Uwe Tellkamp in 3Sat-Docu: Steadfast in the Auenland – culture

Saxony, Uwe Tellkamp once said in a remarkable speech on the Day of German Unity, be a land of quiet colours. And further: “Involuntarily for me, I think ‘Saxony’, the word restraint connects with the rising images.” Knowing other baroque cities, even Dresden’s baroque appears “cautious and fragile; trying more to balance than to conflict with the surrounding landscape”.

At the beginning of the documentary “The Tellkamp case. Controversy over freedom of expression” the camera flies over the river that flows through this baroque Dresden at a low altitude – it is the first gentle approach to a city that, according to the narrator, “of all of Germany is observed, also with suspicion. Is it just that people in Dresden are louder, more argumentative, more conspicuous than elsewhere? Doesn’t what is being discussed in Dresden concern the whole country?”

This formulates the work assignment for the following 90 minutes. The film by Andreas Gräfenstein deals with the Tellkamp case with his active personal participation, it deals with questions of conflict and balance in society, and above all those of freedom of opinion. And this movie is, to start with, quite successful despite a few weaknesses.

Tellkamp sees the Elbe meadows and says: “That was our country”

After the initial drive in the still pale morning hours, the camera accompanies Uwe Tellkamp to the banks of the Elbe. Their floodplains are “the deepest childhood landscape,” he says, “we children … not in front of the smartphone, but everywhere here, that was our country”. It’s a quiet scene, and if you just point your finger at the TV at the contemptuous word “smartphone” and say “Boomer!” screams, he will be able to gain far less from this film than would be possible.

In other words: the willingness Listening to Tellkamp and getting involved with him, you should bring it with you, only then is it worth it. Because the film is, on the one hand, a portrait of the author and a study of the milieu, but, on the other hand, with the author Ingo Schulze, who is as calm as he is incorruptible, and a whole series of journalists, it always has enough personnel ready to avoid getting a list in any direction. Tellkamp is allowed to press charges, for example that the “corridors of what can be said” are becoming narrower and that the price to be paid for truly free speech has risen rapidly. And others are allowed to see it differently in the film. The good old freedom of expression, in this film it is preserved in a relaxed manner.

Saxony, Tellkamp once said, is a land of quiet colours. In the picture: the city of Dresden.

(Photo: Ulf Behrens/ZDF)

This creates an interesting perspective on the writer. About his childhood memories and the late GDR described in “Turm” it goes into the extended now. Uwe Tellkamp says about this now: “For me, it is no longer a functioning democracy to the extent that I have been able to get to know since 1990 and that has always been my goal, to which I always wanted to go.” He says moralizing debates is the real problem. He says that everyone should be cosmopolitan today, “really? The gully is cosmopolitan, everything flows in there”.

Uwe Tellkamp allows many such very direct moments, sometimes there is hardly any restraint, there is more tension and there is a furor that rages in him. Sometimes it’s an instructive West German at the cheese counter who enrages him, sometimes it’s West en gros, which has been happily inheriting for more than 70 years and now owns more than half the Elbhang. After all, it is even more often the German journalism of taz to the FAZ, whose formerly lavish range of opinions has shrunk enormously.

But that’s exactly where this – as I said – opinion-free film shows its strength. After Tellkamp’s J’accuse, FAZ colleague Stefan Locke gets a big appearance as part of a Tellkamp reading. And our colleague Locke is unfortunately one of the finest and most incorruptible journalists imaginable, a brave and persevering reporter on Saxony, whose rubber truncheon melts away immediately from any opinionated police. One can, as a viewer of this film, hear Tellkamp’s accusations, Locke’s reaction, and then form his own judgement.

3Sat documentary about Uwe Tellkamp: Uwe Tellkamp in conversation with the bookseller Susanne Dagen.

Uwe Tellkamp in conversation with the bookseller Susanne Dagen.

(Photo: Ulf Behrens/ZDF)

Nevertheless, the film has a few weaknesses, for example a slight tendency to kitsch, which is unfortunately rarely the case in Dresden, or the portrayal of the problem bookseller Susanne Dagen, who acts innocently pious in a way that doesn’t do justice to her overall personality. Ultimately, however, he succeeded because, in addition to his basic open attitude towards all sides, he accompanies the writer Uwe Tellkamp to that place where his world is decided – the desk.

All the noisy noise of the world and its daily debates disappear when you see Tellkamp there, writing with a fountain pen or at the typewriter, also pointing to a kind of floor plan his new book. When the writer talks about his writing, about the state of vibration, uncertainty and “fog” in which art and literature begin for him, then his creative power can be felt, then he has an effect on himself in the best sense of the word. As a spectator, you then forget the noise of the world, see Tellkamp sitting there and think, man, I would like to read something about him!

But of course the writer Tellkamp only exists in connection with the world, of course it is only through this connection that he is – as he says himself: – “in the game with my skin”. The fact that in this game both the author and his city of Dresden, and especially the Milieu Weißer Hirsch/Elbhang there, seem somehow trapped in different pasts between 1945, 1989 and 2015 is at times depressing news. The film, as the bearer of this message, is not to be blamed for this.

The Tellkamp case. controversy over freedom of speech. Wednesday, May 18, 8:15 p.m., 3 sat.

source site