Primo Levi und die öffentliche Nutzung der Vergangenheit

One century a er the birth and more than three decades a er the death of Primo Levi, the time has come to go beyond his posthumous canonisation, and to historicise his life and work by considering the distance that separates us from his age. is means carefully distin­ guishing between his own present and the current uses of his writings. Whereas the destiny of a classic author is to be permanently reinterpreted, this reassessment sometimes results in signi cant misunderstandings, which were the topics of Enzo Traverso’s Simon Wiesenthal Lecture, held on 12 December 2019. ere, he analysed respectively Primo Levi’s position in Italian culture, his de nition as a Jewish writer and his role as a literary witness of the Holo­ caust.