Rainald Goetz in the Wissenschaftskolleg: The Last Big Thing

The course reserve is booming, the copy shop is running: Rainald Goetz gave a lecture in Berlin that was received euphorically because it provided material for the humanities’ self-added value chain.

BNot only did everyone who was there, but also everyone who wasn’t there, commented on Rainald Goetz’s appearance at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin on February 22nd. Harry Nutt, editor of the “Berliner Zeitung”, missed out on the public criticism of the journal for the history of ideas (ZIG). The numerous reports about the evening finally led him to write an article about his “shame” at stupidly ignoring the invitation to the evening, which haunted his dreams.

The trigger might be the general tenor of the reporting. The mere fact that the Büchner Prize winner Rainald Goetz, who had not spoken publicly or performed for several years, spoke to an audience is considered an event. However, the feuilleton did not come up with this itself, the author helped tinker with it. The backdrop for the evening were scaled-up copies of newspaper pages, excerpts from a Gerhard Richter painting, literary scholar Stephan Porombka climbing his private library (caption: “You are what you read”), Rubens’ Descent from the Cross altar and a football player showed. Goetz quickly picked up the paper webs from the copy shop on the day of the performance.

So a big hello on the occasion of the journal criticism, which, rather unusual for the format, was held by an author who had himself contributed a text entitled “Absolute Idealism” to the spring issue. The newspaper’s criticism was also stubborn in that it used the magazine more as a launching pad for all sorts of considerations than as the subject of precise analysis. But that’s the way it should be. The actual business event with an overall view of an entire ZIG year took place internally one day later.

The critics want to be loved by Goetz

How Goetz had publicly used the magazine as an “INCENTIVE MACHINE” could be read in its entirety on two full pages in “Die Zeit” on March 1; a day later the video recording of his speech went online on the Wissenschaftskolleg’s website. The number of testimonials about the performance and the analyzes continues to grow, and this article here is one of them. The event is not so much lengthened as a standard situation of Goetz’s reception is repeated. In an article on Goetz’s novel “Johann Holtrop” Julia Encke wrote in 2012: “One always thinks that writers want to be loved by critics. In the case of Rainald Goetz, it’s the other way around. The critics want to be loved by Rainald Goetz, just as if his appreciation were an accolade, every gesture of affection a kind of Rainald Goetz super critics award.” Loving and being loved like that is neither good nor easy for everyone involved. That just doesn’t mean you can stop doing it.