About Fathers, Longings, and Masculinity - Reading with Necati Öziri and Fikri Anıl Altıntaş

We are very pleased to invite you to our event „About Fathers, Longings, and Masculinity – Reading with Necati Öziri and Fikri Anıl Altıntaş“ on Tuesday, January 23, 2024, at the Mendelssohn-Remise, Jägerstraße 51, 10117 Berlin!

Formative fathers, questions about masculinity and growing up as children of Turkish parents in post-reunification Germany: in their debut novels „Vatermal“ and „Im Morgen wächst ein Birnbaum“, authors Necati Öziri and Fikri Anıl Altıntaş tell two touching family stories. In his book – with which he was nominated for the German Book Prize 2023 – Necati Öziri tells the story of a son, a mother and a sister whose lives and bodies are marked by social and political circumstances. And he writes about an absent father.

„I want to forever take away the possibility of you not knowing who I was. I want you to know how your family was in Germany, how the last summer of my youth was before almost all my friends disappeared. I want you to know what it was like when your old friends patted me on the back and said that I would one day become like you: the hero of a failed revolution. I’m going to write those stories down.“

• Quote from Vatermal, Necati Öziri

In his autofictional novel, Fikri Anıl Altıntaş tells the story of growing up as the son of Turkish parents in a small town in Hesse. His father works as a Turkish teacher, his mother as a cleaner. It is a childhood in the middle of social housing blocks, characterized by the urgent desire to be „German“ and the bitter disappointment with the reality in Germany. The longing to be seen and to find his own way as a Turkish-Muslim man is constantly growing. It is above all his relationship with his father that ultimately confronts him with the question: What does masculinity even mean and how can it be understood and lived beyond the clichés?

„But my father bacame a man in Turkey, and I still had to become one with him in Germany.“

• Quote from Im Morgen wächst ein Birnbaum by Fikri Anıl Altıntaş

Together with you and Necati Öziri and Fikri Anıl Altıntaş, we want to discuss masculinities, images of fathers and the search for one’s own identity in a reading followed by a discussion on 23.01.2023 at 18:00.

We look forward to your participation. Please register online or by e-mail by 22.01.2023.

Yours sincerely

Your team of the Schwarzkopf Foundation Young Europe and the Young Islam Conference