Jewish Museum Presents Reading By Michael Degen

In the second part of his autobiography "Mein heiliges Land," the well-known actor and author Michael Degen paints a vivid and moving picture of Israel's founding years and postwar Germany. We cordially invite you to attend his reading at the Jewish Museum Berlin on Monday 19 March.

Michael Degen, who survived the Nazi era in hiding with his mother in Berlin, sails to Israel just a few years after the war in the hope of finding family members who survived, in particular his brother who managed to flee Germany in 1940. Quite alone, the seventeen-year-old enters a country in turmoil into which people from all over the world are streaming. He learns Hebrew and before long finds himself in a perfomance of a Molière play on a stage in Tel Aviv. Eventually he manages to trace his brother.

Born in Chemnitz in 1932, Michael Degen began training as an actor at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1946. There he worked with distinguished directors such as Bertolt Brecht, Peter Zadek, and George Tabori. Michael Degen became known to a wider public through his TV character in "Diese Drombuschs" and more recently in the Donna Leon series.

The first part of his autobiography entitled "Nicht alle waren Mörder" (They weren't all murderers) about his childhood in Nazi Germany was published in 2002. He read from this book at the Jewish Museum Berlin in August 2004. His childhood memories were filmed (directed by Jo Baier) and broadcast by ARD in 2006. -- www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de