"I was never lonely. Children, friends, companions" - concert reading from the memoirs of architect Irene Henselmann (1915-2011)
She was born von Bamberg, the wife of the busy architect Hermann Henselmann, mother of 8 children, (great-)grandmother of 21 grandchildren and even more great-grandchildren. In her memoirs, she gives an insight into the everyday life of her large family, as well as portraying her numerous friends from the art and cultural scene in the GDR, because she knew them all personally: Tucholsky, Brecht, John Heartfiel... Doubts, struggles and temptations that Irene Henselmann also experienced are not left out.
After the success of her first memoir "Meine große Familie" (1995), Irene Henselmann wrote another five years later under the title "Einsam war ich nie. Children, friends, companions".
She once said of her books: "Until I have thought through and registered everything I have experienced, put it down on paper so to speak, I will never find peace.
The good thing about living with a large number of descendants is that they in turn bring with them a comet's tail of friends and relatives by marriage. Then there are the people my husband and I have come to appreciate and love. These designers, professors, poets and other personalities - it was always instructive and rewarding to interact with them. We had insights into many different problems in the most interesting professions and fields of knowledge. I realized that many of our friends were personalities who shaped the cultural history of the 20th century. I would like to enrich the lexicon of knowledge about these people with traits I have seen and experienced. See the whole thing as an apercu on contemporary history, produced by someone from the generation just before the gates of heaven."
On the 110th birthday of the architect Irene Henselmann, whose estate is in the archive of the Neubrandenburg Literature Center, we will commemorate this fascinating woman with a musical reading. The actress Sabine Frost will read from Irene Henselmann's memoirs, accompanied by Stefan Hessheimer (harmonica) and Borries Schlüter (piano).
An event of the Neubrandenburg Literature Center as part of the Neubrandenburg Book Spring.
