Daniel Goetsch is the ideal European: he is bilingual, studied law in Zurich and Toulouse and settled in Berlin in 2004. When the Swiss author visited Bulgaria for four weeks in 2008, the people there reacted to him with disbelieving wonderment. “The Bulgarians often did not understand why I left my homeland,” says Goetsch. He had travelled there as a literary person – and at the same time as the first holder of a scholarship from a network whose ultimate aims are to turn the joint cultural space that is Europe into a palpable reality. The history of the network began in spring 2007 in the small Polish town of Sejny. Representatives of the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB) went to the furthermost edge of the Europe Union in order to found the Halma Literature Network, together with the Polish Borderland Foundation.
Three complementary partners: the Literary Colloquium Berlin provides the literary know-how, while the Robert Bosch Foundation, whose involvement in eastern Europe began as early as the 1970s, supplies the start-up financing and international contacts. The network also profits from the experience of the Polish Borderland Foundation, which has been engaged in transborder cultural work since 1990.
Like in the board game of the same name, the Halma association would like to enable authors to move easily from one place to the next and thus overcome national borders. The idea is also supported by the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. As Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier remarked about the foundation of this pan-European association, “Halma aims to promote a network which from the very outset manifests the concept of Europe across geographical and cultural borders.” It is almost as if the Schengen Agreement were to be rewritten – but this time not in the interests of inner European crossborder traffic, but of the freedom of movement of literature, promoted by civil society.
“For a long time collaboration between German and eastern European houses of literature was fraught with difficulties simply because people did not know the right person to address or who were the reliable sources,” says Maja Sibylle Pflüger of the Robert Bosch Foundation. That is destined to change thanks to the new cultural network: 16 houses of literature from 11 European countries were represented at its foundation – today there are already 27 such houses from 21 European countries.
Unlike the European Union, the Halma Literature Network is a project that emerged in the east – and has only gradually opened to the west over the past two years. In 2009, not only literary centres in Poland, Bulgaria and Germany are cooperating with one another, but also institutions in France, Italy and Ireland. For the moment, however, the Halma organizers have abandoned the original concept of finding three cooperation partners in each of the participating countries. But the interest of the literature houses is still unbroken. “Nevertheless, no more institutions will be admitted for the next three years,” says Sonja Schillings of the Literary Colloquium Berlin. “We have grown very fast, and for the moment we want to concentrate on our programme.”
The main thing now is to choose and oversee the scholarship-holders. Since 2008, the Halma network has already supported 13 authors with two-month travel grants. The authors can thus visit at least two of the participating Halma centres. The network also offers support in preparing public readings, including the necessary translation. Scholarship-holder and author Daniel Goetsch visited the Institute of the Arts in Prague and the Elias Canetti Centre in Rousse in northern Bulgaria – a decision he certainly does not regret: “A visit such as this relativizes the debates going on at home and helps to clear your head.” What is more, literature is treated very differently there than in Berlin, Goetsch noticed: “Instead of talking about the whole literary business, they prefer to speak about content and form.”
This was a pleasant experience for the writer, especially as the trip to Rousse could also be worthwhile for Daniel Goetsch in the long term. After all, Penka Angelova, the Bulgarian Professor of German Studies who introduced him to the Bulgarian literary scene in Rousse, is planning to translate his novel Ben Kader into Bulgarian. Meanwhile, new synergy effects have emerged which indicate that the concept of the Halma network is working. For example, since early 2009 the Robert Bosch Foundation has been using its contacts to also enable translators to stay at houses of literature throughout Europe for a short time.
On his return to Berlin Daniel Goetsch, like all the other scholarship-holders, wrote an essay on his journey. This can be found on the Halma website under the European Library. “States can reject the euro, restrict the free movement of persons or scrap treaties,” it says there, “but no one can say no to culture.”
