INTERVIEW - Monika Maron: "One wonders: What do they want? For the country to go to the dogs?"

We meet in Salzburg, where Monika Maron is receiving the Libertatem Prize. The award honors authors who champion freedom of expression. The 84-year-old writer has just returned from Croatia. The strain of the long journey in slow-moving traffic and summer heat isn't noticeable. She takes a seat in the small hotel library, orders an apple spritzer, and says, sounding somewhat desperate: "I'm not allowed to smoke in the entire hotel." It's the beginning of a focused conversation, without a cigarette break.

Monika Maron, you were awarded the Libertatem Prize in the name of freedom of expression. In your acceptance speech, you said that your former euphoria of freedom upon crossing the German-German border into the West had given way to a "growing sense of loss." What do you mean by that?

Freedom is for everyone, or it isn't. According to surveys, 60 to 70 percent of Germans believe they aren't allowed to express their opinions. But as Heinrich Böll once said: "Freedom is never given, only won." If everyone who feels their freedom of expression is being restricted started speaking out tomorrow, not behind closed doors or anonymously on Facebook, but at work, at university, in editorial offices, they might be happier, and our country would be a better place.

In your novels "Munin oder Chaos im Kopf" (2018) and "Arthur Lanz" (2020), you describe how growing polarization is overwhelming German society. How do you currently assess the social climate in this regard?

Actually, a little worse every day.

Tell me about it.

We're now familiar with monstrous concepts like "delegitimizing the state in a way that is relevant to the protection of the constitution," reporting centers for offenses below the criminal threshold, and thousands of complaints filed against citizens who have insulted or even simply mocked government officials. The mere fact that politicians would come up with the idea of ​​reporting people for ridiculous behavior, and that citizens are encouraged to denounce each other, was unimaginable ten or twenty years ago. And the hope that this would change under the new government has now been dashed.

You've often been accused of exaggerating your portrayal. For example, back in 2010, when you described German politics' stance toward Islam as misguided. The traffic light government collapsed at the end of last year. Who was right? You or your critics?

Everything for which I was at best described and insulted as controversial or even right-wing is now in the government program.

What do you think were the main reasons for the division in society?

Above all, the ideologically driven migration and energy policies that a political minority enforces against the interests and will of the citizens. The ignorance of an urban, academic class that doesn't live where the problems have become unmanageable, whose children don't attend schools with a 90 percent foreign population. People who speak of "our democracy" as if it were their own property. Who view anyone who contradicts them as a potential enemy.

What do you think about the ongoing attempt to ban the AfD?

Nothing at all. I find it unacceptable when 10 million citizens vote for a party and then you tell them: "Go ahead and vote, but you don't count." What good would banning it do? Instead of addressing why so many people vote for a party they don't necessarily want.

Please explain that.

I think that many people don't want the AfD to govern.

But why has the AfD become so big in the East?

It will get even worse in the West if things continue like this. I think it's possible that the East Germans are still feeling shame from once experiencing how cowardly they were and just grumbling to themselves. Now they're saying to themselves: That won't happen to us again, this time we'll fight back. Besides, the West didn't understand what the transformation after 1990 demanded of the East Germans. The Left was against unification anyway and believed that Germany deserved to remain divided. But the punishment only affected the East Germans, who served 45 years in prison along with the West Germans. The huge amount of money that unification cost was actually compensation for their imprisonment. And then these somewhat backward people get out of prison and vote the wrong way.

Does that mean that voting for the AfD is revenge?

All parties, from the CDU to the BSW to the Left Party, present themselves as a national front against the AfD. That's what the East is familiar with. So I shouldn't be surprised if they take what is actually the only alternative. Even if it's just to annoy the others.

Is this impression deceptive, or has the AfD fallen silent at the moment?

I don't know, but it's true, they're quieter. Of course, it's possible they're cautious now because of this whole ban thing.

You have criticized the political culture in Germany, the one-sided reporting on public broadcasting, the cancel culture at universities, and the reporting centers. You sparked great outrage with your remark that it sometimes reminds you of the GDR. What does the West still not understand about the East?

One thing is that East Germans are naturally more sensitive to institutional measures like registration centers. They remember that they already had something like that. The other is that they actually had to learn democratic procedures first: how to organize themselves, how to fight back. In the village in Western Pomerania where I live part-time, for example, we are surrounded by wind turbines, and more are constantly being added; it's become big business these days. People tried everything. They held vigils, wrote letters, invited Minister-President Manuela Schwesig. They even founded a party called Free Horizon. It was all to no avail. That was their depressing experience with democracy. And I had that feeling for the first time in 2015, too.

