If you’d like to receive updates, you can subscribe to the newsletter available on this website.

The Front Line Foundation, whose Chairman in Poland is the writer Andrzej Stasiuk, has been raising funds since the beginning of the war in Ukraine to purchase equipment and aid supplies to support the population and provide humanitarian assistance. Representatives of the foundation have personally delivered items purchased with the donated funds to the front lines multiple times (most recently to the Donbas Battalion and the Khartiia Brigade, in which Serhiy Zhadan serves). The funds are used for vehicles, vehicle equipment, clothing, and other essential items. We kindly ask for your support! You can send financial aid for Ukraine via the bank link on this website: https://liniafrontu.org/ – or through links found on the Facebook pages of authors Andriy Lyubka and Serhiy Zhadan. See also: https://www.privat24.ua/send/dzikv.

Further information can be found here: https://ukrainefrontline.org/. Donations can be made directly via this PayPal link: https://ukrainefrontline.org/donate/.

Bebelplatz e.V. also supports the initiative of Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky and others who have financially contributed to the founding of the NGO “Poems Not Bombs” in Odesa. Established in 2023, their poetry studio aims to nurture children’s curiosity and creativity by organizing writing workshops and poetry readings. Their website is www.poemsnotbombs.org, and the project can be supported via direct PayPal donations to: Eveningodesa@gmail.com.