6TH EGON SCHIELE SYMPOSIUM AT THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM
31.10.2025
The 2025 scientific conference focuses on "Egon Schiele and Literature"
On Thursday, 13 November 2025, the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator at the Leopold Museum, are hosting the sixth Egon Schiele Symposium at the museum’s auditorium. This year, the theme of the conference is “Egon Schiele and Literature”.
“[...] I believe that every artist must be a poet [...]”
Egon Schiele, 23 April 1918
“Nine years ago, in 2016, the Leopold Museum hosted the first symposium dedicated to the life and oeuvre of the eminent Expressionist Egon Schiele, who is one of the most famous artists in the world today. The many facets of Schiele’s personality and works allow us to look at his oeuvre from various perspectives. While his biography and art has been the subject of many publications from all over the world, there are still many surprising aspects waiting to be discovered. The aim of this year’s symposium is to shine the spotlight on Schiele’s affinity for literature, and to thus start a new, previously largely unexplored, chapter in the study of this fascinating and exceptional artist.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum
“The 6th Egon Schiele Symposium highlights the artist Egon Schiele’s ties to authors and literary works. As in previous years, we are once again looking forward to captivating lectures by numerous renowned Austrian and international speakers, including Eva Werth (Université Gustave Eiffel Paris-Est), Anna-Katharina Gisbertz (University of Mannheim), Karin Rhein (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg), Marina Silenzi (University of Basel) and the author and literary scholar Stefan Kutzenberger. We are delighted to be welcoming the well-known Austrian actor Christoph Luser, who has agreed to deliver the “opening address”, reciting select poems and texts by and about Egon Schiele to get the symposium off to an atmospheric start.”
Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator, Leopold Museum
The Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele’s (1890–1918) artistic oeuvre is closely linked to his affinity for forms of language and writing, as well as poetry and literature. In 1910, the exceptionally talented, barely 20-year-old artist wrote expressive poems which are surprising not least on account of their imaginative neologisms. Over several years, Schiele wrote numerous, often lyrical letters to his friends and relatives, and showed a keen interest in books, ranging from literary works to factual books and art publications. The artist’s penchant for literature provides the focus of this year’s all-day event, which will be held on 13 November 2025, and in which the artist’s contacts with literature, writers and publishers will be explored through individual thematic emphases.
Egon Schiele was only 14 years old when his father Adolf Schiele (1851–1905) passed away. The artist inherited his father’s library, and was himself a collector of select prints. He owned a copy of the fanciful lyrical work The Dreaming Boys, written and illustrated in 1908 by the young Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) at the behest of the Wiener Werkstätte. In 1912, he acquired the almanac Der Blaue Reiter, issued by the Expressionists Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Franz Marc (1880–1916). Schiele was in contact with writers, journalists, art and literary critics, editors of journals, and publishers, among them Franz Blei (1871–1942), Arthur Roessler (1877–1955), Franz Pfemfert (1879–1954), Eduard Kosmack (1880–1947), Max Roden (1881–1968), Robert Müller (1887–1924), Albert Paris von Gütersloh (1887–1973) and Karl Otten (1889–1963), some of whom he captured in portraits.
The 6th Egon Schiele Symposium trains the spotlight on various thematic emphases surrounding the artist’s ties to authors and literary works, with lectures delivered by Anna-Katharina Gisbertz, Simone Hönigl, Kerstin Jesse, Stefan Kutzenberger, Karin Rhein, Marina Silenzi and Eva Werth. This year’s conference will also give room to junior researchers for the first time: Caroline Rosenauer is currently conducting research at Vienna University into the textiles in Egon Schiele’s paintings, and will present her findings so far.
To kick off the biannual event, the theater and film actor Christoph Luser will read poems by Egon Schiele, as well as select passages written about the artist by his contemporaries.
