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The banal moment in which Europe mutates

2020-09-13T17:46:49.077Z


Hardly anyone knows the continent as well as the Dutch author Geert Mak. In his new book "Great Expectations" he finds reason to criticize the EU - but much more reason to hope.


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Chronicler Mak: The locals had become decoration

Photo: 

Ulrich Baumgarten / Getty Images

There is a corner pub near his publishing house in Amsterdam that Geert Mak can go to after interviews.

When we were there for the first time, many years ago, the decor and staff were exactly what one imagines an downtown neighborhood pub to be.

There was a jukebox, beer and regulars smoking, reading the newspaper or watching the television.

You could sit and talk forever, the prices, as they say, were reasonable.

But when we were there again some time ago to have an after-work drink after an interview about his book "The Many Lives of Jan Six", things were different. 

Nothing in the shop had changed - the same decoration, the same drinks - but the audience seemed to have changed.

The guests were younger than the former regular audience, elegantly dressed and valued the rustic pub as a newly discovered, new location to go out.

You hardly ever came in, it was too loud to talk and it had become significantly expensive.

Mak found this development significant and extremely interesting: In just a few years, the locals had become part of a decoration that other contemporaries visited like a tourist destination.

How is that to be interpreted?

The Dutch author Geert Mak has written himself a unique position in the European cultural landscape: Every book is a literary historiography of our present.

No other author is able to recognize and describe how quickly and exactly how our time changes, at which point banal everyday life mutates and becomes history.

Mak has developed a keen eye for these things and he can tell it vividly without lingering in the anecdote.

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The development of his style began with a mobile home with which he set off through Europe at the beginning of the millennium.

Every day he wrote an article for the daily newspaper for which he was working on the road - it was about historically significant but forgotten places, he described encounters with intellectuals, artists or casual passers-by.

The focus was on opportunities - the continent had not been open and united for that long - and the focus was also on dealing with the ghosts of the past, especially nationalism.

Mak's book "In Europa", published in 2005, became a bestseller because he knew how to free the subject of Europe from the paralyzing boredom into which dutiful political reporting had banished for years. 

Now, after working on his father's village, he has dealt again with the state of Europe.

The book is entitled "Great Expectations" and is an inspection of the intellectual and cultural state of Europe.

Mak sets up a thought experiment: How would he tell a historian from the future about us, about Corona, the crises in Europe, the contrast between town and country, the collective exhaustion, the migration crisis and finally the wild hopes that are still and despite everything here bloom?

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Geert Mak

Great expectations: On the trail of the European dream (1999-2019)

translated by: Andreas Ecke

Published by Siedler Verlag

Number of pages: 640

translated by: Andreas Ecke

Published by Siedler Verlag

Number of pages: 640

Buy for € 38.00

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Mak takes a trip to the borders of the Union, beams us back to the nineties, describes crises and heroes, until readers realize the rare opportunities and spaces of freedom that exist here - but he also shows where Europe is disloyal to its ideal core .

Here he uses dense descriptions from his environment, for example looking at the education system in his home village.

There he knows a committed but headstrong teacher who sometimes redesigns the lessons when there was a violent thunderstorm in the country at night.

Then the whole morning is about lightning and electricity and everything that goes with it.

But because of this, this teacher got into trouble, writes Mak: He doesn't stick to the curriculum enough.

The entire education system, Mak criticizes, has been taken over by managers and consultants who understand little about the actual thing, teaching children, and to whom it is also not important.

He observes the same thing in the procedure for the selection of the European Capital of Culture of the Year: Mak describes it as a parade of professional event managers and consultants, in which there is a lot of money and not those with the core of the matter, a lively, enjoyable cultural production has a lot more to do with.

Europe should reflect better here, because education and culture are essential ideals. 

Between Trump's USA, Putin's Russia and the Chinese, Europe is growing into a new role: a place that is uniquely free, that is committed to education, culture and social justice, and that cultivates and promotes democracy and freedom of expression.

Europe - that is the conclusion of this book, which inevitably creates a good mood - Europe is only just beginning.

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Source: spiegel

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