Karen Leeder - Podcast Details

Shows

Opening LinesSpring Awakening - Episode 2John Yorke examines the radical 1891 play Spring Awakening by German dramatist Frank Wedekind. A cautionary, nightmarish portrait of teenage angst and rebellion against oppressive social structures and family pressures, the play’s explicit content was so shocking that it was not performed for 15 years after its publication. In the decades since, it has often been cut or censored. Wedekind’s original play became the inspiration for a 2006 hit Broadway musical of the same name.In this second of two episodes, John looks at how Spring Awakening has been interpreted and performed in the 134 years since its...2025-02-2314 min

Opening LinesSpring Awakening - Episode 1John Yorke examines the radical 1891 play Spring Awakening by German dramatist Frank Wedekind. A cautionary, nightmarish portrait of teenage angst and rebellion against oppressive social structures and family pressures, the play’s explicit content was so shocking that it was not performed for 15 years after its publication. In the decades since, it has often been cut or censored. Wedekind’s original play became the inspiration for a 2006 hit Broadway musical of the same name. In this first of two episodes, John looks at who Frank Wedekind was, and how he contributed to the expressionist movement that...2025-02-2314 min

In Our TimeBertolt BrechtMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the worl...2024-05-2359 min

In Our Time: CultureBertolt BrechtMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the worl...2024-05-2359 min

In Our Time With Melvyn BraggBertolt BrechtMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world.With...2024-05-231h 02

Heartland Daily PodcastBeyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (Guest: Katja Hoyer)Heartland’s Tim Benson is once again joined by Katja Hoyer, research fellow at King’s College London, to discuss her new book, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany. They chat about the political, social, and cultural landscape that existed in East Germany, the oppressions and hardships implemented and placed on the East German population by the communist regime, and why East Germans were so into blue jeans. Get the book here: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/katja-hoyer/beyond-the-wall/9781541602571/Show Notes:Commentary: Clare McHugh – “East of Eden”https://www.commentary.org/articles/cl...2024-03-041h 30

Ill Literacy: Books with BensonBeyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (Guest: Katja Hoyer)Heartland’s Tim Benson is once again joined by Katja Hoyer, research fellow at King’s College London, to discuss her new book, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany. They chat about the political, social, and cultural landscape that existed in East Germany, the oppressions and hardships implemented and placed on the East German population by the communist regime, and why East Germans were so into blue jeans. Get the book here: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/katja-hoyer/beyond-the-wall/9781541602571/Show Notes:Commentary: Clare McHugh – “East of Eden”https://www.commentary.org/articles/cl...2024-03-041h 30

Festival 202360. Versopolis: A Celebration of European PoetryBorn in rural East Germany, Ulrike Almut Sandig now lives with her family in Berlin. The performance poet started out pasting poems onto lamp posts in Leipzig and distributing them on flyers and free post cards. Multiple prize-winning collections followed and together with her translator Karen Leeder, she will present ‘powerful visual poems that resonate in the...2024-02-281h 05

BE:CURIOUS – A Podcast by the Oxford/Berlin Research Partnership#8 Finding the Words: Poetry and The Art of TranslationPoetry, in its attempt to take the ineffable things of life and put them into words, is an incredibly subtle form of language use. Which means that translating a poem between languages is anything but straightforward. In today’s episode, we talk to two minds about the art of doing just that. Born in East Germany in 1962, Durs Grünbein is one of the most prominent German poets of his generation. Known for often dealing with political matters in his work, Grünbein has published more than thirty books of poetry and prose. Karen Leeder, who is currently a BUA...2023-06-091h 01

Arts & IdeasEast GermanyKatja Hoyer and Karen Leeder join Anne McElvoy to discuss new histories of East Germany, stories depicting life in the state which have recently been translated into English as well as a recently translated edition of Uwe Wittstock's February 1933. Plus, Emily Oliver on the history of BBC German service and Elizabeth Ward is beginning a research project on the cinema of East Germany and its involvement in International Film Festivals.Katja Hoyer's book is called Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 Professor Karen Leeder has been reading February 1933, a new translated work by one Germany’s leading co...2023-03-2845 min

The Play PodcastSpring Awakening by Frank WedekindThe Play Podcast - 055 - Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Professor Karen Leeder The Play Podcast is a podcast dedicated to exploring the greatest new and classic plays. In each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. Frank Wedekind’s dark, expressionist play Spring Awakening is a cautionary portrait of adolescent angst and rebellion against oppressive social strictures and family pressures. Its fran...2022-11-211h 01

Arts & IdeasThe Stasi poetry circle, Nazi schools and German cultureIn 1982, the East German security force was deeply concerned with subversive literature and decided to train soldiers and border guards to write lyrical verse. Decades earlier in 1933, a group of elite boarding schools modelled along the lines of English public schools were founded on Hitler's birthday. A new play explores the disappearance of English schoolboys in the Black Forest in 1936. Why did the authoritarian regimes of 20th-century Germany concern themselves so heavily with cultural output and influence? Anne McElvoy discusses some of the curious initiatives of Nazi Germany and the DDR and responses to them.Pamela Carter...2022-03-1644 min

