Steffen Mau, born in Rostock in 1968, is Professor of Macrosociology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In “Lütten Klein. Life in the East German Transformation Society” (2019) he describes, among other things, how he experienced the night from November 9th to 10th, 1989 as a young soldier in the National People’s Army. His most recent book, “Sorting Machines. The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century” (2021) was nominated for the German Non-Fiction Prize.
SZ: What are you reading right now?
Steffen Mau: At the top of my pile is Stephan Malinowski’s “The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis”, this year’s winner of the German Non-Fiction Prize. The book is a moral portrait and milieu study of the most prominent family of the German aristocracy with their diverse, often shameless attempts to gain influence. There is a lot of sociological analysis in there, such as the question of how effortless prosperity can be improperly increased and defended. With what dark strategies, sinister alliances and obscure henchmen have the privileges been brought through time? Well researched, elegantly written, almost like a detective.
What was the last really good book you read?
Lea Ypi’s book “Free” I was very enthusiastic because it brings us closer to the ambivalence of freedom in a special way. The book is about Enver Hoxha’s Albania, the collapse of state socialism and ends with the lottery uprising in 1997. A coming-of-age story and at the same time the story of the transformation of an entire country that too often lies in the blind spot of European self-examination.
Which classic did you read far too late in life?
John Updike’s “Married Couples” is a modern classic from 1968 that I picked up only recently. A great psychograph of upper middle class America. Under the bourgeois surface and in the – as one would fashionably say today – heteronormative togetherness, things are simmering, boredom is looking for escape doors, infidelities as an exit strategy.
Have you ever stolen a book, if so which one?
Yes, namely “Paths to Paradise”, a book about work society utopias by the French social philosopher André Gorz. I got this without paying at the Kiepert bookstore on Ernst-Reuter-Platz. Since I regularly spent a lot of money on books there, I hope for absolution, otherwise the statute of limitations applies.
It is said that sociology is one of the most literary disciplines among the social sciences. Why actually?
Is that so? I dont know. Of course, there are some really good authors, and I really like reading sociology German, but not when it becomes jargon-like and comes across as strained. Niklas Luhmann’s seemingly unintentional and very precise laconicism is hard to beat.
The neat bookshelf as the epitome of cultural capital, isn’t that a thing of the past?
Maybe the PDF is the book of tomorrow. According to the former chancellor, she recently discovered the audio book; maybe also a future model that brings reading from the eye to the ear. There are said to be universities that no longer buy bookshelves for their employees. So far, the rule has been: Less reads more, but when the academic class stops reading books, the bookshelf will probably become a nostalgic product.
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