Paul Leworthy (Newcastle): Public Memory in Postmigrant Germany. Remembering Hanau in Das deutsche Volk (FMSP) | 28 May 2026

28 May 2026, 4-6 pm
Campus Westend, Casino 1.812

Paul Leworthy (Newcastle)

Directed by Marcin Wierzchowski, Das deutsche Volk (2025) is a black-and-white feature-length documentary about the events and the aftermath of the shootings in Hanau, Germany, in 2020, in which a far-right extremist killed nine people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Rather than simply recounting what happened on the night of the attacks, the film follows the victims’ families over four years, focussing on their suffering and their struggles for justice, accountability, and commemoration. In this lecture, I will discuss how Das Deutsche Volk both documents and performs memory work, while also thinking about how the film entangles public memory with questions about belonging. 

Paul Leworthy is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. His first monograph, The Shape of Memory, will appear with Peter Lang later this year. He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies Review and host of the Connecting Memories Podcast.