Following certain indefensible decisions by a prior magazine’s management, at the end of last year, Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Mathilde Montpetit and Alexander Wells lit out to begin their own operation: The Auflauf, on online cultural dispatch from Berlin featuring interviews, capsules reviews and promoting indie and translated literature. Having recently celebrated their six-month anniversary (and been instrumental in helping us organise our minor incident weekender), we sat down with The Auflauf to discuss the magazine’s ethos, Berlin literary life and the broader socio-cultural moment in Germany.
minor lit[s]: Can you briefly identify yourselves and your relationship to each other?
Alex Wells: I’m Alex Wells. I’m from Australia. I’m married to Mathilde, and Sanders is my friend. I’m a book critic and essayist. I’ve been based in Berlin for the last seven years. I usually write on German literature and German history for US, UK, and Australian magazines, and I’ve just finished my first book, which will be appearing in Germany next year.
Mathilde Montpetit: I’m Mathilde. I’m currently doing a PhD in medieval West African history at NYU, but I live here in Berlin. I also write for The Public Domain Review and am married to him (indicates Alex), and Sanders is my friend.
Sanders Isaac Bernstein: I’m Sanders Isaac Bernstein. I’m a writer here in Berlin. I’ve been in Berlin since the beginning of 2019. I came in the middle of doing my PhD and thought I’d be here for two years, and now I’m here forever with an anchor baby (laughs and indicates baby on lap). I write essays and reviews—much of them dealing with historical memory—for mostly US-based publications, and Alex and Mathilde are both my friends.
Why did you leave The Berliner and set up the Auflauf?
AW: I was working at The Berliner for five or so years, running their book section. We started with one spread that became two spreads, three spreads, and it involved a lot of work from Mathilde as well as a few other contributors. Mathilde ended up co-running it. Sanders was also spiritually involved. And Sanders ran the theater section of the magazine. We were operating rather independently from the main thrust of the magazine, which was quite city-life oriented. And then last year in October a rather unpleasant situation arose which led to most of the journalists and critics and editors leaving the magazine. There were problems with speaking openly about the situation in Gaza, among other things. We perceived there to be blurrings of the line between editorial independence and the business side of the magazine that hadn’t been a problem before as far as we could tell, but it really accelerated over time. To cover the international books and theater world of Berlin, and to have a constraint over people who want to talk about Gaza—we felt that that was simply indefensible. Then it can no longer be a community service, or even a real place-based literary project. So we left—some of our mates are now making the great news publication HEIST, and we’re cooking up The Auflauf.
That magazine was a good home, and we had good colleagues, but we’re really enjoying the freedom now to focus much more on translators and translated literature and indie stuff. The last interview we had in The Berliner in the books section was Mathilde talking to Alexander Booth, who’s a minor literature[s] figure as well, and that felt like a nice place to leave it to say, “This is the sort of person we’re trying to talk to.”
MM: That last interview was about his translation of Gerhard Rühm, who’s an Austrian poet, and was very pleasingly weird—not the stuff that The Berliner would usually cover.
AW: We partly left negatively under this political situation, but we also spied an opportunity to do something that was a bit more DIY, community-oriented, and elevated. Not only in the writing we cover, but also in the writing we produce.
What has been like watching people in Germany’s response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine? How do you account for the position that many Germans hold vis-à-vis the genocide?
SB: It’s certainly been difficult, to say the least. Here in Berlin, we live in Neukölln, which is a center of Palestinian diaspora in Europe. Germany in general is the site of one of the largest Israeli and Palestinian diasporas—and Berlin in particular. We watched, right after October 7, how militarized our neighborhood became. It was rather shocking, but I should have known better, considering post-9/11 in the United States, the Islamophobia that was a part of the childhood which I grew up in. And then here it was. It’s been extraordinary across the spectrum, across politicians, across the newspapers—even among cultural institutions. There have been too many cancellations to name, though many have been widely reported. I’ve written open letters with other Jewish writers and artists about the situation, which were published in German newspapers, to little effect. In general, I think that while the rhetoric here is intensified in comparison to elsewhere, what’s happening here is not isolated. Anti-antisemitism is being mobilized as a pretext for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment and being used to divide the left everywhere. It’s happening here, it’s happening in the US, and it’s happening in Europe and the world more broadly. It seems opportunistic and a question of power politics more than something that has to do with a good-faith effort to deal with historical responsibility or guilt, which is often how it’s presented. I don’t know if I have a grand explanation for it that’s worth getting into right now. But I can say that when we left the publication it was because we came to it understanding our work there as not only freelance labor but also as a way of fostering a community in this city, and when it made the decisions that it did, that was no longer possible. We couldn’t build that world in Berlin or outside of it, if we continued to be part of the organization.
