Christine Brückner wrote a book with the title: If you had spoken, Desdemona. She created fictional speeches for female characters from real, literary and mythological history. The speeches did not remain undelivered for long; they were and are performed again and again in the theatre. But one question remained: what would these women have said themselves? Every year since 2021, the Brückner-Kühner Foundation and S. Fischer Theatre have called on all women to speak out. The result is overwhelming and can be seen at www.ungehalten.net. Together, they form a huge mosaic of courageous voices. They are very different, biographical, political, funny, sad, literary, pragmatic, vulnerable and sometimes hurtful. They stand side by side in broad diversity, complement and contradict each other and develop a touching beauty precisely because of their incongruity and courage. And the great thing is that there are more and more of them every year. And they can't be held, heard and seen often enough.
About the first anthology, S. Fischer 2023:
"This book not only gives you anger, but also courage. Courage to speak out, even when internalised structures try to hold back one's own words. The 24 authors forge ahead and rage from a real-life perspective that is stirring - if not out of personal concern, then out of empathy." (Handelsblatt)
"Heartbreaking, angry, touching, infinitely sad and yet also funny" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
"Voices that are still too rarely heard." (Berliner Morgenpost on Neue ungehaltene Reden ungehaltene Frauen at the Berliner Ensemble, 2022 )