World Refugee Day on June 20, 2019

Since 2001, June 20 has been celebrated as World Refugee Day.

Even though it has been some years now that a day goes by in Germany without media coverage on the topics of refugees, migration and persecution, June 20 is intended to put special emphasis on international solidarity and humanitarianism: According to data compiled by the United Nations, there are currently roughly 70 million refugees worldwide – more than half of them are children. Every two seconds, a person is forced to flee somewhere in the world.

Reportages, essays and reports tell the story of the people behind the numbers and the headlines and make it possible to form a differentiated picture on the abiding theme in our societies:
Die Außenseiter (Philipp Ther),
Über das Meer (Wolfgang Bauer),
Globale Bewegungsfreiheit (Andreas Cassee), to name but a few.

But there are literary texts, too, that deal with the search for freedom, political obstacles and the question of societal responsibility in their own, very different ways:
Schutzzone (Nora Bossong),
Kruso (Lutz Seiler),
Nachruf auf Lebende (Christa Wolf),
August (Christa Wolf),
Der Verlorene (Hans-Ulrich Treichel),
Tagesanbruch (Hans-Ulrich Treichel), to name but a few.