Vienna: Primo Levi, European writer

On 20 January 2026, at 6.30 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute in Vienna, a meeting dedicated to “Primo Levi, European writer” will take place.

During this meeting, Domenico Scarpa – editor of many publications by and about Primo Levi – will share some reflections on the relationship between the great writer and thinker from Turin and European ideas and intellectuals, especially in the German-speaking world. In conversation with Hannes Sulzenbacher, chief curator of the Jewish Museum in Vienna and head of the Austrian exhibition of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, he will recount the transition from a Europe unified by Nazi violence to the values of post-war European consciousness, from Primo Levi’s point of view.

The meeting will also be an opportunity to present the Levi Net project, which will make available online, free of charge, a digital version of all Primo Levi’s letters to and from German correspondents, and Thesaurus Primo Levi, a multidisciplinary study dedicated to the language of the Turin writer.

The conversation will be in Italian and German, with simultaneous translation into German.

Domenico Scarpa is an essayist and translator. He has taught for many years at the Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale and Middlebury College in Vermont. He has edited volumes by and about Primo Levi, Robert Antelme, Italo Calvino, Fruttero & Lucentini, Natalia Ginzburg and Graham Greene. He has translated fiction by Cathleen Schine, Jonathan Coe and Philippe Forest. He regularly collaborates with the Primo Levi International Study Centre in Turin.

Hannes Sulzenbacher was co-director of the “Wien ist andersrum” festival and co-director of “QWIEN – Zentrum für queere Geschichte” in Vienna. From 1999 to 2022, he was active as an exhibition curator, and from 2014 to 2021, he was director of the curatorial and scientific team for the reorganisation of the Austrian exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial. Since July 2022, he has been chief curator of the Jewish Museum in Vienna.