Arts & IdeasThomas MannWould he condemn Hitler? That's the question novelist Thomas Mann was continually asked, after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 following novels such as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain. Colm Toibin's new novel The Magician details the differences of opinion between Mann and his brother, and the way his children were part of a bold and experimental younger generation of writers. Anne McElvoy brings Colm Toibin, Sean Williams and Dr Erica Wickerson together for a discussion about Mann's life and writing and the pressure put upon writers to make a public stand on topical issues.Colm...2021-09-2945 min

Start the WeekColm Tóibín on Thomas MannThe prize-winning author Colm Tóibín recreates the life and work of one of Germany’s most famous and acclaimed writers Thomas Mann. The Magician is a deeply intimate portrait of a private man, revealing both his suppressed homosexuality and complex family ties, and of a public writer who sought to explicate the soul of Germany in the 20th century.When Hitler came to power Thomas Mann fled his homeland and went into exile in America, and in Switzerland, never to return to live in the country that inspired his creativity. Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern Germ...2021-09-2742 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesBook at Lunchtime: Porcelain - Poem on the Downfall of my CityTORCH Book at Lunchtime webinar on Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City by Durs Grünbein, translated by Professor Karen Leeder. Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all. About the book: Porcelain is a book-length cycle of forty-nine poems written over the course of more than a decade that together serve as a lament for Durs Grünbein’s hometown, Dresden, which was destroyed in the Allied firebombing of February 1945. The book is at once...2021-06-251h 10

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesBook at Lunchtime: Sophocles – Antigone and other tragediesTORCH Book at Lunchtime event on Sophocles: Antigone and other tragedies by Professor Oliver Taplin. With panellists Professor Karen Leeder and Dr Lucy Jackson. Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all. Sophocles stands as one of the greatest dramatists of all time, and one of the most influential on artists and thinkers over the centuries. His plays are deeply disturbing and unpredictable, unrelenting and open-ended, refusing to present firm answers to the questions of human existence, or...2021-03-011h 06

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesLive Event: Voices from the Wings: Poetry, Performance and Translation on and off the pageTORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events! Translation Week Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This event presents a conversation between academic, translator and writer Karen Leeder and poet, performer and novelist Ulrike Almut Sandig who have been collaborating for the last eight years. Karen and Ulrike were due to appear together with Sandig’s poetry band LANDSCHAFT (with Grigory Semenchuk) at the Big Tent! in May 2020. Ulrike Sandig is that rare thing: a writer who is as...2020-10-131h 13

Arts & IdeasMocking power past and present.The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing.Daniel Kehlmann's new book is called Tyll, translated by Ross Benjamin. A Netflix TV series has been commissioned. His book Measuring The World about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt became the world's second best-selling novel in 2006. Professor Karen Leeder teaches at the University of Oxford. She has translated Porzellan: Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt by Durs Grünbein, coming out as Durs Grünbein, Po...2020-02-0544 min

The VerbGerman poetry after the Berlin WallIan McMillan explores German poetry after the fall of the Berlin Wall – with two of Germany’s most celebrated and groundbreaking poets Durs Grünbein and Nora Gomringer. He is also joined by Professor Karen Leeder who’s explored the ways in which contemporary German literature is ‘haunted’ by the GDR, and by Ira Lightman who reads a new poem haunted by Rainer Maria Rilke – the German language poet most often translated into English - and a translation of one of Durs' poems.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Faith Lawrence 2019-11-1546 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesRereading East GermanyA Book at Lunchtime discussion tracing the cultural legacy of the GDR with Karen Leeder, Dennis Tate, Sara Jones, Marc Silberman and Tom Smith 'Rereading East Germany: Literature and Film in the GDR' is the first volume to address the culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a historical entity, but also to trace the afterlife of East Germany in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It provides a 'rereading' of East Germany and its legacy as a cultural phenomenon free from the prejudices that prevailed while it existed. The editor of the volume Karen Leeder...2016-05-0553 min

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the HumanitiesRubble Flora: Volker Braun Poetry ReadingThe German poet gives a special reading of old and new work and answers questions with David Constantine and Karen Leeder.2015-05-2056 min

Modern Poetry in TranslationTorso of Polyphemus: Karen Leeder on Durs Grünbein and Rilke at Poetry InternationalKAREN LEEDER Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford. She has published widely on modern German literature, especially poetry and has been active in translation in the UK and beyond: including a stint on the English PEN Work in Translation Committee, the Steering Committee of the British Centre for Translation and on the Board of MPT. DURS GRÜNBEIN Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in the former East Germany in 1962. He has lived in Berlin since 1985, working as poet, essayist and translator fr...2014-09-1708 min

Start the WeekGermany and the EUOn Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at Germany's role in Europe. Katinka Barysch argues that despite the crisis, support for EU integration still dominates, and that unlike Britain, the ability to compromise is seen as a skill, not a weakness. Two British MPs, from left and right, Gisela Stuart and Douglas Carswell, remain sceptical about the EU, but German-born Stuart understands her birth country's emotional connection to it. Carswell argues that the digital revolution calls for smaller, not larger governments, and Karen Leeder believes that despite Germany's belief in the European project it still has not laid to...2012-11-2641 min