Still, I have to add that there are instances of people working within existing structures here and attempting to open up the discourse from within cultural institutions. I know that the overwhelming weight of my answer does not say that, but I think there are profiles in courage as well. Lettrétage, for example, receives state funding. But even though it receives state funding, Lettrétage still has in its ongoing nightly readings and performances Palestinian writers and, indeed, Arabic culturemakers more broadly. And that is in a landscape where many people, simply by virtue of their heritage, have been deplatformed. And there were some rare theaters like the Volksbühne that did allow for performances canceled in other venues to take place in some of their side stages.
MM: I think that was wonderfully put, Sanders. I will also say that things have changed quite markedly since October 7th. I think it’s caused a reckoning among Germans on the question of Israel, so that one feels that things are really different now than they were two years ago. We have local elections coming up, and several left parties are running on explicitly pro-Gaza platforms; it’s a really seismic shift, that we now see “criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism” on election signage.
AW: A disjunction has been emerging between German institutions and German people. In the international coverage, you hear a lot—very rightly so—about what German institutions have been doing, especially political institutions and policing. Of course it’s an outrage. But sometimes people on social media make claims about how all Germans are on this. And it does feel that increasingly there’s a divergence in public opinion, which there’s been for almost the whole duration of the war. Especially after one or two months in, when you look at opinion polls, there’s been a divergence—as there is in the US, as there is in the UK, Australia, all kinds of places—between the consensus that’s enforced at the level of political and cultural institutions and what actual people think and feel. And, as Sanders pointed out, not all German institutions have gone along with it anyway.
Can you elaborate on the city of Berlin as a center of literary culture. What are the advantages and drawbacks?
SB: Berlin is one of the largest, if not the largest English-speaking literary community in a non-dominant English-speaking city in Europe. It has an extraordinarily vibrant literary culture. Something like twenty-five percent of Berlin was not born in Germany. There are many different literary scenes occurring, sometimes even overlapping in the same places. For example, Lettrétage, which is a publicly funded, free space that is putting on literary events every night of the week, in many different languages. The community, at least in my experience of it—and that’s part of the reason I remain here—has been extraordinarily supportive and retains some of the character of Berlin as a place, that it was once the edge of the map where up to 1989 one couldn’t go any further east in Europe. It had to be an active choice to come here, a seeking out. And the sense that people have made choices—as in that idea of Berlin, the choosing to come here—has created a curious, open, and interested literary culture. It’s also important to remember that in Berlin, even with culture cuts, there’s a tremendous amount of funding for the arts. Last year it was something like eight hundred million euros of funding—which is three to four times the NEA budget for the entire United States.
[T]he sense that people have made choices—as in that idea of Berlin, the choosing to come here—has created a curious, open, and interested literary culture.
Drawbacks, I’d say, is harder, besides the Gaza situation what we talked about. I think one drawback perhaps is that one would hope for more conversation across linguistic lines. Having such a large English-speaking literary community means also that it can sometimes be insular and ignore the other parallel worlds that exist. So that’s something that has to be actively worked toward rather than something that already is happening by its own accord.
MM: I think that’s all definitely very true. I think too maybe one of the drawbacks—not to be like, “My greatest weakness is also my greatest strength”—but I think that part of the city’s vivacity is the fact that so many people come through Berlin—so many people have spent two months in Berlin. Berlin is still the only city I’ve lived in where you meet somebody at an event and you say, “Oh, we should get a drink sometime,” and the person will actually follow up. Everyone’s always looking to meet new people, but because everybody’s always passing through it can be hard to have a sense of a permanent literary community. But it also means that people exchange a lot more. New people come in, groups are always constellating in different ways. People are open to new connections, because their best friend just moved to Belgrade.
