Six Characters of Hotel W.: A Case Study from Never Again Peace

Never Again Peace, the 2025 edition of steirischer herbst festival, responded to a world in which wars are spreading and democracies are faltering. One of its projects, Six Characters of Hotel W., stepped back to revisit the time in which the currently crumbling order seemingly emerged: the aftermath of World War II. Six writers created a diverse cast of characters orbiting one of the Graz grand hotels in the autumn of 1945. The festival reader presents these texts next to essays exploring their relation to reality and how the memory of World War II is used today.