Born in England to Kindertransport refugees who were active Communists – Thomas Brasch came to embody the fault lines of German history like few other artists. As his father Horst Brasch rose in the ranks of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party, Thomas became an uncompromisingly radical writer whose activism led to censorship and three months in prison. After his move to West Germany, he refused to play the role of GDR-dissident and focused his critique on West German society and German history in plays, poetry, and a series of brilliant but challenging films. Although he is highly regarded as a translator of Chekhov’s and Shakespeare’s works into German, none of Thomas Brasch’s major works have ever been published in English. His major films, jarring meditations on German history such as Der Passagier – Welcome to Germany (1988, starring Tony Curtis as a choleric Hollywood director who returns to Germany to make a film about his experience in a concentration camp), are rarely shown in the United States. This spring, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Goethe-Institut New York, The German Film Office, Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the Friends of Freiburg University, and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York will re-introduce audiences to this remarkable artist and story.


“Lieber Thomas” New York Premiere
Wednesday, June 14 – 7pm ET
Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
Join us for the New York premiere of this German feature film! Director Andreas Kleinert’s Thomas Brasch biopic Lieber Thomas (Germany, 2021, 150 min.) shows the life and dreams of a man for whom every world was always too small, someone who overcame boundaries and caused damage in the process. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.
Registration and further information:
https://lieber-thomas.eventbrite.com
https://www.lbi.org/events/lieber-thomas/