Impressions from Frankfurt Book Fair
Europe, Peace Prize and crime thrillers: fascinating debates and new publications mean there is much to discover at Frankfurt Book Fair.
Speed dating I
How disrespectful to think only of matchmaking agencies when the term “speed dating” is mentioned. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) set up an interactive speed-dating box in Hall 3.1. during the Book Fair where people from developing countries present video messages and talk about their everyday lives and their daily fight against hunger. You sit opposite one another – and can see how your own plate is filled with red cabbage and dumplings while on the other side there is only rice gruel.
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Speed dating II
There were also several speed-dating sessions at the Blue Sofa: on Saturday, during a crime thriller speed-dating event, presenter Michael Sahr talked to the authors Andreas Eschbach (Teufelsgold), Sebastian Fitzek (Das Paket), TV Commissar Miroslav Nemec (Die Toten von der Falkneralm) and Nele Neuhaus (Im Wald). Each author was given ten minutes to present his or her book. Neuhaus called the Book Fair “a home match”: “I live 15 minutes from here, and my books are set in this region. In my new book there is even a scene in which my inspector drives past the exhibition centre here – and is annoyed about the traffic jam caused by the Book Fair.”
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Peace in Europe
Michael Roth, Minister of State for Europe at the Federal Foreign Office, would like to see citizens showing greater commitment to Europe: “Speak up! You can criticise us too if you want or have a go at us – politics is much more grateful for criticism than you think,” he said before 150 onlookers at the Weltempfang forum. There he discussed “Europe’s Crisis and the Intellectual Debate” with French author Mathias Énard and Jagoda Marinić, German-Croatian writer and founding director of the Heidelberg Intercultural Centre. Jürgen Kaube, co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, chaired the 60-minute event.
“We must ask ourselves the question of how the peace project European Union can contribute to a peace project Europe,” said Roth. The goal is “to be able to be different and free without fear”. Exchange, encounter and integrative movement have characterised the European Union from its beginnings. “Diversity has inspired others – but we now discover that exchange is perceived as something strenuous.” The heart of the question of whether Moslem refugees belong to Germany is: “Which kind of society do we want to live in?” said Roth, rejecting the populists and nationalists: “I would answer with a resounding ‘Yes’.”
How the history of Europe has been influenced by times of exchange and phases of conflict was explained by Mathias Énard, who was honoured with the prestigious French Prix Goncourt for his novel Compass (French title: Boussole). “The EU is not made for eternity, peace is threatened – we must gather our strength to protect our values and find values that go beyond the economic aspects of the Union,” he said. The “cosmopolitan Europe in which people have six week of holiday a year and therefore time to travel has shown itself in recent months to be xenophobic and hostile,” regrets Jagoda Marinić. The challenge is to make “the countries of Europe into European countries and not authoritarian states”.
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Manga mania
With often meticulous craftsmanship, the fans of manga and comics have copied the costumes of their favourite heroes and proudly presented them on Saturday and Sunday in Hall 3 and on the Agora exhibition space. Wolverine, Captain America and the characters from Trinity Blood are all assembled peacefully together here. The book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig have long since become meeting places for the members of this scene and have a definite place in the calendars of manga and comic fans. However, you will also meet several film characters in the inner courtyard of the exhibition centre – Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter in excruciating pink or the Mad Hatter from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
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Cradle of democracy
“Wow, that’s what it looks like from this perspective,” said an impressed Carolin Emcke, the Berlin-based journalist and writer, when she looked into the rows of onlookers from the rostrum in Frankfurt’s St Paul’s Church on Sunday. Emcke received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in St Paul’s Church for her contribution to societal dialogue. For many years, explained Emcke, she had seen the award ceremony from a different perspective, namely from the floor of her parents’ house “and eventually that seemed appropriate to me”. She now perceives the prize, which heroes such as Martin Buber, Jürgen Habermas and Susan Sontag had received before her, “less as an honour and more as an obligation”. In her speech she spoke in favour of diversity and cautioned that “difference is not sufficient grounds for exclusion”. Answers to the current climate of fanaticism and violence in Europe must not be simply delegated to politics: “Freedom is not something you own, but something you do,” said Emcke. “We are all responsible for the everyday forms of abuse and humiliation.” A moving laudatory address was presented by Seyla Benhabib, the philosopher who once studied with Emcke under Jürgen Habermas in Frankfurt. The Peace Prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros, is one of the most important societal honours in the Federal Republic. The approximately 1,000 guests included Federal President Joachim Gauck, Minister of State Monika Grütters and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.
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Looking ahead to 2017
During an official ceremony on Sunday, Flanders and the Netherlands, Guest of Honour of the Frankfurt Book Fair, passed on their role to the 2017 Guest of Honour: France. More than just France, it is the French language and Francophone literature that will be honoured in 2017 with a programme that is focusing on three themes: innovation and new areas of the digital creative economy, the French language and the theme of youth. From January 2017, events all over Germany will not only focus on novels, non-fiction books, children’s and young people’s literature, comics and poetry, but also new genres and art forms. Bienvenue!
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See you again in 2017!
On Sunday evening at 5:20pm the loudspeaker announces: “Dear visitors, the Frankfurt Book Fair closes in a few minutes...” Applause swept through the halls as exhibitors and publishing house employees applauded the 68th edition of the largest international book show and the end of five strenuous and exciting days. The Book Fair is over. Some 277,000 visitors came, 2,000 more than the year before, including 142,300 trade visitors. See you again next year!
