Frank Böckelmann

Frank Böckelmann (born July 25, 1941 in Dresden ) is a German author , media and cultural scientist .

Life

Growing up in Stuttgart, Böckelmann lived in Munich from 1960. Here he initially founded literary magazines (including Ludus - with Uwe Lausen - and Texturen - with Hartwin Gromes ), studied philosophy and communication science , assisted the Husserl student Arnold Metzger and from 1963 took part in the Subversive Action , together with Dieter Kunzelmann and Herbert Nagel , Rodolphe Gasché, Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl . In 1966 Böckelmann initiated the “Study Group for Social Theory” and was the spokesman for the “anti-authoritarian faction” in the Munich SDS . Because of rioting , serious turmoil and the captives, he was sentenced to suspended prison sentences. In the summer of 1968 he retired from the SDS and a few years later from the New Left . In addition to his dissertation ( The Problem of Existential Freedom in Karl Jaspers , 1972) with Hermann Krings, he wrote other writings on the concept of freedom in contemporary philosophy. At the end of the 1960s, Böckelmann began to write about everyday phenomena, gender roles and problems of mass communication. From 1969 to 1972 he wrote reports and time diagnoses for Twen and Stern .

From 1976 he worked in free media research. For three decades he worked as a project manager in the communication research group in Munich (AKM) and investigated for public clients a. a. Italian private television, familiar television routines, the links between newspaper publishers and private broadcasters and the economic development in private broadcasting. The Bertelsmann book, which was written together with Hersch Fischler in 2004, ultimately benefited from this . Behind the facade of the media empire .

Together with Dietmar Kamper († 2001) and Walter Seitter , Böckelmann published the Tumult series since 1979 . Publications on transport science. Since spring 2014, in addition to the publication series and also under the main title Tumult, the cross-topic Tumult has been published. Quarterly publication for the disruption of consensus , founded and edited until the end of 2015 and "responsible" by Frank Böckelmann and the Viennese philosopher and editor Horst Ebner , afterwards "edited" by Frank Böckelmann alone. This magazine is published - after an interlude at Alpheus Verlag by Hanns Zischler - by a non-profit organization. According to Böckelmann and Ebner, the founding of such an “organ of current debate” was motivated by “the noticeable reluctance of intellectuals in the face of the convulsion of global powers and markets and the growing pressure of consensus in public opinion online and offline”. Both are mutually dependent.

Böckelmann has been living in his native city of Dresden again since 2010.

Positions

In Böckelmann's argumentation, we encounter motifs from left Hegelianism, from Heidegger , Carl Schmitt and especially from Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio , who also published in Tumult . He has gained general recognition primarily as a stylist who carefully develops his theories based on everyday phenomena.

Böckelmann's books and essays, which deal with a wide range of topics, not least record the history of mentality in the Federal Republic. Coming from the center of the student fundamental opposition, for which Adorno's and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment represented the "actual basic text", they occupied a special position in the last decades of the 20th century. After his departure from the New Left, Böckelmann presented, according to Magnus Klaue in the SZ, “authoritative studies on the aging of Marxism and the change in the authoritarian character”. "His books The Bad Abolition of the Authoritarian Personality and About Marx and Adorno , published in 1971 and 1972 , are still worth reading because they show an unusually clear view of the conformism of the New Left."

In the political debate and the cultural self-perception of (West) Germany since the 1980s, Böckelmann recognizes a fundamental paradox: They lament the loss of the binding nature of all doctrines and virtues that once provided orientation (Christianity, Enlightenment, Marxism, liberalism, psychoanalysis, honor and loyalty, home and fatherland). At the same time, however, certain central ideas such as equal opportunities, self-determination, tolerance, diversity and cosmopolitanism (the “Western” or “European values”) have become indisputable. Böckelmann explains this with the fact that these postulates have forfeited any salary and only function as rules of participation and traffic. They suggested certainty after all certainty had ended.

The title of the book Die Emanzipation ins Void alludes to this interpretation . According to Böckelmann's view - as set out in his basic text Jargon der Weltopenheit , published in 2014 - the "Western values" only offer invitations to discuss possible values ​​and allow the North Atlantic societies to remain in a "zero position".

