Geert Mak

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Geert Mak (2010)

Geert Ludzer Mak (born December 4, 1946 in Vlaardingen ) is a Dutch writer and essayist .

Life

The son of a preacher of the Reformed Church in the north of the Netherlands Friesland completed a law degree at the University of Amsterdam . After that, he briefly took on a position as an academic lecturer at the University of Utrecht , where he taught public law and immigration law. Since the uniformity and limitations of the legal field of activity were not enough for him, he switched to a responsible journalistic position at the left-wing weekly De Groene Amsterdammer for ten years in 1975 . As a sideline, he founded the literary magazine Atlas , which anticipated his subsequent freelance existence as a writer.

Mak is the winner of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2008.

In 2013 he was a member of the jury for the award The Extraordinary Book of the children and youth program of the Berlin International Literature Festival .

As part of the ceremony for the 25th anniversary of the Center for Dutch Studies at the Westphalian Wilhelms University (WWU) Münster , Mak received an honorary doctorate from the History / Philosophy Department of the WWU Münster on December 11, 2014. The reason for the award states that Mak is "as a gifted storyteller in a position [...] to combine specialist science, popularization, intellectual originality and commitment".

He is married and lives in Amsterdam and Friesland.

subjects

His intense curiosity and observation of everyday life and developments in the Netherlands and its cities and provinces resulted in several successful book publications. An extensive passion for travel, which he also used for research work in order to write reports and travel books, provided him with a wealth of international opportunities for comparison and conversation partners. From the beginning, he paid particular attention to contemporary history of the 20th century. In 1997, the German translation of his study on the most important Dutch cultural metropolis, Amsterdam , appeared two years later, a large-scale monograph on the fall of the village in Europe . De eeuw van mijn vader 1999 ( My father's century , dt. 2005), which explored my own family history in a broad, broader context, was a great success, not only with literary critics but also with readers.

Nachgeholt appeared in the German edition 2005 In Europa. A journey through the 20th century , Mak's collected essays on the major and minor lines of development in the history of many European countries in the 20th century. There was also a series on Dutch television based on the book. When asked about errors in his portrayal on the talk show Pauw en Witteman on March 10, 2008, Mak defended his claim that the 1942 Wannsee Conference had decided the Holocaust. (In fact, the decision was made earlier.)

At the same time, his timely analysis of the background and consequences of the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 came out. His reception thesis, based on many circumstantial evidence , sparked controversial discussions: the politicians and the media had become “traders of fear” and had fueled a hysterical Islamophobia , while the citizens remained calm after the murder of van Gogh. However, Mak's comparison of Theo van Gogh's film Submission with the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew met with great opposition : both used the same propaganda technique. While the right to violence against women was concretized in Submission with the corresponding Koran suras on women's bodies, the Nazi film The Eternal Jude underlay images of terrifying figures from the Warsaw ghetto with Talmudic texts. Mak cannot see any significant difference in the respective connection between scriptures and people and wants to warn the public about it.

In the aftermath of the murder, Geert Mak noted a “ moral panic ”. In the country's media and especially on the Internet, “xenophobia that has been pent up for years” has erupted. In addition to the media, the political parties tried to instrumentalize the murder for their own interests. It "began a fear trade, even worse, there was almost an addiction to fear", "the Muslims" would soon "take over the majority" in the big cities, for example representatives of the right-wing liberal ruling party VVD . Until then, the publicist Geert Mak was considered an undisputed moral authority among his compatriots. Despite the pamphletistic character of his writing, he managed to initiate a broad debate about the state of democracy in the Netherlands.

While the tenor of the criticism of his analysis still met with more or less approval in large parts, his Nazi comparisons were sharply criticized by the VVD, the Arabist Hans Jansen and the writer Leon de Winter . His instrumentalization of anti-Semitism was met with angry protests. Mak failed to respond directly to this part of the criticism, as usual, instead his publisher stated that he had not compared van Gogh's film Submission (Part I) as a whole with The Eternal Jew , based on the script Ayaan Hirsi Alis . The German daily Die Welt commented on Mak's behavior as follows:

“In view of his own excitement, he thoroughly failed a cool analysis, and the angry polemics about the rescue of a long-buried multicultural dream, which repeatedly shines through, do not advance the Netherlands either. Nevertheless, “The murder of Theo van Gogh” is still worth reading. Not as an analysis of a "moral panic", but as an interior view of a country in at least a mental state of emergency. "

Selected works

  • 1992: De engel van Amsterdam . ISBN 90-254-0034-5
  • 1997 Amsterdam - biography of a city . Siedler, Berlin, ISBN 3-88680-612-X , 350 pp. (Dutch Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam , 1995)
  • 1999 How God disappeared from Jorwerd . The fall of the village in Europe . Siedler, Berlin, ISBN 3-88680-669-3 (ndl. 1996: Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd )
  • 2005: My Father's Century . Siedler, ISBN 3-442-73347-2 (ndl. 1999: De eeuw van mijn vader )
  • 2004: In Europe ; German: 2005 In Europe. A journey through the 20th century . Settlers, ISBN 3-88680-826-2
  • 2005: The murder of Theo van Gogh. Story of a moral panic . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main, ISBN 3-518-12463-3 (ndl. 2005: Gedoemd tot kwetsbaarheid , ISBN 90-450-1382-7 )
  • 2007: The Istanbul Bridge. A journey between orient and occident . Pantheon, Munich, ISBN 978-3-570-55040-3 (ndl. 2007: De brug . ISBN 978-90-5965-046-6 )
  • 2013: A brief history of the Netherlands. A historical portrait . CH Beck, Munich, ISBN 978-3-406-64559-4 (already published in 2008 under the title Netherlands in the series Die Deutschen und seine Nachbarn )
  • 2013: America! - In search of the land of opportunity . Siedler, Munich, ISBN 978-3-8275-0023-6 (Dutch original: 2012: Reizen zonder John - op zoek naar Amerika . Atlas Contact, Amsterdam, ISBN 978-90-450-2084-6 )
  • 2016: De levens van Jan Six: a divorcee . Uitgeverij Atlas Contact, Amsterdam / Antwerp, ISBN 978-90-450-2776-0
    • The many lives of Jan Six . From the Dutch by Gregor Seferens and Andreas Ecke. Siedler, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8275-0087-8
  • 2019: Grote Verwachtingen. In Europe 1999-2019 . Uitgeverij Atlas Contact, Amsterdam / Antwerp, ISBN 9789045038919
    • Great expectations. On the trail of the European dream (1999-2019) from the Dutch by Andreas Ecke. Siedler, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-8275-0137-0
  • 2020: Epiloog bij Grote Verwachtingen . Uitgeverij Atlas Contact, Amsterdam / Antwerp, ISBN 9789045042916

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See press release from the University of Münster
  2. ↑ See press release from the University of Münster
  3. ^ Jan Kanter: Disturbed Netherlands, indignant Netherlands . In: Die Welt , January 21, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Mak, Geert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mak, Geert Ludzer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch writer and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Vlaardingen