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On the 50th anniversary of the publication of the poetry collection Harri eta Herri by Gabriel Aresti, the Berlin Basque club wanted to feature the poet from Bilbao during its 2014 Euskera Day celebration.  Aresti’s poems were read along with texts in German by Bertold Brecht at an event held at the Wekstaff der Kulturen Cultural Center in Berlin. 

Berlin, Germany.   The Gernika Kulturverein Basque club in Berlin celebrated the International Day of the Basque Language on December 6 with a poetry recital that took place at the Wekstaff der Kulturen Cultural Center in berlin.  The event was extra special since the club won the ENE 2014 prize earlier in the week, in recognition of the club’s efforts in the diffusion and instruction of Euskera.

Basque supporters in Berlin hold poet Gabriel Aresti and his collection Harri eta Herri, a referential work of Basque poetry in special regard especially on this its 50th anniversary.  The poetry event included interspersed readings of works by another great poet, German Bertold Brecht.

Brecht’s poems are well-known in Euskera in the voice of Mikel Laboa and in more recently, Aresti has also been translated into German on the internet.  The anthology Brecht-Aresti Poema hautatuak - Ausgewählte Gedichte (Brecht-Aresti Chosen Poems) allows the reader to get closer to the work of these two greats in a bilingual edition.

The event was organized by the Basque lecturers at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin and Frankfurt, and thanks to its success, it will be repeated in the coming months.  Christine Paasch was in charge of reading in Germany why the poems in Basque were read by Garazi Ugalde.