Why Germany doesn’t need a parliamentarian. – Culture

The Vice President of the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, approves the proposal of a parliamentary poet. That doesn’t mean anything good for art.

Just imagine: Paul Ziemiak has his eyes closed, his head falls on his right shoulder every second, then he flinches for a moment, opens his eyes, calms down, goes back to sleep. The Greens MP Hanna Steinmüller is rather angry about the fifteen minutes they are taking away from her and plays “Candy Crush”. Everything makes more sense than what one should endure here: In the plenary hall there is a poet who has just been released from one of the German literary institutes and is performing a sonnet about the compulsory vaccination. She is parliamentary poet for 24 months. Until recently, she imagined life as an artist to be different, but hey, a scholarship of 3,000 euros a month isn’t that bad either.

Should we writers now work as a storytelling agency for the progressive coalition?

Have in this newspaper on January 4th In a remarkably unironic contribution, the writers Mithu Sanyal, Simone Buchholz and their colleague Dmitrij Kapitelman called for a parliamentary poet who should mediate between society and politics, and also “irritate” and emotionalize. The poet is to be provided with a small office in the Reichstag and adequate apanage. Katrin Göring-Eckhardt immediately praised the idea on twitter, albeit in a somewhat wooden diction: “A strong culture and an appreciative approach to our language are essential for any open society.” The Vice President of the Bundestag would like Sanyal et al. get to know each other to discuss the proposal. Her willingness reveals how little actual “irritation” she expects from poets: Here, eager people apply who do not really want to annoy. Rather, their wish is to “pour political debates and currents into poetry or prose”, and they think it would be nice if what was cast was projected as “neon letters or light installations on the Bundestag facade”. That sounds less like people who are after “irritation” than like cheerleading. Should we writers now work as a storytelling agency for the progressive coalition?

Perhaps we both would not have such bad cards for the position of parliamentary poet? After all, the office should be filled “as diverse as possible”. The bad news: Unfortunately we are unable to attend until further notice, at least Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We both work in the public sector: one teaches teenagers at a vocational school in Kaiserslautern, the other writes very polite e-mails, makes phone calls and plans budgets. It’s true: we both imagined literature to be more glamorous. Still, we prefer not to go to the Bundestag. Why?

Most writers need a job – and that’s a good thing for art

We get up in the morning, file our pay slips in Leitz folders at the end of the month and collect pension points. In the evenings we write on our books, which, to be honest, are not read much, but we love and need to write. Anyone who wants to be a writer spends little time wondering why and for what purpose – it’s a need, sometimes even a compulsion. What you often ask yourself as a writer is, how – How can one meet the need when the world is less and less interested in literature? Every now and then we get an advance payment and we get paid for readings, but that’s not a secure income. That is why we are dependent on him: the bread-and-butter job – and that’s okay. In order to be able to write what you feel like doing, you shouldn’t be financially dependent on literature. This is the only way to avoid the need to run after debates in your work and work on subjects because you believe that they are of interest to the public. To be able to write what you yourself needsyou need a job. Writing poetry for politicians is not, however, for good reason.

But it’s not just about the individual who writes. According to the initiators of the idea of ​​parliamentary poetry, art should help the country to become more peaceful, fairer and more ecological. Art is seen as a socially unifying element, which mediates between government and society and is supposed to bring political ideas to the people and also to draw the attention of politicians to problems – a kind of storytelling. So the state needs art in order to have an impact on society and to explain itself – but does art also need the state? Yes, say Mithu Sanyal, Dmitrij Kapitelman and Simone Buchholz, because at the same time there should also be an impact on literature: The authors are calling for a boost to politicization and would like to be involved in shaping it.

Should MPs wipe the tears from their eyes to deportation ballads?

The contribution not only pleads for committed literature, but even for committed state literature that would inevitably lead to political kitsch, at least that’s what the sugary, phrase-like language of the contribution suggests: “We are relevant, we are heard and therefore we also have a responsibility . ” Politics is also belittled as a result: It is not about arms deliveries abroad, about the oppressive situation of our economically left behind, no, it is now about the political and artistic elite confirming each other. All of them are systemically relevant in this reading. Should we throw pebbles on the heavy walls of the Reichstag with our delicate poet’s hands when dozens of Afghans are deported again? And then write a ballad to which the deportees can wipe tears from their eyes? There are probably more efficient artistic interventions.

We believe in an independent art: we artists are not systemically relevant and neither do we want to be. As artists, we don’t want to bear any responsibility in a state. Artists seldom provide reliable moral or political guidance. They are not mascots, nor should they become symbols, not even for a small fee. This does not mean that artists and art cannot exert any influence on social political processes, but they do not have to continually prove themselves or defraud their raison d’etre through alleged systemic relevance. Art does not have to be immediately politically usable.