Rebellious Women on Foot: A Literary Walk through Berlin-Mitte with Anneke Lubkowitz

A Literary Walk through Berlin-Mitte with Anneke Lubkowitz

Bettina Brentano, Else Lasker-Schüler, Emmy Hennings, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—women writers who found freedom and autonomy on foot. Author Anneke Lubkowitz invites participants on a literary walk through Berlin-Mitte and Wedding, following the traces of historical women walkers whose stories continue to resonate today.

Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog depicts a man. That this is no coincidence is something Anneke Lubkowitz knows well—and it inspired her to seek out the women who have been systematically overlooked in the history of walking.

On 3 July, the Mitte Museum and Golda books and more invite visitors to a special evening event. Lubkowitz will present her book Rebellious Women on Foot, combining a reading with an actual walk through Berlin. The evening begins at 6 pm with a reading at the Mitte Museum in Wedding—a neighbourhood vividly described by Bettina von Arnim in her socially critical writings of the 1840s. At 7 pm, participants will set out on a shared walk along streets that von Arnim once documented as a poor quarter of the city, continuing to Berlin-Mitte and the bookshop Golda books and more, where the second part of the reading will take place at 8 pm.

Lubkowitz’s book brings together eleven women writers—including Sophie von La Roche, Mary Shelley, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Annemarie Schwarzenbach—who discovered walking as a practice of independence, self-determination, and engagement with the world. Rather than focusing on nature as an end in itself, the book explores women’s walking as a political and literary practice.

Born in 1990, Anneke Lubkowitz studied literary studies in Berlin and Edinburgh and completed a doctorate on nature writing. In 2020, she published the anthology Psychogeography. She lives in Münster.

The event is free of charge. Individual parts of the programme may also be attended independently.