Two who don’t really get together: Thilo Sarrazin and Uwe Tellkamp in Berlin
Image: dpa
Thilo Sarrazin presents his new book “Reason and its Enemies” in the House of the Federal Press Conference. The introduction is held by the writer Uwe Tellkamp, trembling with anger at the state.
Dhe conference room in the Berlin House of the Federal Press Conference is not designed for large numbers of visitors. It is seldom full at publishing events, but today almost all the seats are taken. The proportion of photographers is high, the round of snaps, with which the book presentation begins, drags on. Thilo Sarrazin, the author, his laudator Uwe Tellkamp and a representative of Langen-Müller-Verlag sit on the podium. “You will hardly find more bestsellers at one table,” says the publisher, “especially not in this combination.”
Thilo Sarrazin has written a new book in which, according to the register, the SPD appears a good thirty times, Islam a little more often and the name Uwe Tellkamp exactly once – in a footnote about the “growing tendency poets, thinkers, publishers or political parties already therefore excluded from the social and political discourse because they are considered ‘right’”. But the footnote has reached its addressee, because Tellkamp is here (unlike the SPD, which has separated from Sarrazin). He waits for the publisher’s representative to give the starting signal, then he starts.