AW: I agree strongly with that. I think it is a strength that’s also a drawback. And it’s not just English speakers. It’s not just American grad students who come here for a year, post about it, and leave. It’s also true of Uruguayans and Syrians and Australians and people even more diverse than Australians.
MM: All of the Australians are leaving. It’s a big problem.
AW: It’s a flat white shortage all across the city now. What’s exciting is a certain openness—though I agree with Sanders that the openness can be bounded by language group, especially on the part of English speakers, who can be particularly cliquish. The drawback is a certain sense of Berlin as a non-place, including on the part of writers and editors and translators who live here. Again, that can be exciting. It can take away certain pressures within the language, within linguistic traditions that authors work in, but also peer pressures and genre pressures and socially conformist pressures. It does, though, mean that if you’re interested less in solo production and more in literary exchange, which all three of us are in different ways, it can be frustrating that so many interesting people are near each other and don’t collaborate and don’t even share ideas or read each other’s work. So that’s part of the motivation, maybe, behind what we’re doing here.
The drawback is a certain sense of Berlin as a non-place, including on the part of writers and editors and translators who live here.
What is the relationship between the German literary community and the expat literary community in Berlin?
MM: I think it depends. It’s interesting. There’s a lot of progressive young Germans who think that the US is the best thing that’s ever happened to the world. Like the left party here, which is polling at twenty percent [Ed. ultimately achieving 25.7%, subsequent to this interview] for local elections, keeps saying, “How can we do what America has done on the left?”
SB: “How can the left ‘do a Mamdani’ in Berlin?”
MM: So there’s a set of younger German writers who love English stuff. Who really reach out to English language speakers and often are themselves very fluent in English, and so when you talk to them, they understand all of the American cultural references. Then there’s a whole other German world that really feels like a world apart from English language stuff. It’s partially that they have a real literary culture: they have their own institutions, they have their own history, they have their own traditions, and Anglo lit feels commercial to them, maybe. We’re less good at interfacing with them, in part because they’re not that interested in us. Which, fair enough.
SB: I think there’s a bit of an overlooking on both sides. In some ways expats and English-speakers in Berlin are amazed by what there is here in the English-speaking world. The English-speaking world is not simply people from English-speaking countries. The people who are writing in English are people coming from Africa and from Asia. There’s a tremendous range of writers in Berlin who are comfortable working in English. But the English speakers also aren’t recognizing the wonderful world of German writers writing in German. There are many expat writers writing in German, who have chosen to make that their language and who are not originally from Germany here in Berlin. I think there’s a way in which on both sides there’s neglect as a result of just how rich and vibrant the scenes are. It’s one of the things which we’re very aware of and that we’re trying to do our small part about—to attend to some of that diversity and some of that richness, bringing them into conversation with each other.
How would you describe the Auflauf? What is the ethos of the magazine?
MM: After we left The Berliner, we were looking around and seeing that there wasn’t really anybody else doing that kind of stuff: writing about books that are not only from Berlin, but speaking to Berlin, and then also profiling writers who wouldn’t normally get big interviews, either because they’re too indie or write in German or things like that. There’s been a very inspiring spate of new publications in Berlin in the past couple of years: The Diasporist and The Berlin Review are publishing amazing literary writing, but their project isn’t the sort of community coverage that The Berliner was doing. Our colleagues at HEIST are doing news, food, politics, so we’re picking up the slack on lit. The idea is to have a magazine that’s of Berlin, in all senses of the word. Berlin is an interesting place to write from. People are interested in what is happening in Berlin, and that’s what we’re trying to respond to.
The idea is to have a magazine that’s of Berlin, in all senses of the word. Berlin is an interesting place to write from. People are interested in what is happening in Berlin, and that’s what we’re trying to respond to.
AW: I think the conversations that are happening in Berlin are world conversations. In the same way that people listen in on New York and London, and should listen in on Damascus and Nairobi, we feel strongly that Berlin’s worth listening in on. The themes that we emphasize—Arabic literature, post-communist literature, queer literature, interlinguality, translation and exophony—I think these are themes that everyone’s thinking about, or should be thinking about. These are real features of our world. And the excitement of Berlin as a cheap, sexy party place is not the only interesting thing about Berlin. It remains a place of global interest. As we’ve seen most recently, it’s become a global center for arguments about Holocaust memory, Palestine, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Ultimately, we see Berlin’s literary and political conversations as global ones. I think we wanted to find a place where we’re—in the breadth of our coverage and in the depths of the conversations going on and in the literary content that we publish—trying to give to Berliners and to the world a sense of what’s being thought about here and how.
