It's up to you to choose
I sing you, democracy: The election is the first of a number of speeches that Günter Grass held as a private election speaker for the Social Democratic Party of Germany until 1976 . Grass gave the speech on a speaking tour organized by the Social Democratic University Association and Liberal Student Association of Germany through the Federal Republic at the time of the 1965 federal election campaign . It was published by Luchterhand Literaturverlag in 1965 as an 11-page publication, also in print and on a record.
For its surtitling, the author slightly modified a word from Walt Whitman .
content
In its most controversial passages, the speech to “determined and undecided voters”, which lasted just under an hour, demanded recognition of the Oder-Neisse border or argued against paragraph 218 “beyond all party convention resolutions” (Grass) . Another interpretation of June 17, 1953 that followed the young Willy Brandt and opposed Konrad Adenauer : the events in West Germany were "deliberately falsified into a popular uprising". In the absence of the participation of the bourgeoisie, the peasants and - with the exception of Leipzig - the students who did not show solidarity with the rebels despite chanting in front of universities, it was all about a workers' uprising. In addition, the speech presented Grass' campaign " Books for the Bundeswehr " and called for the age of majority to be reduced in accordance with conscription. The text of the speech was subdivided into a number of other small demands: Grass recommended, for example, the abolition of the 5% clause, which in his view is incompatible with a democracy . In addition, government politicians were approached, for example Ludwig Erhard was described as ineligible for having spoken a Goebbels word in a public speech about “degeneracy of modern art”. Grass ends with a list of political and social visions: “There are democratic stories in the air. All of this is up to you. "
Framework
Admission was charged for the events in fifty German cities in halls with sometimes well over a thousand seats. The surplus should benefit the “Books for the Bundeswehr” campaign.
Grass specially designed a drawing for the event poster for the speaking tour. On it you can see a rooster crows "Es Pe De". The actual abbreviation of the supported party (SPD) was not found on the poster to make the private nature of the initiative clear.
In My Century , Grass describes an election campaign event on September 14, 1965 in Cloppenburg , at which his speech provoked tumult and egg-throwing. Contrary to his memory, however, he did not give the speech There is a choice , but I accuse .
be right
Peter Bruges writes in a contemporary Spiegel report about the content of the speech It is possible to choose :
- Even friend Schiller, the professor and ready-to-leap economics minister of the shadow cabinet, with whom the poet appeared at the beginning of his strangely private election campaign, is said not to have suspected beforehand what we would be talking about that evening. Es-Pe-De and SPD march separately.
In 1996, Hans Adler and Jost Hermand stated that "the relationship between political speaker and writer (...) in It is up to you (...) remained unmediated".
further reading
- Timm Niklas Pietsch: “Who is still listening?”: Günter Grass as a political speaker and essayist . Plain text, 2006
Individual evidence
- ^ Gero von Wilpert (Ed.): Lexicon of world literature. German authors . 4., completely reworked. Ed., Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, p. 212.
- ↑ a b c d Original wording
- ↑ a b The election drummer for the Es-Pe-De . In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1965
- ↑ Günter Grass: My Century. Göttingen, Steidl 1999, p. 265.
- ↑ Günter Grass: I am indicting. The Cloppenburg campaign speech. September 14, 1965. Audiobook ed. v. Kai Schlueter. Production Radio Bremen / Ch. Links Verlag 2011.
- ↑ Peter Bruges: ZISCHOMAN, ZISCHOPLEX, ZISCHOPHIL . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1965, p. 20 ( online ).