Tilman Jens

Tilman Jens, 2011

Tilman Jens (born September 5, 1954 in Tübingen ; † July 29, 2020 in Leipzig ) was a German journalist , book author and filmmaker .

Life

Tilman Jens was the eldest son of the writer Inge Jens and the classical philologist and literary historian Walter Jens . After graduating from the Odenwald School in Ober-Hambach, he studied in Constance . In the mid-1970s he worked for television and was active for cultural programs such as the NDR book journal and titles, theses, temperaments of the Hessian broadcasting company .

Tilman Jens caused a sensation in 1984 as editor of Stern with a report on the death of the writer Uwe Johnson . To research, he went into the empty house of the late poet in Sheerness , England . The star separated from Jens after the circumstances surrounding the report became known.

In a report for the WDR - Kulturweltspiegel on May 29, 1994, Jens accused the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki , until then a close friend of his father's, during his time as Vice Consul in London for the Polish secret service, under false pretexts, regime-critical Poles in exile "to their homeland lured back ”. Some of these emigrants were then sentenced to death by the Polish regime. In his replies, which he concluded in his biography (1999), Reich-Ranicki contradicted the "completely lies" allegations of complicity in murder. His widespread silence about his secret service activities was due to an obligation to maintain secrecy, the breach of which he was threatened with the "sharpest" consequences. He himself considered his work for the secret service to be "irrelevant and superfluous". The historian Andrzej Paczkowski contradicted Jens; there is no evidence that "Reich helped during his time in London to lure exiled Poles into a trap".

From the mid-1990s, Jens was the author of television documentaries for ARD . In addition to portraits of celebrities such as Kurt Masur , Oswalt Kolle , Axel Springer and Harald Juhnke , he created reports from culture , theology and politics . These included reports on cosmetic surgery , Christian fundamentalism in Germany, the way Scientology works , everyday euthanasia , the Stasi spying on the Springer group and the execution of Tookie Williams .

In 2007 Jens produced a report on cryonics . The German Society for Applied Biostasis , which advocates cryonics, called the report "unreflective". The journalist misrepresented experiments and made improper comparisons. However, she had refused an interview offered by Jens.

On March 4, 2008, Tilman Jens published his father's dementia in the feature section of the FAZ , triggering a debate in the German-language media. In June 2009 his book Demenz was published. Farewell to my father , a year later he replied to the media coverage with parricide. Against a general suspicion . Many reviewers consider the first book on his father's dementia to be an important work that captures physical and intellectual decline with journalistic precision; But criticism was also expressed about his thesis that his father wanted to forget and keep quiet about his former NSDAP membership with the illness.

As a result of the reports on cases of abuse at the Odenwald School , Tilman Jens, ex-pupil and member of the sponsoring association of the Odenwald School, published the book Freiwild in May 2011 . A lesson from perpetrators and victims . At a book presentation in Darmstadt in 2011, followed by a panel discussion with Meinhard Schmidt-Degenhard and Bernhard Bueb - himself a former teacher at the school - Jens spoke of a failed or failed clarification of the abuse cases. Two days earlier, in an interview on Deutschlandradio , he had already complained about the “hunt” on demonstrably innocent teachers. In his book review in Die Welt , Jan Küveler criticized that Jens allowed himself to be carried away to generalizations in the “defense of individuals who might be innocent”, “which can hardly be distinguished from trivializations”. Alan Posener called Jens' book in the world on Sunday an "important book [...] which will hopefully mark the beginning of a serious discussion about the taboo of pedagogical eros."

The 2013 volume Der Sündenfall des Rechtsstaats. A pamphlet on the new religious struggle. In such circumstances. Matthias Dohmen attested little resemblance to the pamphlets by Ludwig Börne , Heinrich Heine or Friedrich Engels , but Jens used some questionable arguments. For example, the case of a raped woman from Cologne is misrepresented, who was not "refused a gynecological examination" in a church hospital, as Jens claims, but the "morning-after pill" was withheld, which was still bad enough. The alleged compliance of the policy towards the Central Council of Jews was also an allegation. The thesis that a “coalition of the pious” would lead to a “war against the rule of law” had to be backed up with more material than Jens did. The publisher was advised to employ a lecturer, as Jens had referred to the lawyer (and former construction worker) Rolf Schwanitz as a "belly skilled worker ". Tanjev Schultz acknowledged the book in the Süddeutsche Zeitung to be short-lived, but accused it of exaggeration when it spoke of a “coalition of the pious” going to war against the rule of law. With such speeches, Jens overshoots the goal of the desired debate, because he puts representatives of the faith in the corner of an enemy, against whom words can hardly do anything anymore.

Jens was married twice, worked as a freelance journalist for television and lived in Frankfurt am Main and most recently in Leipzig. There he died by suicide at the age of 65 after a long illness .