6th Egon Schiele Symposium
13 November 2025, 10 am to 5 pm
at the auditorium of the Leopold Museum
Program
9.30 am Admission and coffee
10 am Welcoming address by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum and
Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator at the Leopold Museum
10.30 am Reading: Select Poems and Texts by and About Egon Schiele – Christoph Luser, actor
11.15 am “The many books, pictures and sculptures […] emanate a strange atmosphere which envelops me […].” Egon Schiele’s Library in Focus – Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator, Leopold Museum
11.45 am “The Monumentality of Psychological Characteristics”. Egon Schiele’s Portraits of Writers – Simone Hönigl, Research Assistant, Egon Schiele Documentation Center, Leopold Museum
12.15 pm Lunch break
1.30 pm Embedding Egon Schiele’s Writings into the Literary and Art Historical Context of His Time – Eva Werth, comparative literature scholar, aesthetics researcher and lecturer, Université Gustave Eiffel Paris-Est
2 pm Against the Zeitgeist? Pictorial and Word Art by Leopold Liegler and Egon Schiele – Anna-Katharina Gisbertz, literature scholar, supernumerary professor, University of Mannheim
2.30 pm “Decent or Indecent Art? Egon Schiele and the Eponymous Publication by Ernst Wilhelm Bredt – Karin Rhein, curator of the collection, curator of 19th-century art, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
3 pm Coffee break
3.30 pm “An artist is primarily an intellectually gifted expressive”… or: Was Egon Schiele a Dionysian Artist? – Marina Silenzi, associate researcher and lecturer, University of Basel
4 pm Fictional Schiele – Schiele Fiction. Egon Schiele as a Literary Figure – Stefan Kutzenberger, author
4.30 pm Junior research: The Fabrics in Egon Schiele’s Paintings. The Influence and Use of Textile Designs as Artistic Expression – Caroline Rosenauer, art educator
5 pm Closing discussion
With thanks to Wiener Städtische Versicherung AG, partner of the Leopold Museum
Free admission! Please register by Thurs., 6 November 2025 at:
Website 6th Egon Schiele Symposium
Christoph Luser (*1980 Graz) studied acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, and also trained as a classical ballet dancer. From 1999 to 2002 he was an ensemble member at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus; in 2002, he moved to the Münchner Kammerspiele and made guest appearances at the Schaubühne Berlin, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, at Schauspiel Köln, at the Vienna Burgtheater and the Schauspielhaus Graz.
He has worked with renowned directors, including Jürgen Gosch, Andreas Kriegenburg, Luk Perceval, Stefan Pucher, Falk Richter, Michael Thalheimer, Katie Mitchell, Frank Castorf and René Pollesch. From 2013 to 2017, he was an ensemble member at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. At the beginning of the 2019 season, he moved to the ensemble of the Vienna Burgtheater, where he worked with Robert Borgmann, Andrea Breth, Barbara Frey, Mateja Koležnik, Simon Stone, Tina Lanik and Martin Kušej, among others. Since 2024, Christoph Luser has played the double role of “Good Companion/Devil” in Robert Carsen’s new staging of Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival, and was recently awarded the Nestroy Theater Prize for his performance. Alongside his theater work, he has starred in numerous film and TV productions, among them the TV series Tatort, in cinema films by Doris Dörrie, Margarethe von Trotta, Wolfgang Murnberger and Edgar Reitz, as well as in numerous films for television by Andreas Prochaska, Robert Dornhelm, and others. He further starred in the acclaimed series Der Schatten. His role as chief inspector in the regional crime drama Dunkle Wasser, filmed in Mattsee, has won Christoph Luser a nomination for the 2025 ROMY Awards. He earned international renown for his part in the second season of the SKY thriller series Der Pass.
The Egon Schiele Documentation Center at the Leopold Museum was launched to expedite scientific research into the artist’s oeuvre. Publications and reviews are continuously archived and made accessible to researchers. Additionally, the research platform Egon Schiele Autograph Database offers online access to Egon Schiele’s writings and correspondence from Austrian and international institutions and private collections.
Egon Schiele Documentation Center
The Egon Schiele Documentation Center is open to visitors by appointment from Tuesday to Thursday, between 1 pm and 6 pm.
Egon Schiele Documentation Center
Egon Schiele Autograph Database
Egon Schiele Symposium Website
Egon Schiele. Networking and Friendships
Conference volume on the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium at the Leopold Museum
Ed. by Kerstin Jesse and Hans-Peter Wipplinger, 2024
The entire contents of the conference volume on the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium were published for the first time in a bilingual publication in German and English. With contributions by Philipp Blom, Régine Bonnefoit, Tobias Burg, Ulrike Emberger, Laura Feurle, Simone Hönigl, Kerstin Jesse, Alexander Klee and Alexandra Matzner.
This conference volume, as well as those on the 2nd – 4th Egon Schiele Symposiums (2017, 2019, 2021), are available at the Leopold Museum Shop or online at: https://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/visit/shop
6th Egon Schiele Symposium
The 6th Egon Schiele Symposium is held on 13 November 2025 from 10 am to 5 pm at the auditorium of the Leopold Museum. Language, writing, poetry and literature are closely linked to Egon Schiele (1890–1918). In 1910, the talented artist wrote poems and invented neologisms, he wrote numerous, often lyrical letters over the years, and took a keen interest in books, ranging from literary to factual works and art books. This year’s symposium explores the artist’s ties to writers and literature through individual thematic emphases.
Date: 13th Nov. 2025, 10 am
Type: conference
Location: Leopold Museum
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Vienna
Austria
URL: https://www.leopoldmuseum.org/egon-schiele-symposium/en
Queries & Contact
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung
Mag. Klaus Pokorny
Press/Public Relations
+43 1 525 70 - 1507 and 1541
presse@leopoldmuseum.org
www.leopoldmuseum.org
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