The day after the cancellation, you can reach Oliver Zille, head of the Leipzig Book Fair, in his office, where he says the not so boring sentence over the phone that the Leipzig Book Fair is “a mirror of society”. Despite the number of infections, some publishers would set up their stand in Leipzig in mid-March, others would rather not, and in the end it wasn’t enough. However, the unusually intense contributions and discussions that flared up after the cancellation, sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger fires, reflect a lot about the state of the book market and the republic.
The chronology of this extremely sudden cancellation must already be unsettling: in November 2021, enough exhibitors had confirmed their participation to be able to hold the trade fair with a capacity utilization of a proud 75 percent compared to pre-pandemic times. Twenty percent of the exhibitors in Leipzig traditionally come from abroad. This percentage stayed the same until the end.
In mid-January, the trade fair sent out a survey to exhibitors. In the she announced that a new Corona Protection Ordinance was on the way in Saxony and asked who would stay with them under these circumstances. 83 percent of the exhibitors took part in the survey, of which 80 percent stated that they would definitely continue to participate. That was enough. In the background, the trade fair developed an extended hygiene concept with the state government. There should be an open fairground.
This Leipzig book fair is the first to be canceled without replacement
Just under two weeks ago, on January 31, the acceptance rate was a solid 75 percent. The Saxon state government is holding a press conference in Dresden in which it announces the new corona rules. One day later, on February 1st, the trade fair director Oliver Zille contacted the exhibitors again to make sure once again that the promises would be kept. Suddenly the wave of cancellations begins. Just a week later, Zille realized that he had to cancel the fair.
Firstly, it no longer has enough exhibitors to do justice to the Book Fair’s claim of providing a representative market overview. And secondly, not enough time to convert the halls in such a way that the trade fair could be staged with fewer exhibitors. It is also too late for a digital alternative program. The publishers have not prepared anything for this either. In the third year of the pandemic, this Leipzig book fair is the first to be canceled without replacement.
The reactions since Wednesday have been unusually violent, cracks in the industry are becoming visible, sometimes violently within publishers – between publishers and controllers. The big corporate publishers are accused of wanting to let the Leipzig trade fair jump over the cliff with this maneuver. Evidence is used: the Berlinale is currently running in Berlin. Almost at the same time as Leipzig, the children’s book fair is taking place in Bologna, in which the major publishers that are not present in Leipzig are taking part, the Bookfair in London and the particularly bustling and popular Lit.Cologne in Cologne. None of these major events have to deal with cancellations. All over the country, authors are currently on a reading tour. It only hits Leipzig. And as collateral damage once again: the sore East German soul.
East Germans are proud of their literature, and the GDR has always been competitive here
“Without Leipzig, the book year is unthinkable, not only for East Germany, not only for German booksellers, but also for Central and Eastern Europe,” writes Ingo Schulze, Leipzig is his “literary central star”. Aufbau publisher Constanze Neumann writes that the fair is “indispensable” and that her company will now “do everything to ensure that our authors can read in Leipzig even without a fair”. The author Julia Franck speaks of a “rejection not only of literature, but also of the East”. When she found out about it, she was “downright angry”. As a place of understanding across all borders, Leipzig is “absolutely important”, a “beacon of enlightenment”.
East Germans are proud of their intellectual history, and the GDR has always been competitive in literature: Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller. Bestselling authors such as Lutz Seiler continue to draw on this substance to this day. When the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize went to an East German author four times in a row after the fall of the Wall, they weren’t exactly surprised. Last year, the Bachmann Prize and the Georg Büchner Prize went to Helga Schubert and Elke Erb, i.e. to authors who had already written and published in the GDR.
But it is also true that these authors are all published by West German houses today. And that, from a purely business point of view, it wouldn’t even be unreasonable not to invest any more money in the Leipzig Trade Fair. The stands cost a lot of money, and at the same time German publishers in East Germany can hardly make any more money. Although almost 20 percent of Germans live in the east, the German book industry only makes around ten percent of its sales there. After thirty years of emigration and elite exchanges, there is not much left of the proud country of literature. Very many East Germans tend to perceive West German book production out of the corner of their eye.
The spring fair is now taking place in cheerful Cologne, so to speak: where the readers are
Sebastian Fitzek’s bestseller “Playlist”, for example, has sold almost as often in North Rhine-Westphalia alone as in the entire east. From an economic point of view, it makes perfect sense for publishers to move the spring fair to Cologne: like Lit.Cologne, Leipzig is now a purely public festival, and the big deals have long since been concluded in Frankfurt and London. But Leipzig is also the central monument of East German reading culture, and the fact that the decision to cancel was made in Munich, Stuttgart or Frankfurt, at least certainly not in Leipzig, is a detail that does not necessarily ease the situation. The East Germans had double bad luck with their occupiers, the Leipzig Germanist Dirk Oschmann recently wrote in the FAZ: First came the Soviets, then the West Germans.
After the rejection, the tense atmosphere was joined by thoughtless language, that arrogant tone with which the East German people’s parties AfD and Left Party fuel their election campaigns. The “Börsenverein”, the branch association of the German book industry, sent an open letter to the humiliated Leipzig trade fair boss, which was probably meant to be encouraging, but in which he was addressed like a three-year-old boy who had painted a nice scrawl picture: “Like a “Lion” he fought with his “small team”, they said, well done, little trade fair boss! The marketing manager of a large West German publishing house gave an interview on the day of the cancellation in which he gave the people of Leipzig a devastating testimony for “communication and action”, but: “We are now very much looking forward to the Frankfurt trade fair in autumn.”
The next unfriendly Saxony essay is already in the pipeline again
The founder of Kanon Verlag and former Ullstein boss Gunnar Cynybulk accuses the German publishers of thoughtlessness and double standards: On the one hand, they are committed to keeping bookstores open, sending their representatives further across the country and authors on reading tours. On the other hand, one sees oneself unable to maintain a book fair stand in Leipzig. There is a lack of solidarity, according to Cynybulk, the industry does not paint a good picture in this story.
A feeling of morose emptiness remains: the Leipzig Book Fair could have taken place if the three major West German publishing groups had pulled themselves together and mustered a little extra energy. If only there had been an awareness at the corporate headquarters of the role played by the Leipzig Trade Fair in East German society and of what an important bridgehead it is for the liberal, democratic, intellectual sections of society in Poland, Hungary and the Ukraine. If literary life had not first been thought of in terms of bookkeeping. Alone: None of this was available in Germany in the third year of the pandemic.