Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and three quarters of a century after the Ventotene Manifesto Durs Gr\ufcnbein visits Milan, where he reads from his newest works and holds the very meaningful speech Mailand, der Bahnhof, die Freiheit dealing with freedom, responsibility and the ethics of literature. Starting from the presence of civil commitment in the works of the most distinguished contemporary German author, who experienced \u201cdie Mauer\u201d and the consequences of the Iron Curtain, the present essay investigates how Gr\ufcnbein\u2019s poetry and essaystic production result in a source of inspiration for the civil society. Through the performative power of Gr\ufcnbein\u2019s words and rhetorical strategies the reader is confronted with an intellectual well aware of the problems of his time, whose poetry shows a bracing sense of political reality without neglecting formal aspect