According to Böckelmann, politics must keep an eye on the overall global development in order not to slide into opportunism or moralism: “Due to the media, mass consumption, intercontinental traffic, popular culture and the Internet, we are already on a largely unbounded earth”. The interchangeability of places, living spaces, faces, origins, religions, attitudes and ways of life threatens. Against this background, multiculturalism and mass migration accelerate - according to Böckelmann - "the cultural standardization and desolation of the earth". Adorno said in 1944: "As a dense fabric of modern communication, the world has become so uniform that the differences between the diplomatic breakfasts in Dumbarton Oaks and Persia as a national timbre must first be figured out and the national peculiarities will primarily be experienced in the rice-hungry millions who have fallen through the narrow meshes, while the abundance of goods that could be produced anywhere and at the same time, the struggle for raw materials and sales areas always appear more anachronistic, humanity is divided into very few armed power blocs. They compete more mercilessly than ever the anarchic commodity production companies and strive towards mutual liquidation. The crazier the antagonism, the more rigid the blocs. Only by total e identification with these power monsters is impressed as second nature on those affected in their greater areas and clogs all pores of consciousness, the masses will behave in the kind of absolute apathy that enables them to perform miracles. " (See Dialectic of Enlightenment) You came to similar analyzes in 1944, but with different consequences. Böckelmann no longer has much in common with critical theory.

Böckelmann sees the advancing process of globalization as the main reason why more and more people are longing for a place back, home and belonging, presence and uniqueness: “In order for a person or a figure or a position to be cosmopolitan, they must first have a status that If it expresses its receptivity, it must belong to a place from which it can open itself to the world. ”Ultimately, Böckelmann considers the increasing“ forgetting of foreignness ”nurtured by indifference to be more disastrous than xenophobia:“ The inhibition to look people in the face and to watch say what you see, a real block of perception (...) ”.

Böckelmann takes an anti-universalist point of view. He denies western civilization the right and the ability to use postulates of the European Enlightenment (equality, freedom of will and choice of the individual, tolerance, democracy) to regulate the understanding of the world. He does not consider the “global triumphal march of a dark-haired and coffee-brown standard person in a uniform world culture to be desirable.” Therefore, Böckelmann was assumed to have a national-conservative attitude. Dierk Spreen wrote in 2017: “Shoot each culture in its own space, borders tight and sharp. (...) It's not about how one could appreciate the other as another. (...) Böckelmann is not concerned with the 'struggle for recognition' (Axel Honneth), but with the enforcement of cultural-folk purity laws according to the motto 'each one's home'. Mixing and hybridity are rejected. (...) The criticism of indifference is, so to speak, the injection needle to inject the poison of ethnic-cultural categories. ”For Böckelmann, however, the“ fight against the law ”has an alibi function: from the“ emergency ”, the“ impending disaster ”of future mass immigration Africa and the Middle East to distract.

Böckelmann devotes a lot of space in his writings to the criticism of the “cult of self-determination”, which he understands as a product of “social techniques of synchronizing individualization”: Fascinated by the promise of unlimited self-availability, we collected options and tried to avoid stipulations as much as possible. An “inexorable self” takes the “autonomy-drunk individual on the curb”. Masculinity and femininity and the "sexual orientations" are lost in the "unified gender of self-availability". The internet, the financial market, coexistence, sex, traffic, administration and democracy have long since become posthuman systems operated by the collective of self-determined people. Through employment and in the struggle for social distribution, individuals sought to expand their potential for self-realization. But “both never end and lock the life plans of the unequal individuals in a status of provisionality”.

In his book Risk, So I Am - From Lust and Suffering of Self-Determined Life (2011), Böckelmann describes the “risk existence” of our days, the last after the “disempowerment of the trend-setting authorities (church, state, family, class, moral law)” Decision-making and responsible authority remain, from this draw the - wrong - conclusion that it has become omnipotent, and then usually no longer gets beyond the level of potentiality.

The reviewer Lorenz Jäger certifies Böckelmann in the FAZ that he remained subversive in a special, unspectacular way: “The true subversive action today would be, for example, a marriage, a child, a renunciation. In other words, an action in which the individual subject no longer perceives himself to be the isolated center of self-care and self-search, but instead surrenders and surrenders. " "In a very successful formulation", Böckelmann speaks of the "search for something that would be worth finally not having a choice". "On the other hand, none of the infinite, juggled promises of possibility come up any more."

