It is under the boos that the German minister of culture was welcomed at the Leipzig book fair this week.
The German Minister of Culture, Wolfram Weimer, is being criticized for removing three left-wing bookstores from a list of nominees for the German Bookstore Prize, which was supposed to reward the commitment of over a hundred independent bookstores in Leipzig on March 19.
The minister justified his intervention due to “information related to state security.”
In a recent interview with the weekly Die Zeit, Wolfram Weimer explained that he could not provide further details. According to him, “state security services are not allowed to tell us more.”
The controversial bookstores are located in Berlin, Brême (in northern Germany), and Göttingen (in the center of the country).
The Bookstore Prize comes with grants ranging from 7,000 to 25,000 euros, which come from subsidies granted by the federal government. However, the selection is made by an independent jury.
Recourse to the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution
Before this edition, the Ministry of Culture had never intervened to modify this list.
It was before Wolfram Weimer decided to consult the protection services of the Constitution, who reportedly identified the three bookstores in one of their databases.
The minister explained that taxpayers’ money, here in the form of subsidies, can only go to institutions under no “suspicion.”
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, one of the three shops would have played a role in “the communication network of the RAF,” the Red Army Faction, an extreme-left terrorist organization born in the 1970s. However, as the newspaper specifies, “the RAF was dissolved 30 years ago.”
In the other two cases, one of the bookstores “serves as a postal address for antifascist groups” and the facade of the third is tagged with graffiti, one of which says “Deutschland verrecke” (“May Germany perish”).
Surveillance of Opinions
While the use of the services of the Protection of the Constitution is legally controversial, as the Constitution itself protects artistic freedom, the cultural world sees Wolfram Weimer’s intervention as surveillance of opinions.
Especially since the minister, without a political label, is no stranger to controversy.
Recently, he was criticized for wanting the departure of the director of the Berlinale, American Tricia Tuttle.
During the last edition of the festival in February, a laureate made a pro-Palestinian speech. Wolfram Weimer then wrote on X: “This festival is the voice of international cinema, bold and relevant. One thing is clear: there is no place for anti-Semitism here.”
Rarely has the position of Minister of Culture caused so much discussion. As stated by the public information site Tagesschau.de, “it is rare for a Minister of Culture to be the subject of breaking news.”
Ironically, as reported by the public service report NDR, one of the three bookstores affected by the minister’s intervention for the Bookstore Prize is overwhelmed by customers.
The “Rote Strasse” bookstore in Göttingen reports sales “like before Christmas” and humorously refers to Wolfram Weimer as their “employee of the month.” His portrait is now hanging in the bookstore.
