Young Euro Connect 2011

"European Blind Dates"

Young successful managers who are socially committed … Four young authors who set out to find more about them! What motivates them to their “Responsible Leadership”, to their demand to also live their commitment in their professional lives? This year young authors and journalists from Germany, the Ukraine, Poland and Denmark will engage themselves into this and other questions concerning the social commitment of today’s young leadership elite. The young authors, who are successful writers in their home countries, will spend several days together with the young managers. Their impressions and experiences will become literary texts that will bring the audience and the young decision makers closer together!

Editor Karsten Kammholz (Germany) meets Swiss manager Oliver Karius. Polish journalist Witold Szablowski meets Georgian national Irakli Absandze. Irakli is himself a journalist with a number of roles including that of director of a non-profit organization in Poti (Georgia). Ukrainian journalist and writer Tanya Malyarchuk meets Turkish-German film director Züli Aladag, and Danish national Line-Maria Lång spends a few days with Miguel Alves Martins - the Portuguese managing director of IES (Institute for the Promotion and Development of Social Entrepreneurship )- All the young managers are active within the “Young Leaders” network set up by the BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt. We are very much looking forward to read the work that is inspired by these “blind dates”.

The texts will be recited by the renowned actors Isabel Schosnig and Henning Vogt at „Young Euro Connect“ on 4 August at 8 p.m. 20 in the Konzerthaus Berlin. Stephan-Andreas Casdorff, editor-in-chief of the "Tagesspiegel", will be the moderator for the evening.

Tickets: 8 € plus advance booking fee

Partner: BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt

Young Euro Connect 2010

Ode to Greece

“Thank you for letting us completely rethink Europe“

We dispatched three young writers on the literary path in 2010 with this somewhat provocative topic: Michal Hvorecky, who has become a superstar of young Slovakian literature in the meantime; Natasa Kramberger, who was nominated for Slovenia’s most important book prize at the age of just 22 years as the first woman to receive that honour; and Ariane Grundies of Germany who, according to the F.A.Z newspaper, “makes surprising sounds audible.”

They have treated this thought-provoking topic in texts that take a look at what the euro crisis in Greece has actually evoked in us Europeans. Where does solidarity stop? How could the Greeks let things go this far? This topic is explored with a literary approach in Young Connect.

Europe beyond Brussels 2009

The search is on: Young Euro Connect 2009 was sending out nine young journalists to look for clues, to get behind the scenes, and to cast some light on where the real Europe manifests itself in our everyday lives... Behind the sober formulations in all too many of the regulations and guidelines, one thing remains true when you listen to these fascinating stories: wherever you look, Europe was already there.

Looking Back

"Give just a bit more thought to Europe!" That has been the deceptively modest appeal that Young Euro Connect has been issuing to young writers from across the continent since the year 2005. The result: surprising, moving and very personal texts that really allow the reader to get inside the intellectual and emotional worlds of these young authors. Texts that might really shake you up – a literary mosaic that, according to the prestigious Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, tells you, “more about Europe than all the history books and political speeches put together.” And since March 2009 it has all been available in book form.

Polishing up Europe’s image

From the very beginning, the idea behind Young Euro Connect has been to encourage young people to get involved in a fruitful conversation about something that they might not otherwise have given all that much thought to: Europe and its values. Just how amazingly successful the project has proven year after year was highlighted in 2007 by the French author Jérôme Lambert, when he commented on his encounters with his fellow writers and his erstwhile rather disillusioned image of Europe: “And I was overwhelmed to discover that, yes, the five of us are on a joint mission: demonstrating that there is something that it’s still very much worth thinking up.“