Cancellation of comic performance in Berlin: No debate without Volker Beck

On Friday evening, Vincent Lemire stands with his publisher in the Urania foyer and is outraged. “I should have presented my book here this evening. But the event was canceled at short notice – for political reasons. “That is unbelievable and absurd,” says the 51-year-old historian. A few police officers stand guard in front of the Urania, and a concert is taking place inside in the large hall. Spectators stream past Lemire, who has come to speak to a few German journalists who heard about the cancellation. Lemire has already spoken to the French press because he is a well-known author in France; his last book was a bestseller there.

This bestseller is a comic about “Jerusalem – The Story of a City”. Lemire is familiar with this: He has written several books about the Holy City of Jews, Christians and Muslims, which have been translated into several languages ​​and for which he has won several prizes. He headed the French Research Center (CRFJ) in Jerusalem for several years and currently teaches at the university in Paris. His comic, created together with the illustrator Christophe Gaultier, has sold over 300,000 copies in France. “Admirably objective and accessible,” enthused Le Figaro About the book, which entertainingly summarizes the city’s four thousand year history in ten chapters FAZ It’s called the “graphic novel of the moment.” The German translation was published by the small publisher Jacoby & Stuart. Lemire wanted to present it at Urania with his German publisher Edmund Jacoby and the literary scholar Christian Wollin, a long-time fellow at the University of Jerusalem.

Volker Beck as a compromise

In order to attract more attention to the event, the publisher and Urania agreed to invite as prominent a guest as possible. Michel Friedman was under discussion, but the choice ultimately fell on Green Party politician Volker Beck, President of the German-Israeli Society. This was initially agreed, but canceled at short notice the evening before the event. The reason he gave was that “given the author’s current, somewhat obsessive positioning” he did not want to sit on the same stage with Lemire. Had war happened? Beck was referring to a tweet by Lemire, who had criticized the French government for ignoring the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with reference to his alleged “immunity”: a clear violation of international law.

“I can’t start by talking about his BD and discreetly question its gojnomrativity (spelling errors in the original) in some places, as if there was nothing else in the room,” Beck wrote in an email to Lemire’s German publisher on Thursday evening. BD stands for Bande dessinée, the French word for comic. And with the buzzword “gojnormativity,” Beck wanted to say that, in his eyes, Lemire was probably not Jewish enough to talk about Jerusalem: a remarkable statement, after all, Beck himself is not a Jew.

Overreaction by the Urania director

The next morning, Johanna Sprondel, the director of Urania, completely canceled the event planned for the evening: she no longer wanted to hold it without Volker Beck. “There is of course room for opposing opinions, but they require strong opposing positions,” she wrote somewhat awkwardly on Platform X (spelling error in the original). In the evening, Urania issued a press release stating that the announced book premiere had been canceled because without Volker Beck no more controversial debate could be expected. “Our program does not provide for readings or book presentations with the purpose of promoting books, such as those that take place in bookstores,” says the press release, which no longer mentions the literary scholar Christian Wollin.

“That is our principle: We are not a place for monologues that go unchallenged.” “We want to offer debates, and if necessary, controversies,” Urania director Sprondel confirmed to taz by telephone. For anyone who knows the program of the “non-profit cultural and educational institution” in Berlin-Schöneberg, this is a surprising statement, as the house is not known for particularly controversial debates. On Tuesday evening, FDP politician Karolin Preisler and CDU politician Philipp Amthor will discuss the topic of “freedom of assembly” with a lawyer: no major controversy is to be expected. And on Wednesday, the controversial author Mirna Funk will have the opportunity for the sixth time this year to chat with a guest friend about aspects of her current book “Learning from Jews”: More self-promotion is hardly possible.

atmosphere of fear

Urania’s overreaction is symptomatic of an atmosphere of fear and anticipatory self-censorship in the German cultural and scientific scene when it comes to the Middle East conflict: nerves are on edge. Many publicly funded institutions are now afraid of inviting guests whose views contradict a supposed raison d’être or could otherwise cause controversy.

Some try to contain them, as the National Gallery tried to do with the Jewish-American artist Nan Goldin by organizing an entire symposium around her: supervised thinking. Or they leave it alone, like the University of Leipzig, which canceled a lecture by the Jewish historian Benny Morris because various groups had previously been outraged by his statements and called for the event to be canceled. Morris is of the opinion that Israel should have driven many more Palestinians beyond the Jordan in 1948 in order to create a more homogeneous state. Most recently, the 76-year-old repeatedly advocated an Israeli attack on Iran, including with nuclear weapons if necessary.

Even if one rejects such statements, one can find the rejection of the University of Leipzig wrong – just as wrong as the hasty rejection of Berlin’s Urania, which now meets a renowned French historian who only wanted to talk about his current comic bestseller. His German publisher, who is now stuck with the costs, is also disappointed.

“I have tried all my life to take an intermediate position and to mediate between different views,” says Vincent Lemire, who is respected by both Israelis and Palestinians, to the taz. “The fact that even I should now stand outside of what can be said stuns me.”

Note: An earlier version stated that the canceled event took place on Saturday evening. But it was supposed to take place on Friday evening. We have corrected that.