Legacy. The cabbage logs

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Legacy. The Kohl Protocols is a non-fiction book about Helmut Kohl by the German journalists Heribert Schwan and Tilman Jens published by Heyne Verlag in October 2014 .

content

The non-fiction book, a little over 250 pages long in the first edition, is divided into three chapters plus a foreword and appendix.

In the first chapter “'You did that fine, folk writer!' - My 600 hours with Helmut Kohl ”, Heribert Schwan describes on 46 pages the timing and content of the 105 interviews that he conducted with Kohl between March 2001 and October 2002 and recorded on 200 cassettes with a running time of 630 hours To write the basis of his biography .

In the second, with 160 pages, the most extensive chapter “Come on, let's raise a treasure!” Tilman Jens inserts numerous quotations from Kohl into his own running text in order to present ten subject areas. These include Kohl's self-image (II.2) and his party friends (II.3), political opponents (II.4), his wife Hannelore and his relationship with the Federal President (II.7).

The final third chapter with a length of 16 pages was again written by Schwan. It is a résumé under the title “The legacy of the old man - a little bow at the end”.

reception

In the introduction of his review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Rainer Blasius already suggests that the book has “what it takes to be a bestseller”. He bases his assumption on the combination of “skilful marketing”, “outrage over the violated privacy of the former chancellor” and, ultimately, the content that reveals much of “what has so far remained hidden from the general public”. The book provides a lot of contemporary color and also sharp judgments and the like. a. about Rita Süssmuth , Norbert Blüm and Angela Merkel , which Blasius proves with the corresponding passages of quotations. The selection of quotations supplements the previous Kohl depictions with “lively scenes” which “cannot be denied authenticity”. The result was "a moral image of politics"; the large tape recordings belong "not in an Oggersheim hobby cellar, but in the care of a neat archive that is open to research".

On Spiegel Online , the journalist Jakob Augstein describes the non-fiction book, which gives insights into Kohl's thinking, as an “indispensable document” - the former chancellor's judgment on the genesis of German unity alone is worth the book. Augstein also goes into the legal dispute in his review because the author duo Schwan / Jens had published the Kohl protocols against Kohl's declared will. Judges and lawyers should decide among themselves "whether Schwan had the right to quote from the sources". The publication is justified “in any case”.

The world reviewer Ulrich Clauß also emphasizes the importance of an unfiltered inspection: Kohl's “drastic statements” are “certainly a good source for writing history that does not suffer from anger because of a lack of trust or the bias of being too close”. Even without "offering something really new historically [...]", they would offer "plenty of color from decades of German power perspective".

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The non-fiction book was already a bestseller shortly after publication : in the first week of publication it reached number 2 on the hardcover non-fiction bestseller list of the magazine Buchreport , briefly rose to number 1 after five weeks, stayed in the top 10 for twelve weeks and in the bestseller list overall 21 weeks. The book sold 200,000 times in the first two and a half years.

Litigation

Even before the book was published in October 2014, Helmut Kohl examined legal steps to prevent its spread. Since the publisher, according to its own admission, did not receive an injunction , it delivered the book to the bookstores on schedule. The regional court of Cologne rejected a first attempt to stop the spread by means of an injunction .

In November 2014, the Cologne Regional Court banned the distribution of over a hundred quotations from Kohl and thus the book itself. This included that the duo of authors was not allowed to read the relevant passages, for example at author readings. The sale of books that had already been delivered was not affected.

In 2016, the 115 quotes questioned served the "former ghostwriter Heribert Schwan, the journalist Tilman Jens and the publishing group Random House (Heyne-Verlag) as joint and several debtors" due to an extensive violation of personality, plus damages of at least five million euros to sue five percent interest. When the judgment was passed by the Cologne Regional Court in April 2017, Kohl received a claim to 20% of this amount or one million euros. This was also linked to the fact that Kohl had to bear 80% of the costs of the legal dispute. After Kohl's death, his widow Maike Kohl-Richter tried to get the compensation paid out to himself. The Cologne Higher Regional Court, however, dismissed her action because a claim to monetary compensation was not inheritable.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Blasius: Schwan has long considered itself the better cabbage. In: FAZ.net . October 10, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Jakob Augstein: SPON - When in doubt, left: In Kohl's head. In: Spiegel Online. October 9, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Ulrich Clauss: Kohl's accounting: uncensored protocols of the former chancellor. In: welt.de . October 5, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Legacy. The Kohl-Protocols - book report. In: buchreport.de. Retrieved October 18, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b Detlef Esslinger: Kohl Protocols - He should pay for it. In: sueddeutsche.de . April 27, 2017. Retrieved December 26, 2017 .
  6. ↑ 'Legacy. The Kohl Protocols': Heyne-Verlag delivers controversial Kohl book. In: rp-online.de. October 6, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  7. ↑ phw: Controversial legacy book: Kohl initially fails in court. In: Spiegel Online. October 9, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Peter Kurz: "Kohl Protocols": The forbidden book and the consequences. In: wz.de. November 17, 2014, accessed December 26, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Bernd Dörries: Kohl is fighting for his legacy. In: sueddeutsche.de . March 3, 2016, accessed December 26, 2017 .