"Say What You Think. And Think Before You Say It!" - A Harry Rowohlt Evening

Harry Rowohlt

"He will become what he is" - that's what his school leaving certificate said. And it was true! Harry Rowohlt became everything he always wanted to be: a hilarious language artist and virtuoso of digression, a translator of the untranslatable and a reader with a thousand voices, plus "Vagrant Harry" in the TV series Lindenstraße. Yet his life took a different path than planned, because he refused to become what he was supposed to: his publisher father's successor.

Journalist Alexander Solloch has written an impressive biography. It is not only meticulously researched and reveals many surprises, but also possesses "a distinctly Harry Rowohlt sound" (Deutschlandfunk Kultur). He speaks about the life and work of this versatile artist, while actor Olli Dittrich reads from the master's texts. This will be a tremendous celebration!

Alexander Solloch, born in 1978, grew up on the Lower Rhine, studying history and French in Leipzig and Aix-en-Provence. After his apprenticeship, he worked as a freelance author and radio presenter. In 2011 and 2019, he was nominated for the German Radio Prize. Since 2014, he has been a literature editor at NDR.

Olli Dittrich, trained as a theatre painter, is a master of transformation. A four-time Grimme Prize winner, he is regarded as one of the finest contemporary creators of artistic characters. His films, TV formats and parodies have been nominated and awarded countless times both nationally and internationally. As a composer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist with nearly 2 million recordings sold, he is a fixture in the music industry. With his most famous character, the bar-stool philosopher "Dittsche", Dittrich regularly performs on major German stages, including the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Berliner Ensemble and Elbphilharmonie. His nearly three-hour solo performance was awarded the LEA Prize in 2021.