Events | Spring Festival at Schloss Wiepersdorf 2026
Sunday, May 31, 2026, 2:00 pm–6:00 pm | Schloss Wiepersdorf
Spring Festival at Schloss Wiepersdorf
We cordially invite you to our Spring Festival on May 31, 2026, from 2.00 to 6.00 p.m.! The museum, the café in the Orangery, the studio house, and the Tankhalle will be open to visitors, alongside presentations in the castle park and stalls featuring food and local products. The program includes readings, music, and artworks on display in the studios by current and former Schloss Wiepersdorf fellows. Additionally, an art workshop for children invites all kids to join in and get creative themselves.
The Spring Festival 2026 is organized by the Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf and is supported by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Culture of Brandenburg.
Free admission
Wiepersdorf - Bettina-von-Arnim-Straße 13, 14913 Niederer Fläming
By attending the event, you agree that pictures and recordings made there may be used for public relations purposes.
Directions
At 1:30 p.m., a free shuttle bus departs from Jüterbog train station to Wiepersdorf and at 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. back from Wiepersdorf to Jüterbog train station. Please register at info@schloss-wiepersdorf.de or by phone at 033746 699 0.
For individual travel, the "Rufbus" (on-demand bus service) can be booked regional in Brandenburg with advance notice by calling 03371 62 81 81 or online at vtfonline.de/rufbusapp.html (only available in German).
Parking is available on the street. On the grounds of the Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf (Am Konsum 4, 14913 Wiepersdorf), there are two publicly accessible electric charging stations with four normal charging points.
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Program
Castle Terrace
2:00–2:30 p.m. – Opening
5:00–6:00 p.m. – Closing
Music
Studio House
2:00–6:00 p.m. – Open studios
Taslima Ahmed
Luise Talbot
Luise Talbot lives and works in Saarbrücken. She initially studied African Languages, Literatures, and Art at the University of Bayreuth, during which her interest increasingly shifted toward contemporary art and the aesthetic exploration of the uncanny. In her painting and drawings, Luise Talbot examines moments of irritation and ambivalence, in which the familiar tips into the foreign.
Luise Talbot was a fellow at Schloss Wiepersdorf in March and April 2026.
New Children's Book Illustrations from the Czech Republic
As part of a group residency, eight Czech authors and illustrators worked together on new children's books in April 2026. These drafts will be presented in an open studio.
The group residency at Schloss Wiepersdorf was made possible in cooperation with the Czech Literary Centre in Prague (Czechlit), the Moravian Library, the Knižní lázně literature festival in Marienbad, and the German-Czech Future Fund.
3:00–5:00 p.m. – Children’s art workshop
Kaj Osteroth, Nick Crowe, and Zora Janković lead the studio workshop for children aged 7 and up, where they can paint, draw, sculpt, and get creative.
From 3:00 p.m. – Kristalle by Carolin Martin
The short film Kristalle (Crystalls) by Carolin Martin tells the fantastic story of Neige, who undergoes a wondrous transformation and turns into a woman made of sugar after eating a piece of cake. The film was shot on a farm in Oehna with the participation of the local traditional costume associations Dennewitzer Flämingtrachten and Fläming Freunde.
Following a brief introduction by the director, the 15-minute film will be shown in a loop.
Tankhalle
3:00–3:30 p.m. – Matthias Nawrat & Svenja Leiber
Reading & talk: The Fortunate Fate – Life East and West of the Iron Curtain
Matthias Nawrat was born in Opole, Poland, in 1979 and emigrated with his family to Bamberg in Upper Franconia in early 1989. He studied biology in Heidelberg and Freiburg im Breisgau, followed by literary writing at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel. His novel Das glückliche Schicksal (The Fortunate Fate) deals with living and surviving east and west of the Iron Curtain. In it, a young Polish psychologist travels to Venice in 1983.
Matthias Nawrat was a fellow at Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2024. In 2026, he was awarded the Berlin Literature Prize.
Svenja Leiber is a writer born in Hamburg in 1975. Her most recent novel, Nelka, was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. it tells the story of a 16-year-old girl who is deported to Germany for forced labor in 1941.
4:00–4:30 p.m. – Lucy Jones & Carolin Krahl
Reading & talk: Translating "Franziska Linkerhand" by Brigitte Reimann
Lucy Jones is a renowned British literary translator who has lived in Berlin for 25 years. She is a current fellow at Schloss Wiepersdorf and is translating Brigitte Reimann's novel Franziska Linkerhand into English. She will speak with Carolin Krahl about the work on this translation, as well as about Brigitte Reimann and her oeuvre.
Carolin Krahl is a writer from Leipzig. In 2024, she published her novel Wühlen (trottoir noir), an exploration of the GDR past through the differing life stories of three women in a small Saxon town during the 1980s and 1990s.
