Sasha Marianna Salzmann
Sasha Marianna Salzmann
I will never know what it means to be invisible.. [...] What it means to wander through the streets and not to have to anticipate people trying to touch my hair as they go past. What it's like not to have to talk to myself into staying calm when I’m asked several times a day whether I speak German. Losing myself in the crowd is not an option for me. I belong to several minorities; trying to hide this is potentially more dangerous for me than stating my position. [ed. trans.]
Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Sichtbar, 2019
| Born | 21. August 1985 in Volgograd, Soviet Union |
|---|---|
| Exile | Federal Republic of Germany |
| Profession | Writer, Theaterautorin, Dramaturgin, Essayistin |
Sasha Marianna Salzmann was born in Volgograd, grew up in Moscow, and emigrated with her family to Germany in 1995 as a so-called Jewish quota refugee. “The teachers at school asked us who we were, and we said Volga Germans, German Russians, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews (naturally without gendering, since we were still a long way from even having heard of it),” wrote Sasha Marianna Salzmann in an article for taz published in 2018. “The teachers called us Kontingentflüchtlinge (quota refugees) and Spätaussiedler (repatriates). In the playground, the other pupils called us ‘Kontis’.”
Confronted too often with the question of her origins and migration history, she dropped out of school and joined a theatre. She began studying dramatic writing in Berlin and composed her own works, which included Weißbrotmusik (premièred in 2010) and Wir Zöpfe (premièred in 2015). She has received grants and prizes for her work, for example the Exile Dramatists’ Prize awarded by Wiener Wortstaetten and the Mara Cassens Prize. Her first novel, Außer sich was published in 2017 and shortlisted for the German Book Prize.
For a long time, Salzmann was unable to answer questions about her origins without hesitating. She has since found a clear answer, as she explained during a speech given on the 10th anniversary of the Junges Schauspielhaus in Hanover: “Whenever anyone asks me where I come from – and people do ask me, they still ask me – I know what I have to say: I come from the theatre.“ (Salzmann, Wo ich herkomme, 2018)
Further literature:
Aydemir, Fatma u. Yaghoobifarah, Hengameh (Hg.): Eure Heimat Ist unser Albtraum. Berlin: Ullstein fünf 2019.
Salzmann, Sasha Marianna u. Czollek, Max (Hg.): Ein Kongress Zeitgenössischer Jüdischer Positionen: 6.-8. Mai 2016 Maxim Gorki Theater Studio Я = A Congress On Contemporary Jewish Positions : 6-8 May, 2016 Maxim Gorki Theater Studio Я. Bielefeld: Kerber 2017.
Selected works:
Außer sich (Roman, 2017)
Wir Zöpfe (Theaterstück, Uraufführung 2015)
Muttersprache Mameloschn (Theaterstück, Uraufführung 2012)
Weißbrotmusik (Theaterstück, Uraufführung 2010)
Gallery
