THE MAN WHO STAYED

On Friday night in Berlin, about 500 people came to the Gethsemane Church for a service to commemorate the anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s death and to give thanks for Liu Xia’s release.

The event featured Nobel Literature Prize winner Herta Müller reading Liu Xia’s poetry, Wolf Biermann singing some of his classic protest songs from the DDR, and exiled author Liao Yiwu, who pushed for Liu Xia’s release and performed a piece of music he wrote based on Liu Xiaobo’s last hours.  Also in attendance was former German President Joachim Gauck. You can read a good summary on Deutsche Welle’s English service here. 

I gave the eulogy, entitled “The Man Who Stayed,” which ChinaFile was good enough to post here,  the NYT Chinese service translated and posted here, while the taz published it here in German–the language I delivered it, in my JFK-style accent…

For a full video of the event, please click here. My talk starts at minute 28.