The evening of solidarity for Ukraine at Lit Cologne was heated – Kultur

There is also a short Kamelle moment on this evening, you can’t resist this association, it’s just Cologne. A lady clatters through the auditorium and throws a few cough drops at the Russian interpreter Erika Rubinstein, who is struggling with her hoarseness. But that’s really the only thing about carnival at the Theater am Tanzbrunnen, at an event that wasn’t even planned until just now. “No to war!” stands above the stage, the whole room is bathed in the Ukrainian national colors of yellow and blue.

The Lit.Cologne, the largest literature festival in Europe in terms of audience numbers, is taking place again in analogue form for the first time since 2019. But because a war of aggression is raging in Ukraine at the same time, a solidarity event for the country has been included in the program to mark the opening. In her welcoming address, Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker immediately pointed out, which is rather unusual for such an occasion, that the federal and state governments are not doing enough to support the municipalities in distributing Ukrainian refugees. And she wishes that “Vladimir Putin would read more again – we should send him books, lots of books!” Maybe that will help, who knows?

It is understandable that in an exceptional situation like this one seeks reassurance, and the hope of finding salvation in literature is perhaps justified. The fact that a tonally uneven – and at three hours extremely long – evening unfolds is less due to the short-term nature of the planning than to the fact that nobody has a solution ready here either, which you can’t expect from anyone. Not even from the panel, which despite intensive efforts by the organizers does not have a Ukrainian author. Nevertheless, it has a top-class cast with the publicist Navid Kermani, the Volgograd-born author Sasha Marianna Salzmann, the Belarusian novelist Sasha Filipenko, and the journalist and President of the German PEN Center, Deniz Yücel.

Conviction on the one hand, plus the desire to heat up discourse, which is common today

The actor Ulrich Noethen occasionally reads with great authority from the real-time published war diary of the Kyiv-based author Yevgenia Belorusets – and he carries the text “Putin is delivered” by Vladimir Sorokin, which the Russian writer published in the SZ. Sorokin himself should also be in Cologne, but is suffering from Corona.

On this evening, a topic surprisingly came to the fore, on which the participants, with the exception of Kermanis, seemed to be just as surprisingly united: the demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine enforced by NATO.

“That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?” Asks Deniz Yücel, to the noticeable displeasure of the majority of viewers. Yücel obviously bothers the rather sensitive moderation of the journalist Susanne Beyer, who also feels a bit slowed down by him. He brushes aside the connection between his own “prison history” in Turkey and the Ukraine war that Beyer offers him, and postulates that German engagement with humanitarian aid is a substitute for what is now at least as necessary, namely exile of all Russian banks from Swift, an increase in arms deliveries – and also the option of a no-fly zone. “I’m always amazed at people who were absolutely certain up until February 24 that Putin would definitely not start a war, and who now know exactly how he would react if NATO drew other sides,” says Yücel.

Open detailed view

While there may be a desire to heat up the atmosphere of the event alongside conviction, Sasha Filipenko, who left Russia because of political reprisals and now lives in Germany, is feeling a mixture of anger and despair. In a text presented by Noethen, he compares the war to a football match, for which Europe provides shoes and footballs but no defenders, while Putin “scores one ugly goal after the other”: “We have to go on the attack because this game is coming to an end and we’re still many goals down.” The fact that demonstrators are still being arrested in Belarus has been completely forgotten in this country, says Filipenko. This is the Zelenskij attitude, so to speak, the more multi-faceted, more urgent internal view of the conflict, of which this evening could have done with even more.

Sasha Salzmann is more ambivalent. She knows, and also says, that the majority of Germans would be against closing the airspace over Ukraine. But at least they now know where Ukraine is. Salzmann is working towards the final position, so to speak, saying that she always had a bad feeling about Putin and had defended arms deliveries in her left-wing circles even before the war. “Shall we remain passive?” asks Salzman. And chooses as her final word: “Close the skies over Ukraine.”

In contrast, the ex-generals sound like doves of peace on German talk shows

It’s almost as if, in the course of the debate, the “no to war” had turned into “go to war”. And it is left to Navid Kermani to point out what comparatively moderate-sounding military retirees have been saying on German talk shows for weeks: that the risks of a NATO-implemented no-fly zone could also include the bombing of Russian anti-aircraft positions and the possible escalation, even that conventional, would be unpredictable. The armchair heroism, which breaks the ground in emotional and thoughtless demands for NATO to enter the war, is strangely at odds with the actual intention of the evening.

Sasha Filipenko is certainly right when he says that illuminating public buildings with Ukrainian colors is more for the West’s reassurance that it has shown its flag and solidarity. He is just as right when he says: “You could only have RussiaToday look and take Putin’s rhetoric seriously to know that this war was inevitable.”

In Kermani’s reading from his book “Along the Trenches” it becomes clear that years ago people clearly recognized where the journey would lead. During a talk in Kyiv, the Ukrainian politician and activist Mustafa Nayem, whose Facebook post triggered the Euromaidan protests in 2013, called for all European states to close ranks because the next war is definitely coming. “A Ukrainian of Afghan origin gave a passionate speech in Persian to an Iranian who lives in Germany about the importance of the European idea.”

Open detailed view

The unity that the Ukraine war brought about and which also surprised him must now become permanent, European inaction in the face of the bombing of Grozny and Aleppo must not be repeated, otherwise we would experience again and again “that more ruthless states over our heads decide away,” says Kermani: “Imagine what would happen if Romania and Bulgaria were not in the EU – then they would now also be part of the ‘buffer zone’https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/.”

So why are events like Lit.Cologne good? Do they show that in the face of warlike aggression, authors don’t have any more original ideas than other people? Do they serve to soothe those present? All of that, sure. Ultimately, however, the most important thing, but certainly the most concrete, is the money that comes together. Half of the proceeds will go to the Pen Center Germany, which will use them to support persecuted authors, and to the Blue and Yellow Cross. The German-Ukrainian Association helps refugees in Germany and sends medicines to war zones. You accept an interim surplus of hot air.