SB: I just want to add, if I may, that thinking about how people live together, in which social constellations—post-Holocaust, post-Communism, and post-Cold War—those are very active conversations here. These questions feel more alive in this city than anywhere else where I’ve lived. And this magazine is a way of having those conversations that we were already having, but now with more people around the table.
Can you elaborate on your individual projects?
AW: I just finished a book. It’s a cultural history of Australia through its birds. Birds in Australia, as elsewhere, have always functioned as a way to refract national anxieties and national fantasies. So through a series of essays about individual Australian birds, I’ve tried to give an exploration of Australian colonial history and post-colonial settler identity in Australia, with a European angle because it’s written from here, in Berlin. And because I’m very much interested in the question of European mindsets reaching unthought-of animals and unthought-of places, and whether those mindsets can account for the width of the world or, as we’ve seen, double down on ongoing hypotheses in a brutal way. A slightly fun, slightly depressing bird book coming out in the spring.
MM: My dissertation is about the use of eunuchs—castrated male servants—in the Songhay Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I’m looking at why this empire was the first empire in West Africa to use them, and how it changed the state that they started using them. Hopefully finishing in the spring!
SB: I am also working on a project, if, at the moment, very intermittently. It’s an essay that maybe will one day become something more about the experience of raising a German Jewish baby in Berlin, as a way of thinking about the condition of Jewish life in Germany, and what the future may hold for this creature and for all of us here, the fears and concerns as well as the possibilities of that.
MM: One more thing: It just occurred to me, thinking about the minor lit[s] event, that it was actually in part conversations with Toby about the idea of bohemianism that pushed us to do this project. Thinking about questions like, “What is contemporary?” “What does bohemianism mean in the age of the internet?” At the moment, everybody reads the same things. And so the thing that you talk about with your friends is a Harper’s article that everybody else who speaks English and is under 45 has read. And then you’re writing in conversation with the thing that everybody else is writing in conversation with. So part of the idea is to think about, how does your writing change when you’re choosing what you’re reading by the arbitrary measure that somebody who lives down the street from you wrote it? It’s so different from what we usually do, and that’s part of what’s exciting about working on this. How does reading change when place is the organizing principle behind it?
SB: Apropos of that we’re opening for this fall for fiction and poetry, from writers who live in Berlin or have a connection to the city. There are many journals here in this city, but so many of them are open to writers from everywhere. We want to see what is the texture of—for the moment—contemporary English-speaking Berlin. We’ll see if in the future we open beyond that. We have already run one German language short prose piece, in translation. And we’re looking forward to seeing what the texture of contemporary Berlin fiction and poetry is like—at least as far as our, hopefully, ever-expanding community represents it.
Sign up for The Auflauf here.
Join minor lits in Berlin this weekend! : Friday 16/10 – Desirelines Books, 19h30; Saturday 17/10 – Gallery Linger, 14h; Saturday 17/10 – Lettrétage, 19h30
Sanders Isaac Bernstein is a writer living in Berlin, where he is a member of the Jewish writers collective, Die Sammlung, and co-directs the “Immer Schon” literary event series. In addition to The Auflauf, his writing has appeared in newyorker.com, The Baffler, Jewish Currents, The Bad Version, which he founded and edited from 2011-2014, and Cabinet.
Mathilde Montpetit is a PhD candidate in history at New York University. She is a contributing editor to The Auflauf and the Public Domain Review, and edits the Pedagogy section of al-ʿUsur al-Wusta, an open access journal of the medieval Middle East..
Alexander Wells is a nonfiction writer, editor, and translator living in Berlin. His essays and reviews have been published by The Guardian, Paris Review Daily, The Drift, New Left Review, The Baffler, Poetry, Mekong Review, History Today, and Meanjin among others.
Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays and fiction appear in Identity Theory, The Dodge, and La Piccioletta Barca, among other places. Twitter/X and Instagram/BlueSky: @monalisavitti.
