“A very personal book of existential seriousness”: The Leipzig literary scholar Dirk Oschmann in the premises of the Ullstein Verlag in Berlin
Image: Imago
His book “The East – A West German Invention” is a bestseller. In the interview, Dirk Oschmann explains which criticism he feels is unjustified and on which points he corrects himself.
Dirk Oschmann, born in Gotha in 1970 and Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Leipzig since 2011, caused a sensation with his book “The East: A West German Invention”. It has been at the top of the “Spiegel” bestseller list for weeks. His theses, which he first developed in a lecture and then in an article for the FAZ, met with vehement rejection and enthusiastic approval. He criticizes the fact that West Germans have constructed a collective East identity and given it negative attributions. At the same time, East Germans are still significantly underrepresented in management positions, which is ensured by West German networks.
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