Political commitment

Böckelmann's central positions also characterize the editorial line of the political magazine Tumult, which he publishes . Quarterly for consensus disruption (see the article under this title). Böckelmann characterizes the politics of the German federal government, but also the attitude of the majority of the population, as a “short circuit of ethics and economy” at the expense of the people's political will-formation. Under the sign of humanity towards refugees from all over the world and in the face of total digitalization, Germany - and with it all of Europe - is becoming the plaything of the sales and investment interests of corporations and financial markets. The “welcome culture” is a “staging of hyper-moral hubris”.

Böckelmann is often said to have developed from the New Left to the New Right. He was described by the avowed left as a “new right” and even as a “new right propaganda minister” and a “right-wing extremist publicist”. According to Michael Buselmaier (Saarländischer Rundfunk), Böckelmann could “once more feel like part of the avant-garde, because how differently than from the right can you provoke today, when the zeitgeist is far to the left and even seems to include the CDU?” That resistance against the migration policy of the federal government is concentrated in the new federal states, explains Böckelmann with discrepancies in socialization. In the West, a large majority experienced their immersion in the global, American-influenced consumer and pop culture as an economic rise and a way to higher self-esteem. In the new federal states, however, after two dictatorships, many people resisted abstract postulates and slogans, encouraged by the experience of the successful popular uprising in 1989/90. When abstract guiding ideas were later again proclaimed as decisive - “tolerance” and “cosmopolitanism”, “diversity” and global justice - this provoked a defiance. They no longer want to serve as a pool for great purification ideas.

When asked about the political polarization in the German population, Böckelmann said in an interview with Zeit Magazin : “As long as one declares the real danger of a creeping Islamization of Germany to be nonsense; as long as it is said that this is all scare tactics, and as long as everyone who resists is defamed - that long the crack must be deepened. ”All debates in Germany take place on a“ conceptual carpet ”, which from the outset confirms the established and the right devalue others. Those who defend themselves against “chaotic mass immigration” are defamed as “right-wing populist” and “Nazi”. Most of the opportunities for discussion are purely therapeutic in nature.

Böckelmann took part in a demonstration of the Pegida movement in Dresden on December 15, 2014 . He is said to have said himself to a Stern reporter: “There are hardly any immigrants in Saxony today. But in 50 to 100 years there is a risk of Islamization of Germany. I want to resist the fact that traditions mix and that differences are no longer discernible. Politics opens the door to anyone who wants to get in. The people feel that they have to gather under the flag. "

Böckelmann was one of the first to sign the " Joint Declaration 2018 " initiative launched by Vera Lengsfeld . In its wording, Germany is being damaged by “illegal mass immigration” and solidarity is expressed with peaceful demonstrators who are demonstrating for the restoration of the “constitutional order at the borders of our country”. In addition to Böckelmann, Thilo Sarrazin , Matthias Matussek , Uwe Tellkamp , Henryk M. Broder and others signed the declaration.

Böckelmann contributed the foreword to Björn Höcke's volume "Never twice in the same river".

In March 2019, Böckelmann was one of the first to sign the appeal “Stop gender language now!”, Alongside Norbert Bolz , Wolfgang Grupp, Reiner Kunze, Helmut Markwort , Josef Reichholf and others. a.

Fonts (selection)

