A country under the spell of the “garden fence Nazis”

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For the Germans, the newspaper “Bild” is like a grimy relative that you don’t like, but you can’t get rid of either.

With a readership of nearly eight million, the newspaper is the largest in Europe – meaning that the editor-in-chief is considered the most powerful journalist on the continent and the director is arguably more authoritative than the chancellor.

Since “Bild” is tough on topics such as migration, asylum or “law and order” and thus opposes the fairly uniform opinion of the German majority and media-ethical border violations are disseminated millions of times in paper and on the Internet, a discussion about this medium is also always a domestic debate.

Best knowledge of Alex-Springer-Verlag

On Wednesday the novel ‘Still awake?’ by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre (48) now provides new material in concentrated form for this national monologue.

Officially, of course, it is not about “Bild” and publisher Axel Springer, but about a “transmitter”. There is an “editor in chief” and the big boss, the “friend” of the first-person narrator. They are clearly former ‘Bild’ editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt (42) and Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner (60). The timing is a stroke of luck for author and publisher; Reichelt had to resign from the position in 2021 as part of #MeToo for abuse of power and unacceptable treatment of employees. And von Döpfner has just published the text messages of the competing newspaper “Zeit” portraying the billionaire’s glossy manager as a populist flat Piefke (“The Ossis are communists or fascists. They don’t do it in between. Disgusting”).

The fact that the new publication is written by Stuckrad-Barre is racy – the shaven-headed writer with the aristocratic name knows the inside of the Axel Springer building in Berlin, Döpfner is his son’s godfather and the child’s mother is editor- in-head of the Springer newspaper “BZ”. In amorous affairs, as it is said in the capital, he must continue to fish in the great publishing house. It is said that he was the one who initiated the investigation against Reichelt with internal reports.

The book’s opponent becomes a “garden fence Nazi”

With prose interspersed with CAPITAL LETTERS, Stuckrad-Barre strings together anecdotes about the two protagonists in DETAIL, deals with Reichelt and his ‘friend’ Döpfner, traces how the latter becomes an EX-FRIEND. The orgy in capital letters, this MAJUSKEL-MANIA could also be a cunning reference to the tabloids with their BIG LETTER, after all, Stuckrad-Barre is admired by his fans as the German Bret Easton Ellis, as the vocabulary from the Spree, as LETTERS- MOZART.

About the “editor-in-chief” it says that “this man” had over the years “radicalized very unpleasantly, had become thicker and thicker in direct proportion to it, and parallel to his hair on his head his fuses also fell out” faster and more extensive ” , with his “WE roar” he became something of a “lawn creeping Nazi”. And the audience learns firsthand, from the battered women, all sorts of intimate things about the fallen journalist (“his nightly howl is extremely creepy, yes “) and how he interacts with colleagues during meetings (“what are you, ultra-awakened menstrual monsters, or what?”). But also the absurd (“He said to me, I’ll make you the next Frauke Ludowig”).

Weinstein and Musk also make an appearance

Based on a heroine named Sophia, who acquiesced to the editor-in-chief’s advances, Stuckrad-Barre chronicles the long struggle of the victims – officially dubbed “witnesses to the prosecution” – against all the social and bureaucratic obstacles faced in the business with their corporate language and a “feel-good manager” lurking, to victory over the boss.

These hurdles include the fact that the compliance lawyer involved calls the lascivious text messages “romanticized messages.” At the same time, investigators from the “Transatlantik” are getting closer to the case, which is speeding things up – you can easily see the “New York Times” in this, which actually heralded the end of Reichelt with an article about the conditions at the editorial office .

The whole is garnished with the course of the scandal surrounding Hollywood producer and sex offender Harvey Weinstein (71). And bitter characterizations of Reichelt and his naive, almost power-drunk superior Döpfner, who insists on driving a car of the Hummer show-off brand in the US and throws himself in vain at Elon Musk (51). “Did he go crazy at first and then think he found him in a Telegram chat group?” it says about the “friend”.

Stuckrad-Barre’s moral portrayal of the Axel Springer Group makes this political powerhouse seem like a sort of assassination of German journalism.

An attempt to come into line with the great reckoning of German literature

The book clearly tries to fit into the grand accounts of German literature. In 1984 Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989) caused an earthquake in the Viennese Bussi-Bussi Society with “woodcarving”. The Austrian broke with the Lampersberg musicians, who are referred to as Auersbergers in the novel, by the grumpy, brilliant first-person narrator’s minutes of an “artistic dinner.” Klaus Mann (1906–1949) already wrote the mother of all accounts with «Mephisto» in 1936. In it he unmasks the German actor of the century Gustaf Gründgens (1899-1963) – renamed Hendrik Höfgen – as a weak freerider in the Third Reich.

In both famous cases, those affected defended themselves by legal means, and this is probably also the calculation of the author of “Still wake?” are; Reichelt’s attorney has already made similar suggestions. The deposed boss himself accuses the key witness, who has been renamed “Sophia”, of lying on social media and dismisses important allegations.

However, one thing distinguishes Stuckrad-Barre from Klaus Mann: Mann had to emigrate because of his anti-fascist attitude, so he fought against the system he criticized and paid a high price for it.

Criticism of Stuckrad-Barre

Von Stuckrad-Barre, on the other hand, has nestled comfortably in the Axel Springer biotope for years, where he is now pulling the leather against and is said to have drawn a monthly salary of 40,000 euros. A former employee of Springer-Verlag – which works in Switzerland with Ringier, which also publishes the SonntagsBlick – tweeted this week: “If someone who worked at Springer in 2015 was allowed to experience live at a multi-day management conference, how much Stuckrad-Barre thought it nice to be Döpfner’s darling, I have to grit my teeth now.”

Viewed in this way, the oeuvre is also a pompous self-denial, an acquittal in one’s own name. Appropriately, Stuckrad-Barre has his protagonist Sophia say at one point, “We’re going to set this whole mess on fire.”

Source: Blick