Cultural events & venues

The student cultural center K19, which is located directly on the central campus "Holländischer Platz", offers an exciting program for literature and language enthusiasts in addition to numerous parties, concerts and film events. For example, the "Wordaholics Poetry Slam" and "Art for Cash" take place here at regular intervals. While the winner of a poetry slam is often rewarded solely by the reaction of the audience, "Kunst gegen Bares" offers anyone who can "do things" (e.g. read, sing, perform magic tricks, etc.) a stage to showcase their talents in front of an audience and possibly even earn a few euros. To stay up-to-date with all the different events, we recommend liking the K19 Facebook page.

A new format among the events at the Literaturhaus Nordhessen is the "LyriKA Lyrik Open Air". This is the result of a cooperation between the Literaturhaus, a bookshop, a music club and the Asta. According to its own information, the "poetry slammer is present alongside the landscape poet, the spoken word poet [...] alongside the concrete poet [...], the songwriter alongside the literary scholar". Various formats invite participation here; but simply sitting in the audience and listening is of course also possible.

For a relaxed evening, we can recommend "Reading for Beer". The focus here is on the improvised presentation of texts; a relaxed evening rhetoric crash course, so to speak. The concept is that the audience brings texts of all kinds (instructions for use, diary excerpts, essays from your primary school days, etc.). These texts are then read out by moderators who have not read them beforehand. The audience can then decide who deserves a beer: the presenter or the guest who brought the text.

Kassel also has a lot to offer for your outdoor leisure activities. If you want to get out into the countryside, you can spend time in the beautiful Karlsaue park, on the adjacent grounds of the Federal Garden Show (BuGa) or in the Nordstadtpark . With the beautiful Fulda, which flows between Karlsaue and the Federal Garden Show, and the lakes on the BuGa grounds, Kassel also offers suitable space for swimmers and water sports enthusiasts (by the way, it's worth taking a look at the university sports program).

The highlight here is probably the mountain parkwith Wilhelmshöhe Palace and the Hercules; an excursion here is especially worthwhile in summer, when you can also enjoy the illuminatedwater features.

If you suddenly get the urge to read during a walk through the botanical garden , you can, for example, borrow a book directly from the public bookcaseon site. Books can be exchanged here free of charge - a great offer that can be found in many different places in Kassel.

The Breitenau Memorial in Guxhagen commemorates the history of the former monastery building as a concentration and labor education camp during the National Socialist era. In addition to the preserved parts of the former camp, which you can enter as part of very interesting tours, you can also visit the exhibition by Stephan von Borstel, which deals artistically with the history of the site.
The University of Kassel also regularly acts as a cooperation partner of the memorial; workshops on the topics of "Literature and persecution: Anti-Semitism in the 20th and 21st Centuries" and "Literary Creation under Persecution, in Prison and in Exile" were organized with students of German Studies.

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