Armin T. Wegner Days 2026, October 17 – 18
111 years after the expulsion and extermination of the Armenian population in the former Ottoman Empire, the program once again focuses on the connection between this genocide and the life and writing of Armin T. Wegner – from the experiences during the First World War in Turkey that deeply traumatized him, to his numerous attempts to capture what he had seen and experienced in an appropriately poetic form. The focus is on the anthology published in 2020, "Aghet – Totenklage und Gedächtnis des Schreckens. Türken und Armenier 1915" ("Aghet – Lament and Memory of Terror. Turks and Armenians 1915"), as well as the "Armenian Requiem" published within it for the first time. It stands as the final – and perhaps most impressive – attempt by Armin T. Wegner to create a work that he believed "must be among the most cruel things ever written about human misery" …
Saturday:
6:00 PM
Welcome address by Ulrich Klan, Chairman of the Armin T. Wegner Society
6:15 PM
"On the day war broke out, I was the loneliest person." Armin T. Wegner in the First World War.
Lecture by Dr. Michael Obst
Book presentation and lectures: "Aghet – Totenklage und Gedächtnis des Schreckens. Türken und Armenier 1915," edited by members Prof. Michael Hofmann, Miriam Esau, and Ulrich Klan, Würzburg 2020.
Dr. Roy Knocke, Director of the Lepsiushaus Potsdam, presents the essay by Dr. Rolf Hosfeld published in the volume: "Deadly Ethnopolitics and Nation-Building in the First World War: The Genocide of the Armenians"
Uli Klan speaks about his long-term study of Armin T. Wegner’s lifelong "struggle for composure," through which he spent decades expressing the horror he witnessed during the "expulsion of humanity" in ever-new forms: "Lament for the Murdered Armenians. From the Eyewitness Notes and Photographs to the Armenian Requiem"
8:00 PM
Musical reading from the late work of Armin T. Wegner: "The Armenian Requiem" (full title: "The Armenian Requiem. The Flight and Suffering of the Boy Mihran Hamparzun or The Destruction of a People in the Syrian Desert") is a major verse epic by the German writer and eyewitness Armin T. Wegner. It is his final literary work on the Armenian Genocide and was published for the first time in 2020 in the anthology "Aghet."
Sunday
11:00 AM
Matinee - Film screening:
The Cut Fatih Akin's elaborate historical film is set between 1915 and 1923 and tells the story of a father's desperate and poignant search for his twin daughters, who were lost in the chaos of war.
Introduction and discussion moderator:
Dr. Hayk Martirosyan (Lepsiushaus Potsdam)