At the time of Angela Merkel’s “welcoming culture”?

Yes, there we were, sitting together in the countryside, united by this feeling of powerlessness. You think what's happening is wrong, but anything you say against it immediately makes you an enemy. An opponent. And not a legitimate voice that can ask: Is this right? I think it's wrong.

Does it give you satisfaction that you were right in your criticism of refugee policy?

No, because it didn't achieve anything. Everything just keeps going. I don't see how this can be corrected. Those who are here now are mostly the wrong people – not all of them, but a great many. And the influx hasn't stopped. Besides, we're dealing with the EU. Even if Germany wanted to do something differently, it wouldn't work. And even if EU laws could somehow be circumvented, the SPD comes along and says: But that's against the EU. And you ask yourself: What do they want? For the country to go to the dogs?

What annoyed you most about the reactions towards you?

Oh, what do you mean, annoyed? But to accuse me of being anti-Muslim or Islamophobic is simply nonsense. Necla Kelek and I ran a discussion group with native Germans, Turks, and people from other Islamic countries for six years starting in 2010.

Was there a name for this circle?

Necla called it "salon," and I called it "Turkish meeting"; officially, it was called "soup and conversation." Our circle included people who weren't so famous back then: Ahmad Mansour, Güner Balci, Ralph Ghadban. We invited professors like Münkler and Heinsohn to give lectures. The discussions often went on into the night over food and wine. We learned a lot, including that secular and legal claims are inherent in Islam. So we call it "Islamism" to protect Islam. But Islam simply hasn't undergone an enlightenment.

Fischer Verlag parted ways with you in a scandalous move in October 2020. How do you look back on that?

No resentment. Fischer Verlag hasn't supported me since "Munin oder Chaos im Kopf" (Munin or Chaos in the Head). If I'd been 60 back then, I would have left myself. But I was almost 80 and thought, what publisher would want an 80-year-old author? They hire her, and then she writes half a book and dies. When Tim Jung from Hoffmann und Campe approached me, I liked him, especially since I didn't want to work with a corporate publisher anymore. Within six months, the publisher had republished all my books in hardcover, and I feel in good hands there.

In your most recent story, "The Cat," you write about the controversial topics of migration and gender: "I haven't been arguing for a long time." Does that sound resigned?

In the past, everything I wrote on such topics began with the sentence: "I've had enough." Everything has been said by now. And it won't change.

In your book "The House," about a retirement community, you laconicly discuss what you should say and what you shouldn't. Do you handle relationships and disagreements more carefully as you get older? Is this a sign of leniency?

There are lifelong friends with whom you don't see eye to eye on certain things. You don't have to deny yourself. In those cases, I suggest we either stop talking about it or tell each other our opinions, but don't argue. At my age, you lose friends through death. I don't want to spend the rest of my life arguing with people I care about.

Her mother was a committed communist, and her stepfather was Karl Maron, a SED official and East German Interior Minister. Were there political discussions at home? Initially, you were actually in favor of socialism.

Yes, of course. I was in favor of socialism for a long time. Not the way it was created, though. There's a difference between believing socialism to be wrong and believing it to be right, but believing the realistic picture that presents itself to be wrong and saying: "That's just not the right kind of socialism." Some people still say that today.

You once wrote: "The question remains how an idea conceived for the happiness of all could turn into the misfortune of all, even its most loyal followers." When did you begin to distance yourself from socialism?

A crucial event was the Prague Spring in 1968. I thought, this can't be right. But I had run away from home much earlier, at 18, and then worked shifts at an aircraft factory in Dresden for a year. There, I was among workers and got to know a social milieu with which I had no other contact. These were life experiences that made me see the world a little differently.

To what extent was the GDR a prerequisite for your writing? Was the dictatorship necessary for your dissent?

That's difficult to say. I traveled throughout the country for six years as a business reporter. Until then, I had thought the GDR was terrible for intellectuals, but good for the workers. In factories like Bitterfeld or Leuna, I saw that things were even worse for the workers.

You then wrote your first novel, “Flugasche,” which was banned in the GDR, about environmental problems, the inhumane conditions in industrial cities, and censorship.

This work has changed my image of this country.