• as editor: The writings on JG Fichte's atheism dispute. Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1969.
• Liberation from everyday life. Models of a coexistence without pressure to perform, frustration and fear Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-920802-53-5 .
• The bad abolition of the authoritarian personality (= Marxism Library. 7, ZDB -ID 120176-1 ). Makol-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971, (several editions, most recently around ira, Freiburg 2017).
• with Anita Albus , Bazon Brock , Peter Gorsen , Hazel Rosenstrauch and Rita Mühlbauer : Masculine - Feminine. Sex is the most unnatural thing in the world. Rogner and Bernhard, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-920802-87-X (2nd, increased edition, ibid 1975).
• About Marx and Adorno. Difficulties of late Marxist theory (= Marxism library. 21). Makol-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972 (2nd edition reviewed by the author. Ça-Ira-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 1998, ISBN 3-924627-53-3 ).
• with Reinhard Wetter: prison report. Makol-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972.
• The problem of existential freedom with Karl Jaspers. Munich 1972, (Munich, University, Dissertation, 1973).
• Mass Communication Theory. The system of the created public, impact research and social communication relationships. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-00658-4 (In Italian: Teoria della comunicazione di massa. Meccanismi della formazione dell'opinione pubblica. Ricerca delle conseguenze e condizioni della comunicazione sociale (= Comunicazione di massa. 5) . Eri, Turin 1980; In Spanish: Formación y funciones sociales de la opinión pública. Gili, Barcelona 1983).
• as editor with Herbert Nagel : Subversive Action. The point of the organization is its failure. New Critique Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-8015-0142-6 (also: ibid. 2002, ISBN 3-8015-0352-6 ).
• heidenheim. a homeland poem. With a frontispiece by Joseph Beuys . Alphëus-Verlag, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-922555-01-2 .
• with Günter Nahr: State public relations in the change of political communication (= AfK studies. 11). Spiess, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-920889-83-5 .
• Italy. Self-regulation of a “free” radio market (= commercial television in media competition. Vol. 2 = AfK studies. 20). Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88435-109-5 .
• with Dietrich Leube: The Disaster Album (= Delphi. 1026). Greno, Nördlingen 1985, ISBN 3-921568-60-9 .
• Journalism as a Profession. Balance of communicator research in German-speaking countries from 1945 to 1990 (= publications of the German Society for COMNET. Vol. 10). Universitäts-Verlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1993, ISBN 3-87940-455-0 .
• Economic ties and competition of the media in Bavaria. An inventory (= BLM series of publications. 25). R. Fischer, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-88927-131-6 (several editions).
• with Claudia Mast and Beate Schneider : Journalism in the new federal states. A profession between departure and processing (= media and markets. Vol. 3). Universitäts-Verlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1994, ISBN 3-87940-443-7 .
• To the movies. Boer, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-924963-62-2 .
• with Kurt Hesse: Who owns private radio? Extent and impact of participation in private broadcasting in Germany (= AKM studies. 41). UVK-Medien, Konstanz 1996, ISBN 3-89669-216-X .
• Sink terms. Endurance tests and liquidations in three decades. Syndikat, Bodenheim 1997, ISBN 3-931705-09-9 (later under the title: Die Emanzipation ins Leere. Contributions to the history of opinions 1960-2000. Philo, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0167-0 ).
• The yellow, the black, the white (= The Other Library . Vol. 159). Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-8218-4159-1 (also: ibid 1999, ISBN 3-8218-4475-2 ; awarded the special prize “ The Political Book ” of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation ). Extended new edition: Berlin 2018.
• Run into open doors. Review of the early and late sixties. In: Claus-M. Wolfschlag (Ed.): Bye-bye '68 ... Renegades of the left, APO deviants and all kinds of lateral thinkers report. Stocker, Graz et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0815-2 , pp. 71-87, (autobiographical sketch).
• German simplicity. Reflections on an Unknown Land. Hanser, Munich et al. 1999, ISBN 3-446-19757-5 .
• Who do the newspapers belong to? The ownership and ownership structure of the daily and weekly newspaper publishers in Germany (= AKM studies. 44). UVK-Medien, Konstanz 2000, ISBN 3-89669-321-2 .
• with Hersch Fischler: Bertelsmann. Behind the facade of the media empire. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-8218-5551-7 .
• Radio in Germany. Framework conditions and competitive situation, inventory 2006. A study. Vistas-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89158-441-5 .
• The world as a place. Explorations in an unbounded existence. Karolinger et al., Vienna et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-85418-123-1 .
• Risk, therefore I am. Of the pleasure and burden of self-determined life. Galiani, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86971-034-1 .
• Open-minded jargon. What are our values ​​still worth? Edition Sonderwege in Manuscriptum, Waltrop et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-937801-96-4 .
• with Dietrich Leube: Escape or hardship makes you inventive: ways out in words and pictures. The Other Library , Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-8477-0385-3 .
• as editor: Rolf Peter Sieferle: The migration problem - On the incompatibility of the welfare state and mass immigration (The series of works by TUMULT # 01). Manuscript, Waltrop / Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-944872-41-4 .

