Herta Müller

"At once seductive and unsettling" is how the work of Herta Müller has been described. At the Baden-Baden Salon 2023, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature will speak about her book Der Beamte sagte, stimulating an exchange of ideas about the use of codes in art. The collages found in Der Beamte sagte appear as stylistic devices early on in Müller's oeuvre. At the same time, they are the expression and cipher of the poetic side of a critical artist who repeatedly exposes and condemns totalitarian systems and ways of thinking. Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten also first seems to be a mystery full of ciphers. In the Baden-Baden Salon, we will discuss the aesthetics of artistic "secret languages" and the act of deciphering them.