Urte Helduser & Johannes Görbert
Tuesday, 23 June 2026 18:00-20:00
Location: Unikino GEGENLICHT at UNIKUM Oldenburg Stage 1

Since the turn of the millennium, the history of 'euthanasia' under National Socialism has increasingly moved into the public consciousness and become the subject of a culture of remembrance. This growing public awareness is recognisable in the increased attention paid to the commemorative work of memorial sites in places such as Hadamar, Bernburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim and - last but not least - Wehnen near Oldenburg. The topic of Nazi 'euthanasia' is also increasingly encountered in cultural and media discourses: in literature, the visual arts and audiovisual media. The media culture of remembrance is also linked to historical and current discourses on disability and debates on medical ethics, such as prenatal and pre-implantation diagnostics and euthanasia. As part of the workshop, we would therefore like to explore this literary-media examination of Nazi 'euthanasia' from the perspective of Cultural Disability Studies. To this end, we would like to present excerpts from selected films, theatre plays and novels on the subject and discuss them together: How are the media forms of remembrance connected to understandings of disability? What images are conveyed here? What affective effects do film productions of victim stories aim to achieve? How do fictional forms of remembrance in literature and film contribute to the historical reappraisal of Nazi biopolitics?

Speakers:

Johannes Görbert (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland) is a literary scholar and works on Literary Disability Studies and Medical Humanities. He is co-head of the DFG network "Inclusive Philology".

Urte Helduser is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oldenburg and researches literature and biopolitics.