“The rape of language”: Uwe Tellkamp railed against gender
The contents in the “archives” were created and posted by the previous owners of this website. We are not responsible for any misleading or incorrect content that is posted here.
“rape of language”
Uwe Tellkamp criticized gendering
19-10-2022 1:01 am
In Germany, writers are allowed to write whatever and how they want. Uwe Tellkamp, however, lacks a clearer opposition to gender equality in them. The vast majority reject gendering, says the Dresden author, who strikes a chord with his audience in Neubrandenburg.
According to author Uwe Tellkamp, writers in Germany should position themselves more clearly than before against the introduction of gender language rules. “Language is like an organ with a thousand voices,” said Tellkamp on Tuesday evening at a lecture on the occasion of the Uwe Johnson Literature Days in Neubrandenburg. However, the controversial gendering is “a rape of language”.
It’s like depriving an organist of two organ stops because they are somehow charged with colonialism. Then the organ no longer sounds. An overwhelming majority of the population rejects that. It is incomprehensible to him why authors have not yet acted more intensively against this, said the writer to loud applause.
In Neubrandenburg, the resident of Dresden presented his new novel “Der Schlaf in den Uhren”, the sequel to his Wende novel “Der Turm”, published twelve years ago. He also emerged as an admirer of the writer Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973), who had lived in Neubrandenburg. “She really impressed me,” Tellkamp said after a visit to the Reimann Literature Museum. Reimann, whose main novel “Franziska Linkerhand” remained unfinished, was one of the best-known and most controversial authors in the GDR.
Tellkamp was criticized for making statements about refugees and reportedly threatening repression against dissidents in Germany. He sympathized with the Pegida movement and repeatedly criticized a so-called attitude corridor between desired and tolerated opinion. In 2017, he spoke out against the exclusion of right-wing publishers from the Frankfurt Book Fair. A year later, during a panel discussion, he claimed without any evidence that 95 percent of all refugees came to Germany “to immigrate to the social systems.”
In 2008 Tellkamp received the Johnson Prize in Neubrandenburg for the novel “Der Turm”, later the German Book Prize and the National Prize. The Uwe Johnson Days want to create more space for dialogue in society. They end on October 27.
