“10 nach 8” is a political and poetic blog where women write about political and personal topics. It is now 10 years old.
A blog reflecting the voices of 600 women over 10 years, ’10 after 8′, a reason to celebrate Photo: Myrlyandiya/imago
For some, it’s 5 to 12, for others, it’s 10 to 8. At least for the 600 women who regularly read the “10 to 8” column. Online time Making it what it is: A little feminist gem in the media landscape. Now the blog collective is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, they are publishing an anthology of 30 of the 1,500 texts published to date, due out in the spring of 2025.
The decade of “10 after 8” is not only a text written exclusively by women from their own lives or from the lives of other women, but also a look at Germany and the world. Over the years, women from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Belarus have increasingly written about war and sexism, loss and new beginnings, with their experiences of flight and discrimination.
Basically, the choice of topics is very wide: Eastern Europe, East Germany, children, sex, family, science fiction, sports, psychology, age, basically everything that surrounds, worries and bothers women in their everyday lives.
Not all texts are equally interesting to everyone, but each text meets the categories described by “10-8”: political, poetic, polemical.
For example, Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić writes about her friend in Ukraine. The country can prepare for war, but the people do not. Hannah Krug, a radio writer living in Switzerland, talks about Russians living in Estonia and how they have to pay for Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Patricia Friedek from Poland reflects on Women’s Day in her homeland.
Failed fat-retention campaign and summer depression
It’s also about working from home, crying, Netflix dating shows and Christmas. Marlen Hobrack, a literary critic based in Leipzig, criticizes the fat acceptance movement as a failed social media phenomenon. Elke Brederick, a German teacher in Berlin, feels the summer blues when she visits her old hometown of Halle an der Saale in Saxony-Anhalt. Rebecca Maria Salentin is upset that outdoor sports are still a male domain. She has hiked 2,700 km and cycled 10,000 km.
What’s special about the creators of “10 after 8” is that they are not only journalists and writers, but also scientists, political officials, artists, entrepreneurs, and so on. This is not a coincidence, it’s intentional.
When the “10 after 8” collective was founded more than a decade ago, that was a clear goal, says one of its founders, Annett Gröschner. “In our eyes, on talk shows, in the academy, in politics . we wanted to show that there are enough capable women out there. We just have to find them and let them do it.”
This is how the idea of making this argument available on a public platform came about. Frank Schirrmacher, then editor Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Provides a media home for the blogosphere. The first column was published on November 11, 2013 and was written by essayist and activist Annika Reich.
The counter-argument to misogynistic remarks
Even then, it was only online, under the title “10 to 8.” The morning’s feminist protest was also a counterpoint to misogynist rhetoric from the likes of Don Alphonso, who rarely missed an opportunity to denounce women, the left, and those who thought differently on his blog.
The blog was moved after Schirrmacher’s death in June 2014. online time, Since then it has been called “10 after 8” and appears at first three times a week, later twice a week, and now once a week in the evening, and is aesthetically painted and lovingly presented.
Six of the ten founders are still there, and all manage the project part-time. Annett Gröschner collects topics, supervises authors, and edits and writes herself. “It’s gotten harder,” says Annett Gröschner. There are more social media channels to maintain more intensively, and a new Insta account has to be used.
What will the next decade of ’10~8′ look like? Elisabeth Wellershaus, theatre scholar and editor of ’10 nach 8′ and the commemorative anthology (with Caroline Kraft), is cautiously optimistic. “I hope it will be more diverse, more distant, and still as open as possible.”
Annett Gröschner is more cautious: “Who knows if there will still be newspapers?” But “after 8 o’clock, after 10 o’clock” it doesn’t matter. Blogs don’t know anything else but online.
