German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/66, pp. 8013-8014.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Herr State Minister, one accusation can thus not be made against you: With you, it is not boring. Already in the second current hour within the briefest time. Yet I do not know whether that speaks unconditionally for your conduct of office.
Johannes Volkmann (CDU/CSU): Rather for the horseshoe theory!
Ottilie
Klein (CSU/CSU): Yes, exactly!
Ladies and gentlemen, the protest of the exclusion of three leftist radical bookstores from the German publishing prize
Sören
Pellmann (Linke): The book trade is leftist radical! Meine Fresse!
– we plainly heard it – is a festival of double morality. After the Commissioner for Culture and Media made known his decision, politicians and cultural functionaries warned of a “climate of pre-censorship”. During the Leipzig Book Fair’s opening ceremony, demonstrators stood in front of the Gewandhaus with banners with inscriptions like “Protect Culture – Let Weimer Go!”, and “Red Card for Opinion Snooping!”. The head of the association exchange of the German book trade – which, besides, is that association which took a leading part in the expulsion of the rightist publishers from the two great book fairs – declared, cite: “We will not accept without complaint your autocratic gesture.” End citation.
Ronald Gläser
(AfD): Inconceivable!
Ladies and gentlemen, here, a political milieu ostensibly fights for the freedom of the printed word.
Holger Mann
(SPD): Owner-operated bookstores!
It is that same milieu which literally rolls over with demands for censorship and Verbot when it is against the right. And one is, ja, right when one simply contradicts this milieu.
So as to comprehend this double morality, one needs just once imagine what would have happened
Jürgen Coße
(SPD: Herr Frömming speaks of morality!
if the Dresden bookseller Susanne Dagen had been nominated for the prize. Ladies and gentlemen, she alone has called into being an entire book fair, and besides without tax money. She would truly have deserved this prize.
Yet, what would likely have happened? There would have been calls for a boycott from your side, protest and tumult. The Antifa would have marched, etc. etc. Frau Dagen will likely never receive a state prize. Yet I suspect, ladies and gentlemen, she places no special value on that.
The good of this debate is that it reveals the principal problem of the German cultural scene, and that is the leftist burden, and the hunger for subventions proceeding therefrom. From this then arises so grotesque an accusation as this: Herr Weimer undertakes a state intervention in the promotion of culture. – A State Minister for Culture intervenes in the state promotion of culture: Just imagine!
Jörg König
(AfD): That is, ja, horrifying!
I ask myself, why at all should book selling be promoted with tax means?
David
Schliesing (Linke): It will be distinguished!
Does then the grocer who sells wurst, the vehicle mechanic or the hairdresser receive help? Ladies and gentlemen, would it not be better we leave that completely? Why should the Commissioner for Culture and Media with tax money reward bookstores on the facades of which are written the words “Deutschland die, please”, or “Heimat is a call to murder.”?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have put a minor inquiry; we’ve asked about four additional bookstores. The Interior Ministry’s information is now put forward; it arrived yesterday. It is therein said – I cite with your permission, Frau President: “An additional information on the booksellers named in the inquiry ‘BiBaBuZe […], Karl-Marx-Bookseller’ […] can, for reasons of the good of the state, not follow…Through a public information on the present degree of knowledge, the affected actors could develop defense strategies…”.
Ladies and gentlemen, from this answer becomes clear that still more booksellers are apparently a case for the Constitution Protection. Herr Weimer, please proceed!
As the alternative book fair Change Pages [Seiten Wechsel] in Halle took place, the cry of the culture scene called for a boycott and to put pressure on the fair operator to cancel the contract. As Berlin-Treptow was called upon to drive the rightist-conservative on-line portal “Apollo News” out of the district and pound away at it [Tasten zu hauen]. And now you behave as if someone trod on your corns [Hühneraugen getreten].
Holger Mann
(SPD): Is that a state institution?
Ladies and gentlemen, this double morality is hypocritical and mendacious.
The freedom of art is inseparable. Either you make no distinction between left and right, or you refrain from your hypocritical outrage if the left, by way of exception for once, were treated like the right. Without exception!
David Schliesing
(Linke): Oha!
Or, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps better still: We renounce entirely these prizes and subventions. The bookseller Susanne Dagen has shown: It goes, even without.
I thank you.
[trans: tem]