Der Spiegel wrote in the obituary: “In his work Jens also dealt with the abuse scandal at the Odenwald School, with the Stasi, Scientology and Stephen Bannon, he never avoided anger. He wasn't always right, but who does that? Jens was a hard-working, brilliant scout who did not shy away from arguments; he made the republic more alert and wiser. "

Publications

• On the way to the place where the dead are. Looking for Uwe Johnson in Sheerness. Piper, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-492-00690-6 .
• Mark Twain. Return to the Mississippi. Piper, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-492-05223-1 .
• Goethe and his victims. A diatribe. Patmos, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-491-72411-2 .
• Dementia. Farewell to my father. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2009, ISBN 978-3-579-06998-2 .
• Parricide. Against a general suspicion. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2010, ISBN 978-3-579-06870-1 .
• Free wild. A lesson from perpetrators and victims. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2011, ISBN 978-3-579-06744-5 .
• Axel Caesar Springer . A German enemy. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, ISBN 978-3-451-30542-9 .
• The fall of man under the rule of law. A pamphlet on the new religious struggle. In such circumstances. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2013, ISBN 978-3-579-06632-5 .
• with Heribert Schwan : Legacy. The Kohl Protocols Heyne, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-453-20077-7 . ( 1st place on the Spiegel bestseller list from November 24th to 30th, 2014 )
• You should be allowed to die. Why a living will is not enough. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2015, ISBN 978-3-579-07096-4 .
• Stephen Bannon: Trump's Dark Whisperer. Heyne, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-45320188-0 .

Filmography (selection)

• 1997–2009: picture book . (TV series, direction and production, 13 episodes)
• 2006: face to order. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2007: Art and Cosmos. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2007: The Hardliners of the Lord - Christian Fundamentalists in Germany. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2007: Cold for the heart - saving life from the ice. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2008: Populated by fighters and dreamers - Turkey and its literature. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2009: Brainwashers - How Dangerous is Scientology. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2009: Dieting fat - why losing weight is sometimes hopeless. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2009: Spied on Springer! How the State Security spied on a media company. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2010: Killing for Peace - Politics, the Church and War. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2012: Circumcision dispute. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2012: The Fukushima Shock - Energy, Morals and Big Money. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2013: In a coma and yet conscious? (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2013: Coalition of the Pious How much religion can the republic take? (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2014: Ghost Towns: The death zone around Fukushima. (Documentation, direction and author)
• 2014: gangsters and genetics. (Documentation, direction and author)

Web links

• Literature by and about Tilman Jens in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tilman Jens in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Website of Tilman Jens

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tilman Jens is dead Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online, August 3, 2020, obituary notice in the Süddeutsche Zeitung online, August 8, 2020.
2. ↑ ^{a b} G.Z .: possessed. Why does Tilman have to persecute Jens MRR so persistently? ( Memento of April 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: epd medien , No. 67, August 28, 2002, archived by Internet Archive .
3. ^ ^{A b} Thomas Anz : Dispute over Reich-Ranicki's work for the Polish secret service. on: literaturkritik.de , April 17, 2004.
4. ^ Report by Tilman Jens. ( Memento from October 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (Kalt ums Herz) on: biostase.de , March 29, 2010.
5. ↑ Tilman Jens: Father's Forgetting. In: FAZ. March 4, 2008.
6. ↑ Jens book "literary father murder". dpa / The Berlin literary criticism , March 5, 2008.
7. ↑ Parricide. In: Tübinger Wochenblatt. April 3, 2008.
8. ↑ I'm not scoffing at my father! on: planet-interview.de , July 21, 2009.
9. ↑ Author Tilman Jens on "Dementia" and "Parricide". ( Memento from March 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Pforzheimer Zeitung. September 21, 2010.
10. ↑ Willi Winkler: On the death of Tilman Jens - The son. Retrieved August 3, 2020 . 
11. ^ Tilman Jens: Fair game. Documentation of the book presentation on May 18, 2011 , published by the book publisher in nine parts on www.youtube.com , accessed on August 3, 2020.
12. ↑ "We haven't looked closely". - Tilman Jens in conversation with Joachim Scholl. In: Deutschlandradio. May 16, 2011.
13. ↑ Lambs and Lions. In the book “Freiwild” Tilman Jens defends his Odenwald school. In: The world. May 20, 2011.
14. ↑ Abuse and Revenge. In “Freiwild”, Tilman Jens describes the sex scandal at the Odenwald School - and how education turns into hysteria. In: Welt am Sonntag. May 22, 2011.
15. ^ Matthias Dohmen: Tilman Jens: "The Fall of Man in the Rule of Law" - At work with coarse dishes. In: Forward . May 14, 2013.
16. ↑ Where is the “Coalition of the Pious”? In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 3rd September 2013.
17. ↑ Oedipus and the Old Man's Books. In: Welt am Sonntag. May 9, 2010.
18. ↑ Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Heribert Schwan in Conclusion , August 3, 2020 .
19. ↑ Tilman Jens, 65 Obituary Der Spiegel

This article is about suicide. For those at risk, there is a wide network of offers of help in which ways out are shown. In acute emergencies, the telephone counseling and the European emergency number 112 can be reached continuously and free of charge. After an initial crisis intervention , qualified referrals can be made to suitable counseling centers on request.