Other titles: s. Keyword: tumult. Quarterly publication for disagreement with the consensus , section “Series of works”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} tumult. Publications on transport science
2. ^ Tumult quarterly, 9th edition, winter 2015/16 p. 1 (unpaginated)
3. ↑ Ibid., 10th edition, spring 2016 ff., P. 1 (unpaginated)
4. ↑ Biographical note in his book Jargon der Weltoffenheit , 2014.
5. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar (Ed.): Frankfurt School and Student Movement. From message in a bottle to Molotov cocktail, 1946–1995. Volume 3: Articles and Commentaries, Index. Rogner & Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-8077-0347-0 .
6. ↑ Magnus Klaue: Landnahme im Bodenlosen , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 95 of April 24, 2017, p. 13
7. ↑ ibid
8. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: Jargon of cosmopolitanism. What are our values ​​still worth? Edition Sonderwege at Manuscriptum, Waltrop / Berlin 2014. See Tumult, Spring 2016 edition, p. 6
9. ^ Frank Böckelmann: The emancipation into the void. Contributions to the history of attitudes 1960–2000. Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin / Vienna 2000
10. ↑ Böckelmann: Jargon der Weltoffenheit, 2014, pp. 63 f., 109, 124 f.
11. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: Sehnsucht nach Heimat, in: Focus, No. 04/16 of January 23, 2016, p. 45.
12. ↑ ibid
13. ↑ Böckelmann: Jargon der Weltoffenheit, 2014, p. 102.
14. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: The yellow, the black, the white. New edition. Berlin 2018. Foreword, p. 8 u. 20 f. See the review by Claudius Seidl: The horrors of foreignness and lack of understanding. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, No. 11 of March 17, 2019, p. 39.
15. ↑ Cf. F. Böckelmann: The yellow, the black, the white . Frankfurt / M. 1998, Volume 159 of the Other Library, p. 445.
16. ↑ Dierk Spreen: The intellectuals and right-wing populism, in: Neue Gesellschaft / Frankfurter Hefte, N. 5/2017, pp. 42–47. Here: p. 44.
17. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: Auf der Realitätsflucht, in: Tumult, Autumn 2018 edition, p. 4 f.
18. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: The mass democracy in the thinking of Peter Furth. Introduction to Peter Furth: Mass Democracy. Landt Verlag, Waltrop / Berlin 2015, p. 40.
19. ↑ Böckelmann: Jargon der Weltoffenheit, 2014, p. 114 f. See Tumult, Spring 2015 edition, p. 6.
20. ↑ ibid
21. ↑ Frank Böckelmann: Risk, therefore I am. Of the pleasure and burden of self-determined life. Publishing house Galiani Berlin, Cologne 2011.
22. ↑ Ibid, p. 13. Cf. Frank Böckelmann: Movement (written 1988), in: Wolfgang Kraushaar (Ed.): Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 3. Hamburg 1998, p. 206 f.
23. ↑ Lorenz Jäger: In the darkness of the lived moment. Frank Böckelmann: "Risk, therefore I am", in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 12, 2011.
24. ↑ Tumult, Spring 2016 edition, p. 6.
25. ↑ Michael Buselmeier: Reading magazines within the program Literature in Conversation on SR2 KulturRadio, July 11, 2017.
26. ↑ Marc Felix Serrao: New German Hardness , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, No. 64 of March 17, 2018, 21 or Peter Richter: Mitteldeutsch, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 206 of September 7, 2018, p. 3.
27. ↑ Martin Machowecz: City of Pain. A portrait of Dresden, in: Zeit Magazin, No. 21 of May 17, 2018, pp. 14–21. Here: p. 19.
28. ^ Tilman Gerwien: Uprising from the middle. In: stern , No. 1/2015, December 23, 2014, p. 130.
29. ^ Christian Schröder: Tellkamp for solidarity against immigrants. "Declaration 2018". Der Tagesspiegel , March 19, 2018, accessed on March 19, 2018 . 
30. ^ Authors against "illegal mass immigration". Joint statement. DLF24 , March 19, 2018, accessed March 19, 2018 . 

Web links

• Literature by and about Frank Böckelmann in the catalog of the German National Library