The Kempowski Symposium will be the first devoted to this uniquely important contemporary German author. The meetings will interest social and military historians, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as literary scholars, critics, and researchers, both as speakers and as discussion participants.

Kempowski’s unique stature
Walter Kempowski is the voice of several generations of Germans. He has not turned his back on the German past, but on the contrary, via his fictional and documentary works, has made known and available to the German-speaking world testimonies of thousands of persons from the ordinary to the extraordinary about their World War Two experiences.

This symposium needs to be held because much contemporary popular German literature, created expressly for the under-30 years of age generation, preaches selfish hedonism and pop-culture, preferring to ignore the enormous human, demographic and social impact and importance of German and Austrian involvement in the most cataclysmic war of the twentieth century.

The Planning Committee invites papers of 20 minutes in either German or English. Possible topics are listed on the Symposium website. Suggestions for alternative topics are welcome.