Current Fellows

© Alena Wagnerová
© Alena Wagnerová

Alena Wagnerová

Literature

September 2021

Ministerium für Bildung und Kultur Saarland

Alena Wagnerová is a German-Czech writer, cultural journalist and oral historian from Brno. In her literary as well as journalistic work she systematically deals with the culture and history of Central Europe, German-Czech relations and the status of women in modern society.

Among her best-known books are Milena Jesenská – Alle meine Artikel sind Liebesbriefe; Im Hauptquartier des Lärms – Die Familie Kafka aus Prag; Sidonie Nádherná und das Ende von Mitteleuropa and the novella Die Doppelkapelle. For years Alena Wagnerová devoted herself to the fate of the Sudeten Germans in a total of three oral history books; in 2003–2007 she directed the oral history part of a documentation, commissioned by the Czech government, dedicated to the fates of the German Nazi opponents from the Sudetes. For her work for German-Czech understanding she was awarded the Pelikán Prize of the magazine Listy in 2005, the Gratias agit Prize of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic in 2017, and the special prize of the German-Czech Future Fund in 2019.

During her stay in Wiepersdorf in August 2021, Alena Wagnerová would like to work on her documentary novel Stillleben mit einer deutschen Familie, which is dedicated to the fate of two siblings during the Nazi era. The brother is sentenced for his human experiments in Buchenwald in the doctors' trial in Nuremberg, while his sister dies as a victim of euthanasia.

Alena Wagnerová also wants to resume work on a reportage about the situation of agriculture in the area around Wiepersdorf and Jüterbog, which she started during her last stay in Wiepersdorf in 2016.