In Conversation: Meron Mendel and Sasha Marianna Salzmann

Meron Mendel (*1976) grew up in a kibbutz, studied education and Jewish history in Haifa and Munich, earned his doctorate in Frankfurt and is now a professor of social work and director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre. His work focuses on the topics of migration society, the culture of remembrance and identity politics. 

Sasha Marianna Salzmann is a playwright, novelist, essayist and co-founder of the cultural and societal magazine freitext. Sasha Salzmann’s theatre works have received numerous awards and have been translated into over 20 languages. From 2013 to 2019, Sasha Salzmann was an in-house writer at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, where Salzmann directed the Studio Я. The debut novel Außer sich was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2017. In 2021 Salzmann’s second novel Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein was published. It was also nominated for the German Book Prize and honoured with the Preis der Literaturhäuser and the Hermann Hesse Literature Prize. In 2023, Salzmann’s essay, Der große Hunger und das lange Schweigen, about Ukrainian history and the present was shortlisted for the WORTMELDUNGEN Literature Price. Since 2023, Sasha Salzmann has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.