In Leipzig, authors meet at the book fair. What do young authors from East Germany think of Döpfner’s “Ossi” statements?
When the chat messages from Springer boss Mathias Döfpner were published two weeks ago, there was great outrage. Especially among politicians in East Germany. After all, Döpfner’s statements about the “Ossis” were insulting: “The ossis are either communists or fascists. They don’t do it in between. Disgusting,” it said, among other things.
In the young literary scene in East Germany, Döpfner’s statements are sometimes met with anger, sometimes with concern or even with derision. The fact that the Springer CEO has now declared in order to limit the damage that he has no prejudices whatsoever against people from East Germany is not particularly impressive here.
It takes one redistribution of power
On the contrary. Above all, the statements make the author Valerie Schönian angry. “What I wish for is that everyone doesn’t get upset for a few days and then act as if this way of thinking no longer exists.”
The problem is not Döpfner, but the structures behind it. The 33-year-old author, who grew up in Magdeburg, wants to talk about them: “It can’t be that a single man concentrates so much (discursive, economic, yes, also political and historical) power on himself,” she says. “It needs a redistribution of power. And as a first step, more representation is needed: from East Germans and everyone else who doesn’t fit into Mathias Döpfner’s worldview.”
Schönian, who in her book “Ostconsciousness” pursued the question of why post-reunification children fight for the East and what that means for German unity, concludes from Döpfner’s statements that he apparently does not know a single East German person.
just a symptom?
“Because – despite all the problems that exist in the East and that have to be dealt with – these statements by Döpfner have nothing to do with reality,” she says. “That’s why I have absolutely no desire to confront them with my life story or that of my parents or grandparents: anyone who wants to can now find out a lot and everywhere about the actual East German realities of life.”
If that doesn’t happen, as with Döpfner, the problem isn’t the stories that haven’t been told enough, but that he doesn’t want to hear them. “Döpfner’s statements are only a symptom of a larger structural problem,” emphasizes Schönian. “The whole debate should be an incentive to deal with this.”
“Passing on Resentment”
The writer Lukas Rietzschel, who was born in East Saxony in 1994 and who describes the lack of prospects and radicalization in the Saxon provinces in his highly acclaimed debut novel “Beat with your fist”, notices the reference to his mother in Döpfner’s messages: “Here it seems between Resentments are passed on to the generations, which did not surprise me, on the contrary: I firmly assume that Döpfner will in turn pass them on to his children.”
Döpfner had written that his mother had always warned him about the Ossis: “From Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler to Honnecker without having enjoyed us reeduction in between. That leads in a direct line to AFD.”
Rietzschel believes that the Döpfner family is not the only one to deal with stubborn prejudices about “the East” in large parts of society. “My confrontation with ‘the East’, which has almost become self-occupation, made me believe that the prejudices about the political and social backwardness of the ‘new countries’ had been watered down over the years. Döpfner’s omissions forced me to reconsider my assessments. I wish he did too.”
“A broad one antifascist civil society”
The writer Bettina Wilpert was born in Bavaria in 1989, but has lived and worked in Leipzig for many years. Both her current novel “Roundabouts” and her debut “nothing that happens to us” are set here, which tells of the allegation of rape and most recently for the ARD was filmed. “It’s simply wrong to say that East Germans are less capable of democracy. Leipzig in particular has a broad anti-fascist civil society,” emphasizes Wilpert.
“There is right-wing radical thinking all over Germany because of National Socialism, only the manifestations are different in all directions.”
With humor
With her book “When I ate schnapps cherries with Hitler” in 2018, the author Manja Präkels wrote an accurate novel about the 1990s in Brandenburg, where violence and fear of right-wing attacks were part of everyday life.
In all seriousness, she could only defy Döpfner’s statements with humor: “I imagine thinking in headlines like that would be very exhausting. There’s no money to help,” says Präkels. “And since I count myself among the communist half of East Germans, I’m taking this opportunity to call for the expropriation of the Springer group. Simply because that’s expected of me,” she says ironically.