Christian Baron

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Christian Baron (born May 27, 1985 in Kaiserslautern , emphasis: Báron ) is a German journalist and writer .

Life

Baron grew up with three siblings (one brother and two sisters) in simple circumstances in Kaiserslautern. His father worked as a furniture maker and fell into the area of working poverty in Baron's portrayal . Baron's aunt encouraged him to work as a sports reporter for the Rheinpfalz newspaper. Baron studied political science , sociology and German in Trier . He joined the SPD and was involved with the Jusos , but was disappointed by Gerhard Schröder's agenda policy. From 2014 to 2018 he was an editor at Neues Deutschland, where he was responsible for the theater in the feature section, he is currently the political editor of the weekly newspaper Der Freitag . Baron is married and lives in Berlin.

Works

In 2012 he published his study Faul, cheeky, brazen , written with Britta Steinwachs . The discrimination of unemployment by BILD readers . In 2016 he wrote the autobiographically motivated non-fiction book Proleten, Mob, Parasiten. Why the left despise the workers .

Prolets, Mob, Parasites (2016)

In it, Baron deplores the increasing alienation between workers and people and groups who see themselves as leftists , especially those with an academic background. Instead of showing solidarity with the workers, who have long been the predominant political subject in the left tradition, there has been an increasing neglect, and even contempt, of the working class. On the basis of numerous examples (often from the author himself) (such as first names , neighborhoods or clothing and eating habits), Baron describes that people on the left also speak with a pejorative attitude towards lower classes.

In discussions within the left-wing camp, especially at universities, working-class children would find it difficult to gain recognition and a hearing towards children from their middle-class parents. Children from working-class households would be "socially sanctioned in left-wing groups if they could not keep up with the educated behavior". Baron criticizes the fact that marginalized groups such as the unemployed are “an abstract reference group”, the reality of which the left does not deal with or does not deal with enough. For Baron, conflicts also arose because his "understanding of the working class, acquired from everyday observations and his own experiences in the family, did not correspond to that which these leftists had found and learned by heart in their dusty books." to which academics who identify themselves as left-wing would have submitted.

At the end of the book, Baron sums up that leftists “have become victims of that success” “that they let themselves be persuaded. Movement and party leftists seriously believed after 1989 that there were no more social classes . So they concentrated on issues of identity politics such as gender equality or the acceptance of homosexual and transsexuality . They began to fight prejudices and forgot to take action against what they produced. ” Baron also blames leftists for the success of the AfD , since they have“ not given the workers a political voice for too long ”.

A man of his class (2020)

For a Friday special edition for International Women's Day 2019, which should only be designed by men, Baron published an autobiographical essay on the violence his alcoholic father used against his mother. It was entitled A Man of His Class . Then the literary agent Franziska Günther suggested that he write a book about his childhood. In 2020 he published his eponymous autobiographical short story. Baron's book was on the Spiegel bestseller list , received numerous reviews and was published as an audio book. The response from literary criticism was mixed. Baron's book has been compared to works by French writers Didier Eribon , Edouard Louis and Annie Ernaux .

Books

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dear Reader | Christian Baron on his childhood and reading a lot - "Literature should awaken empathy" | detektor.fm - the podcast radio. March 20, 2020, accessed on March 20, 2020 (German).
  2. ↑ https://www.rbb-online.de/rbbkultur/themen/literatur/rezensions/buch/2020/04/Christian-Baron-ein-mann-seiner-klasse.html
  3. ^ Christian Baron: Prolets, Mob, Parasites. Why the left despise the workers . Berlin 2016, p. 49 .
  4. ^ Christian Baron: Prolets, Mob, Parasites. Why the left despise the workers . Berlin 2016, p. 50 .
  5. ^ Christian Baron: Prolets, Mob, Parasites. Why the left despise the workers . Berlin 2016, p. 57 .
  6. ^ Christian Baron: Prolets, Mob, Parasites. Why the left despise the workers . Berlin 2016, p. 267 .
  7. ^ Christian Baron: Prolets, Mob, Parasites. Why the left despise the workers . Berlin 2016, p. 268 .
  8. ↑ Christian Baron: A man of his class. In: Friday . October 2019, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Cornelia Geißler: "At the end of the month we sometimes had nothing to eat". In: Berliner Zeitung . February 1, 2020, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Audio book: Baron - A man of his class. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Christian Baron: A man of his class. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
  12. ^ "A man of his class": Even on the lowest fringes of society, you look down on others. Retrieved March 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Baron, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1985
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaiserslautern