Conversations from the Cullman Center: Fatherland: Burkhard Bilger with Raffi Khatchadourian
The New Yorker staff writer recounts his ten-year quest to uncover his family’s hidden Nazi past.
Burkhard Bilger’s parents were always reticent about their youths during World War II. When a packet of old letters arrives from Germany, he finds out why. His maternal grandfather, a once loyal member of the Nazi Party, was either a monster who reeducated children in occupied France or a man who risked his life to shield others from his own party’s brutalities. Over the next decade, Bilger hunted for the truth. Was his grandfather a war criminal or merely an ordinary man struggling to do right under impossible circumstances?
Burkhard Bilger was a 2020–2021 Fellow at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He will discuss Fatherland with journalist Raffi Khatchadourian.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Burkhard Bilger has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2001. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New York Times, among other publications, and has been anthologized ten times in the Best American series. Bilger has received fellowships from Yale University, MacDowell, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His first book, Noodling for Flatheads, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award.
Raffi Khatchadourian has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008, covering science, art, politics, foreign affairs, and national security. His work has been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has twice been nominated for National Magazine Awards.
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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.