Six women and three men sit round a table with tea and biscuits, each with a pile of papers.
For an hour and a half they read aloud to each other, every Thursday at 5 o’clock. After every reading there’s a discussion.
It’s a concept called “shared reading” that started in Britain and has since established itself in Germany.
These “Literary Undertakings,” as they are known in Germany, are organised by two literature agents, Thomas Boehm and Carsten Sommerfeldt. In Berlin there are already seven such groups, and two English-speaking groups are also being added, while groups are being set up in Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg and other major German cities.
It’s “a new reading experience” for 50-year-old Biggi Maart, who also regularly takes part in other book circles.
Instead of reading alone, in peace and at speed, what happens at the Thursday meetings at the Frankfurt House of Literature is the opposite: the group reads aloud in turns, deliberately slowly, and then they talk about what they have read.
By the end of it they’ve read “ten different versions of just one text,” says the primary school teacher, “that fall against each other like a row of dominos made up pictures and thoughts.”
Today Sommerfeldt has chosen a text by Silvia Plath in which a child is unjustly accused of wrongdoing.
The story is set at the beginning of World War II but the discussion quickly turns to the present, with mentions of fake news and a recent child murder case which has shocked Germany.
Sommerfeldt greets every contribution with an enthusiastic, “yeeeesss!!”
Shared reading is all about “talking about yourself,” says Sommerfeldt: “your own life, your own behaviour, finding connections between your own feelings and those which are portrayed in the story.”
It’s usually those who read a lot who find that the most difficult, says the 49-year-old, who used to be head of PR at various publishers.
But through shared reading it’s possible to “delve deeply” into literature.
Aside from the Thursday group in Frankfurt, there’s also a group for older people and one for people with mental health problems. After all, shared reading is meant to be more than just a book club – it’s also meant to be therapeutic.
The mental health aspect is also of interest to scientists. The organisers point to a study by Britain’s National Health Service which suggests that communal reading promotes well-being and communication skills.
It can be especially beneficial for people suffering from burn-out, dementia and mental health problems. In Berlin, the Max Planck Institute is studying the group for older people to see what effect it’s having on their lives.
Demand has in any case been huge: in Frankfurt alone there are 60 people on the waiting list “and new ones are being added to it every day,” says Benno Hanning von Lange from the House of Literature, who is being trained to act as a group facilitator.
The House of Literature is to host a second shared reading group from mid-May, for which, it says, there is already more demand than places.
Last year, the woman who set up the first shared reading group in Liverpool 20 years ago told the Leipzig Book Fair about her reasons for doing so.
Jane Davis’ said her mother died of alcoholism and she had grown up in pubs surrounded by people who preferred to drink rather than talk to each other, according to the Boersenblatt, the German book industry’s online platform.
“Reading together is a wonderful way to connect with other people,” she said. – DPA
