30.04.2015, Berlin | On May 20, 2015, the boarding school Schulfarm Insel Scharfenberg in Berlin-Tegel will host, with support from the Schering Stiftung, the 2nd Scharfenberg Lecture for students 11th grade and above (Sekundarstufe II). This year’s lecture will be given by writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff. She will read from her novel “Blumenberg” (Berlin, 2011) and talk with the students about “forms of knowledge from up close and a distance.”

The Scharfenberg Lecture was launched in 2014 at the Schulfarm Insel Scharfenberg with the goal of providing students with insight into current fields of scholarship and science and with an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with renowned scholars and scientists, authors and artists. The lecture is intended to give the students insight into academic life and provide them with guidance in their choice of study.

Writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff has received multiple awards (most recently, the 2013 Georg Büchner Prize) and is known for her outspokenness (Dresden Speech 2014). Born in Stuttgart in 1954, Lewitscharoff studied religious studies in Berlin and spent a year in Buenos Aires and another year in Paris before returning to Berlin. In 1978, Lewitscharoff took a position as a bookkeeper with the Berlin-based advertising company run by her brother, where she worked until the early 2000s. She began to write on the side, initially mostly radio features and radio plays, and invented a grammar board game titled “Satzbau” (Syntax). In 1994, at the age of 40, she published her first book, “36 Gerechte” (36 Righteous Ones). Lewitscharoff has been a freelance writer since the early 2000s, publishing several works of prose, essays and a play. Her novel “Blumenberg,” published in 2011 with Suhrkamp Verlag, is about the philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996), a professor at the University of Münster who, one day in May 1982, found a lion in his study. From the blurb:

“Big, yellow, breathing – one night, a lion is lying with dispiriting matter-of-factness in the study of renowned philosopher Blumenberg, with its limbs comfortably stretched out on the Bukhara carpet, its eyes quietly resting on its host. The latter barely manages to keep his composure – not that night, nor the next day when the lion makes it way down the central aisle during his lecture, moving in the swaying manner of a wild cat. The auditorium is full, but none of the students seems to see the lion. Is it a sophisticated student prank? Or rather an award from up high for the last philosopher capable of appreciating this lion?”

Preview

Another encounter of science and school at the Schulfarm Insel Scharfenberg is scheduled for September 29, 2015, featuring the 2015 Ernst Schering Prize recipient, Prof. Dr. David MacMillan, chair of the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University. On September 28, 2015, MacMillan will be honored by the Schering Stiftung in Berlin for his pioneering contributions in the area of organocatalysis and organo-cascade catalysis.

The event is open to members of the school community only.
For more information, please call +49 (0)30-20 62 29 60.

Illustration:
Cover of the paperback edition