Set signs: readings against right in Chemnitz | Books | '
Last weekend the PEN met in Chemnitz. You have to tell the prehistory to understand how symbolic this writer's meeting was.
On August 26, 2018 is Stadtfest in the third largest Saxon town Chemnitz, it is celebrated and much drunk. At three o'clock in the evening, Daniel H. sits on the edge of the festival on Brückenstrasse, right next to the monument to the huge Karl Marx head, when two men quarrel with him, and become palpable. Maybe it's about drugs, maybe not. In the end, the 35-year-old lives no longer, he was killed with several knife wounds, a second man injured life-threatening.
Murder or manslaughter, it's a cruel crime. It becomes unusual by the identity of – presumably – perpetrators. Arrested is the 23-year-old Alaa S., a Syrian, who is now in Dresden in court. The main suspect, the police-known Iraqi Farhad A., is on the run and internationally sought for a search. He is said to have set off with his brother in Iraq.
Parade of right-wing extremists
At the beginning of September right-wing parties in Chemnitz march on, AfD and Pro Chemnitz demonstrate together with Pegida and neo-Nazi hooligans. They roar their hatred of strangers, non-whites and journalists, show themselves with naked Nazi symbols, stretch their arms to the Hitler salute. The pictures go around the world. The dispute over whether one can speak of a hunt for foreigners, has political consequences.
Already on August 27, 2018, the right-wing scene in Chemnitz is demonstrating, and there are xenophobic violent outbreaks
Already on the 27th of August the attacks on foreigners increase. Right-wing extremists are marauding in the city. They also attack the restaurant of a German, the kosher restaurant "Shalom". It is not the first attack, says its owner Uwe Dziuballa, but one who does considerable damage. 42,000 euros will cost the renovation.
Attacks on foreign locals
In the middle of the city on the edge of the central shopping mile lies the Persian restaurant "Schmetterling". At the end of September, a few weeks after the attack on the Jewish establishment, the restaurant run by former refugees is being attacked by right-wing extremists, and panes are breaking. After that, the guests stay out.
On October 7, the city's second Persian restaurant is attacked. Masked people seriously injured the host of the "saffron", Masoud Hashemi has to be treated in the hospital. Also this attack on the restaurant opened only seven months earlier is not the first, a disc was smashed earlier, lubricated a swastika on the wall.
The police investigation into these attacks has been discontinued. There is not enough evidence and no witnesses to identify the perpetrators. Investigations of the state criminal investigation office to the case "Mangal" go on. The upscale Turkish restaurant was torched on 18 October with twenty incendiary devices. His host Ali Tulasoglu has lived in Saxony since 1994. In 2017 he fulfilled the dream of having his own restaurant. 350,000 euros of damage and the uncertainty as to when he can ever reopen his restaurant have not driven the family man from Chemnitz.
Tanja Kinkel reads in the Jewish restaurant "Shalom"
"We are responsible for each other"
"If a lesson from the horror of history and the positive things of the last century is to be drawn, then that is that we are all responsible for each other," says Tanja Kinkel. "If we stop believing in it, then civilization, no matter what, can really pack in this culture." And the successful author of historical novels does not stop at words. It is about practical support of the attacked premises and about setting a clear signal. That's why she organized readings in the city together with her colleagues. The city, which was on 9 March 2019 by a minute's silence for a deceased neo-Nazi in the stadium of the local football club FC Chemnitz again hit the headlines. "I asked all four restaurant owners," says the PEN board member, "but unfortunately the 'Mangal' is not yet reopenable."
Tanja Kinkel himself read in the restaurant "Shalom" from various novels of her thirty-year publication history, a zigzag course through the centuries. In homage to her host, she chose her entry in the High Middle Ages book "The Game of the Nightingale" (2011), whose second main character is a Jewish doctor.
A statement by presence
Nora Bossong performed poems in "Safran" and read from her novel about the Italian politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci, "36.9 degrees". The mood is calm, serene, serious. The crowd is not very large, one would have liked to see more Chemnitz in the restaurants. But the PEN initiative competes with a lot of other, simultaneous cultural events in the city.
Nora Bossong at her reading in the restaurant "Safran"
Eva Meerasse was able to gather most of the audience in the restaurant "Schmetterling". The author, who lives in Berlin, traveled to Chemnitz on her birthday to read from her narrative volume "Animals for the Advanced". Their talk reaps many laughs, only the local operators remain with serious faces in the background. "It was not a question," says the author after her reading that she wanted to show the flag in Chemnitz: "You have to support people who have happened something like that, we can not imagine such a thing, because that does not happen to us destroying our apartments, houses or shops, I really think it's necessary to make a statement by presence. "
You can feel good in Chemnitz
There is a big scene in Chemnitz, which is committed to democracy and tolerance and opposes the right-wing radicals with initiatives such as "Welcome to Chemnitz" or "Protest as a celebration". Also Uwe Dziuballa, one of about 600 Jews in Chemnitz, has become active, not only since the attacks on his restaurant, but since 1998. His latest project "The Kippa remains" he pursued for two years. "The story of my family in this area goes back to the 18th century, we are not just visiting here, I found it hard to tolerate being hid as a Jew in Germany again."
Many bands at a big concert under the motto "#wirsindmehr" in Chemnitz set a sign against racism, xenophobia and violence
The sign that the authors and the PEN have set with their initiative not only supports the attacked pubs. It is much more for the city itself. "We experienced Chemnitz as a very free city," says PEN Vice President Ralf Nestmeyer after the conference. "There were fierce pleadings for tolerance, also from the side of the mayor Barbara Ludwig, we felt very well here." When hooligan tourists and right-wing radicals gather in Chemnitz on June 1, as planned, and images of hate-distorted faces and horizontally outstretched arms are once again expected to determine the image of the city in the German and possibly even the international public, people remember I hope so, too. To the peaceful, tolerant, happy side of the city in Saxony.
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