Inheritance

Literature has always been fascinated by questions of “heritage” and “inheritance.” It combines narratives of origin with family drama and fantasies of individual enrichment, but also features attempts to abandon traditions and renounce one’s inheritance. This fascination extends from the patriarchal stories of the Hebrew bible, Shakespeare’s King Lear, and Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks to TV shows such as Downton Abbey and Succession.

Today, literature faces a new dynamic. On the one hand, more private wealth is being passed on than ever before. On the other hand, civil inheritance laws are confronted with rising criticism as structures of marriage, family, and reproduction are becoming increasingly diversified. Additionally, in the context of globalization and “world heritage,” inheritances shift towards the immaterial, virtual, and the digital and are currently being redefined. Therefore, all these debates address issues of social justice, generational and gender relations, as well as cultural-political and postcolonial perspectives.

The Literature Days, a cooperation between the ZfL, the Literaturhaus Berlin, and the Department of German Literature at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, engage with this debate. In eight readings and conversations, we will explore inheritance and disinheritance within and beyond the family, traditions and restitutions, estates and secrets, money and genes.

Fig. above: D.M. Nagu: L‘avenir du livre (2023/24) (detail), © D.M. Nagu