Hölderlin Edition

Between 1992 and 2003, the filmmaker Harald Bergmann produced four Hölderlin films (Scardanelli, Hölderlin Comics, Lyrische Suite and the documentary Passion Hölderlin), which were box-office hits, highly acclaimed at film festivals and broadcast on public television. In recognition of these cinematic works, Bergmann received the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize from the university and city of Tübingen. The films do not merely portray Hölderlin as the protagonist of the stories, as can be expected of feature films, but rather try to translate his poetry into the language of film.
This project released a complete edition of all four films for the international market with the hope that this contemporary form of presentation may generate new impulses in the reception of Hölderlin’s works. Because the films represent a literary translation into cinematic language, the project’s organizers felt it was essential to include the film scripts as extras on the complete edition. Therefore, they have chosen to create a complex form for the edition, comprised of a DVD with English and French subtitles and a book with supplementary English and French translations. An accompanying exhibition illustrated the relationship between moving pictures and text. It also simultaneously referenced various aspects of the extensive material and pointed out corresponding elements in both media – something which is impossible to do in film because of its temporally linear structure. Projections of film sequences, props, scores, etc., enabled visitors to understand the various cross-genre and cross-media steps and decisions made during the production of the films, and opened up new perspectives on the relationship between text, spoken language/sound and image. The release of the edition coincided with the start of the exhibition at various Goethe Institutes abroad. The first stop on the tour was Paris.

Artistic director: Harald Bergmann
Curator: Michael Freitag
Actors and participants in the film: Udo Samel, Walter Schmidinger (A), André Wilms (F), Jean Marie Straub (F), Otto Sander, D.E.Sattler, Heinz Wismann, Heinz Hollinger (CH), Detlef B. Linke, Geno Lechner, Udo Kroschwald, Rainer Sellien, Peter Schneider, Elfi Mikesch (A) and others

Venues and schedule:
Moritzburg Foundation, Halle an der Saale, 21 Oct. 2012 – 6 Jan. 2013
France, Goethe-Institut Paris, March 2012 and other venues
Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, April 2012