You were born in West Berlin, moved to the East with your mother, and lived in the GDR for over 30 years. How do you view this part of your life today?

I probably have a rather unadaptable temperament, which was obviously particularly challenged in the GDR. I was essentially in a constant state of anger. Whether you wanted to buy children's shoes, worked in an editorial office, or had to deal with the housing issue, you basically always had a problem. Generally speaking, though, I look at things without resentment—not at the government of this country, but at my own life. And these experiences are part of that.

Unlike writers like Uwe Tellkamp or Christoph Hein, you have freed yourself from the Eastern theme. Was it helpful that your books, which were banned in the GDR, were already published in the West before you left?

I had already traveled for a year in 1983/84. I was in London, Rome, Paris, and then New York. There, I understood life differently; New York was a pivotal experience for me.

How was it that you, as a citizen of the GDR, were allowed to travel? Was it a privilege thanks to your stepfather?

No, I fought hard for it; other writers were allowed to do it too, probably in the hope that it would get rid of the troublemakers. There's a correspondence that's hilarious, with Deputy Minister of Culture Klaus Höpcke and later even with Politburo member Kurt Hager. My second book didn't get printed either. And then I said I had to go out into the world so I could somehow rediscover the meaning of my life here. After a lot of back and forth, I got a visa for a year. They probably hoped I'd come back and say I wanted to leave forever. But I didn't do that with my husband and our son until 1988.

Your early novel trilogy is set in the GDR; after that, you didn't write any more novels about the GDR. Why?

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the GDR stench, not even in my thoughts. I was glad it was over. Why still write about that boring, oppressive country? Of course it appears in my books; after all, I spent half my life there, especially my younger years, but it only interests me in the context of something bigger. I also don't understand why the next generation is starting to poke around in the GDR as if there were adventures to be found there. I understand that about historians. But why someone would write a GDR novel at 25 or 30—it's not even their own story—I can't understand that. These books act as if they have to reappraise the GDR like the Nazi era after 1945, as if Uwe Johnson, Franz Fühmann, Wolfgang Hilbig, Kempowski, and the others hadn't existed.

You were one of the first to criticize the peace movement around Sahra Wagenknecht for addressing their demands to Ukraine rather than Putin. Why does the East have such an unbreakable relationship with Russia?

I don't believe there's such a positive relationship with the Russians. They had their experience with the Russians, and they were happy when they left. There was a saying: If you vote yes, all the Russians will stay; if you vote no, even more Russians will come in. The reason people now say, that East Germans studied in Russia or had pen pals, applies to very few people.

What is the reason then that Wagenknecht or the AfD are so keen to negotiate with Putin?

I'm not sure about the parties. In Sahra Wagenknecht's case, I suspect her motive is her intense antipathy towards America. Originally with the AfD, too, but now they feel protected there by Musk and Trump. Voters in the East are the deciding factor. And I think they're afraid of the Russians. That's the only reasonable explanation for me: that they're afraid of getting into trouble with them. Also this fixation on "corrupt" Ukraine: they're probably ashamed because the Ukrainians fight in a way they would never fight themselves. And of course, a deep mistrust of America as a socialist legacy is widespread in the East. A neighbor from my village, with whom I really only disagree about Ukraine, asked why Germany couldn't be neutral like Switzerland.

Why can't it?

Germany, among other things, is too big for that. I said we would have to live under some kind of hegemon. We have four options: the Russians, the Chinese, Islam, and the Americans. I would take the Americans in a heartbeat. At first he didn't say anything, then we drank a few glasses of wine, and sometime around midnight he said: 'Well, fine, I'll take the Americans too.' He didn't want the Russians back either.

You emigrated to Hamburg in 1988 and, at the time of reunification, criticized the "arrogance of West Germans" and the "powerlessness of East Germans" equally, which was unusual at the time. Did you immediately feel at home in the West?

Yes, I felt comfortable. I didn't have any quarrels with the West. I started to quarrel with the West when the West stopped being truly the West.

When was that?

When he gave me the same problems I'd had in the East. I don't quarrel with East or West. I quarrel when I can't live the way I think is right.

The theme of freedom runs through your work, from “Fly Ash” to “The House.”

You have to be able to write and say what you want. That's freedom. And when I consider that I ran away from home at 18 and got divorced a few times, when life got too crowded, I freed myself, sometimes quite ruthlessly. You never know where that comes from. Why you can't endure what others endure.