In his series Der Anfang ist nah (The Beginning is Near), Max Czollek talks to Sasha Marianna Salzmann: Salzmann is a playwright, novelist, essayist and co-founder of the magazine freitext. From 2013 to 2019, Salzmann was resident writer at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin and headed its Studio Я. Together with Max Czollek, Salzmann initiated the Desintegration Congress (2017) and the Radical Jewish Culture Days (2018). Salzmann is the author of the novels Außer sich (2017) and Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein (2021), among others.