One can learn from Alexander Kluge that peace cannot be taken for granted: war is always present in his thinking as a possibility and as a childhood memory of the bombing of his hometown. But one can also learn from Alexander Kluge that nothing is unavoidable: “In addition to reality, there is always the subjunctive.” In Kluge’s flexible thinking, people’s feelings and desires are at least as real as the alleged constraints: “The useful alone is not viable.” The journalist Peter Laudenbach, Berlin theater critic for the SZ, wanted to know more about it. He has met Kluge again and again for long interviews over 20 years and just kept asking questions – for example where Kluge gets the certainty that there is always a way out. Or why he thinks skin is smarter than head. Or why, in Kluge’s eyes, “the present is just a transit country”. The interviews in which Alexander Kluge provides information about his life and his convictions have now been published as a book.
Peter Laudenbach, Alexander Kluge: To heaven. To hell. For added value. Interviews 2021 – 2001. Starfruit, Fürth 2022. 152 pages, 22 euros.