Years ago, Timur Vermes denounced the susceptibility of German society to fascism with his satire “He’s back.” Now he has written a literary letter that paints a deeply bleak future. In it he appeals to Friedrich Merz.
The Munich author Timur Vermes became famous for his novel “He’s back”. In it, Adolf Hitler wakes up in Berlin in 2011, in good spirits, and thanks to his appearances in all sorts of television shows, people soon start following him in droves. The satire has been translated into more than 40 languages. Some viewers were extremely irritated by the film adaptation. It was released in cinemas in 2015 and was interspersed with mockumentary elements. In these seemingly documentary scenes, the camera accompanies the main actor, Oliver Masucci, on a journey to various places across Germany and films him as Hitler talking to the population. What people say anticipates much of what the extreme right is saying today. Timur Vermes did not write a novel, but rather a literary letter to the CSU chairman Friedrich Merz. This letter also mixes the levels of what is with what could be.