Under left

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Under left. About someone who accidentally became conservative is an autobiographical non-fiction book published by the former Spiegel journalist Jan Fleischhauer in 2009 in the German Rowohlt Verlag . A year later, Spiegel TV Magazin also released the film Unter Linken. The film for the book.

Form and content

The book has autobiographical features. The author traces his own career to this day, with various references to his parents and their generation. Fleischhauer describes the change in authority in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1968 from a Christian-conservative to a partially radical left-wing society. It presents the education system , the media ( taz and Die Zeit ) and social work as areas in which the left has gained the upper hand in recent years.

He reports on the politically left milieu in which he grew up. He tells, for example, of the parents' aversion to fast food from the USA , the constant reminder of the liberation from National Socialism by the Allies and the political magazines such as Emma that they subscribe to . The book addresses an assumed “victim role” of the left. It also shows Fleischhauer's detachment from this very milieu and positions Fleischhauer in the conservative environment.

reception

In a FAZ review, Julia Encke laments Fleischhauer's idea of ​​humor as well as his stylization as a “victim of that left-wing socialization that made him [...] what he no longer wants to be today.” The Tagesspiegel sees the replacement of Fleischhauer's mother as central theme of the book, which itself remains rather boring. For Hartmut Kühne in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, too, Fleischhauer had mainly written a book about his mother and her generation, but had not taken note of the developments since that time. Fleischhauer persists in the past, the reading tastes correspondingly stale, and his arguments remain weak on many points. All three reviews criticize the fact that Fleischhauer does not define his topic, the “left”.

Fleischhauer's change of position was condemned, among other things, as opportunistic, as well as compared with the polemic caution, good people from the left and Rudolf Krämer-Badoni's various changes . According to Eva Menasse , what Fleischhauer labels as left is often conservative and educated bourgeois herself. The question of whether Fleischhauer is thereby rather distant from or close to the state was controversial among reviewers. The book is considered to be a comparatively entertaining, Anglo-Saxon rather than faithful German read, which some find shallow and somewhat boring. The rediscovery of the conservative stated in connection with the book is occasionally questioned. What comes along as a taboo has long been mainstream intellectual.

resonance

In 2009 the book was among the top 10 of the Spiegel bestseller list for non-fiction books for several months .

In 2010, Jan Fleischhauer was honored with the Karl Hermann Flach Prize of the Karl Hermann Flach Foundation for his book .

output

  • Jan Fleischhauer: On the left: By someone who accidentally became conservative . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-498-02125-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Denis Scheck : On a nose of coke with cabbage. In: Der Tagesspiegel . July 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b Hartmut Kühne: "Unter Linken". A settlement with the alleged zeitgeist. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . July 6, 2009.
  3. ↑ Julia Encke: The man they called the red rat . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 11, 2009.
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Meyer: Jan Fleischhauer: A thanks. In: Neue Gesellschaft / Frankfurter Hefte , Volume 56, July / August 2009 ( PDF ).
  5. ↑ a b Critique of the Left: The Man They Called the Red Rat . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 11, 2009.
  6. ↑ Review in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 6, 2009 at perlentaucher.de
  7. ^ Henryk M. Broder : Caution, good people from the left . In: Die Weltwoche . May 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ a b Tobias Rüther: What is left? I am a lover of fried chanterelles. In: FAZ. June 29, 2009.
  9. ^ Rudolf Stumberger : Villenviertel-Jan and Gutmenschen-Kai . In: Telepolis . June 12, 2009.
  10. ↑ Georg Gafron : Farewell to self-deception . In: Focus . May 30, 2009.
  11. ↑ Alexander Gauland : Just get away from the intellectual Tuscany chic. In: The time . May 20, 2009.
  12. ↑ Alexander Gauland: Just get away from the intellectual Tuscany chic. In: The time. May 20, 2009, cit. according to Tobias Rüther: What is left? I am a lover of fried chanterelles. In: FAZ. June 29, 2009.
  13. ↑ Stephenie Meyer still at the helm. Bestseller lists from July 13, 2009. In: Die Berliner Literaturkritik . July 13, 2009.
  14. ^ Henryk M. Broder: Democracy is not a boutique . In: The world . September 16, 2010.