Helene Bukowski: Who Wouldn't Want to Stay in Life - Reading and Conversation with Clara Kopfermann in the Series "Compass: 8 Visions"

"Your story must begin with this piano. I place it at the start and help the fleeing men carry it up the stairs to your parents' apartment." Step by step, Helene Bukowski traces the brief life of young pianist Christina in her third novel (Claassen, 2026): from growing up in a high-achievement household, through a specialized music school in East Berlin, to the Moscow Conservatory. Between musical highs and educational drill, "Who Wouldn't Want to Stay in Life" tells of piano playing as refuge - and of an illness that only today can be diagnosed: premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

With Clara Kopfermann (reading series bauschen&biegen) and Freiburg music physician Claudia Spahn, the author discusses the pressure to adapt to a male-dominated system - then and now - and art as resistance.

Reading and conversation at Ensemblehaus, Schützenallee 72, on 17.09.2026 at 19:30. Admission: 11 / 7 euros.