Museum
2:30–5:00 p.m. – Museum visit
The museum illustrates over five rooms how the von Arnimsʼ manor house evolved into a residence for artists and scholars. The focus lies on the spirit of Romanticism as well as on the period from 1945 to 1989, when Schloss Wiepersdorf primarily hosted writers.
2:30–3:00 p.m. – Paula Müller & Sebastian Meschenmoser
Opening of the special exhibition: The sun sits
Based on the landscape depictions of the researcher Alexander von Humboldt, artist Paula Müller explores in her exhibition "Die Sonne sitzt" (The sun sits) at what point a documentary record of a landscape transforms into an emotionally charged image of longing in the spirit of Romanticism.
Although Humboldt’s landscape paintings were created with documentary intent, he guides the viewer's gaze through harmonic compositions and the deliberate placement of visual elements that reflect his holistic understanding of nature. Paula Müller adopts these compositional structures, reproduces Humboldt's motifs, and transforms them by omitting human figures and using atmospheric effects such as fields of fog. Through these citations of Romanticism, she charges the scenes with subjective moods and creates landscapes that appear strangely familiar and yet new to the viewer.
The exhibition opening will feature a conversation between Paula Müller, a 2025 fellow at Wiepersdorf, and the artist Sebastian Meschenmoser, who was a fellow at Wiepersdorf in 2010.
Paula Müller was born in Trier in 1977 and currently lives in Berlin. She completed her studies in Fine Arts under Prof. Ulrich Erben and Prof. Daniele Buetti as a master student at the Münster Academy of Art (2007). During her studies, she was influenced by a DAAD scholarship with Prof. Roesch at the ESBA in Geneva. Her ongoing work as a scientific illustrator for archaeologists, both at home and abroad, has deepened the documentary method of drawing within her practice.
3:30–4:00 p.m. – Dilek Majatürk & Matthias Weichelt
Reading & talk: Life as a continuous translation
For Octavio Paz, everything in life is translation. Yüksel Pazarkaya takes this hypothesis even further, suggesting that all being is translation. "The writing self is less of a translation than the speaking self – and even less so is the thinking self. And yet – as a non-native speaker of German, I am always a translation as well. With these thoughts, I wanted to explore what I can do with my mother tongue and with a language learned later in life. But no matter which language I write in – ultimately, all languages must serve the language of poetry," says Dilek Mayatürk. In June, her long-awaited bilingual volume of poetry, Wenn Du lächelst, zerfällt ein roter Apfel in Scheiben (When You Smile, a Red Apple Crumbles into Slices), will be published by Verlag Wunderhorn. She will speak with Matthias Weichelt about this creative process and offer insights into how thinking and writing in two languages influences her literary work.
Dilek Mayatürk was born in Istanbul in 1986 and continued her sociology studies at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria. She has worked as a documentary film producer and author for various media. Her poetry collection Cesaret Koleksiyonu (Yeniinsan Verlag) was published in 2014, followed by Brache (Hanser Berlin) in 2020 and Bir Daha Yok Çiçeği (Klaros Verlag) in 2021.
Matthias Weichelt is a German literary scholar and author. Since 2013, he has been the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Sinn und Form, published by the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
4:30–5:00 p.m. – Susanne Schädlich & Carsten Hueck
Reading & talk: Cabaret of the Nameless
Susanne Schädlich was born in Jena and left the GDR with her family in 1977. In 1987, she moved to Los Angeles, where she studied Modern German Philology as a fellow at the University of Southern California, taught German as a Foreign Language, and worked at the Max Kade Institute for Armenian-German-Swiss Studies. She has lived in Berlin since 1999. Her novel Kabarett der Namenlosen, (Cabaret of the Nameless) published by Arco Verlag in 2025, deals with the uprooting of German artists in exile who, persecuted as Jews in the 1930s, were forced to leave their home country.
Carsten Hueck is a freelance editor and moderator for Deutschlandfunk and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and can be heard on literary programs such as Lesart and Büchermarkt.
Orangery
2:00–6:00 p.m. – Coffee & Cake
Castle Park
2:00–6:00 p.m.
Music: Mermaid Mob
Open air music from the Mermaid Mob Swing band.
Cultural historical tour with ten stops
The cultural and historical tour "Kosmos Wiepersdorf" holds information and stories about the grounds, the buildings and the various residents of Schloss Wiepersdorf at ten stations.
At each of the stops you will find a sign with a QR code. If you scan these codes with your smartphone, you can hear stories of three to six minutes that introduce you to the object or topic in question. Everything you listen to on the tour can also be followed or read on your smartphone, tablet, or the website of the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation. Additionally, each of the stops offers the opportunity to find out more in-depth knowledge about what you have heard or read with the help of expert information.
Catering & Stalls
A variety of savory snacks, sweets, ice cream, and drinks will be available for purchase in the park. You will also find stalls featuring local regional products and a book table hosted by the Wist bookstore from Potsdam.
