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"Entrepreneur Friedrich:" Shut up, Germany! "
Photo: Dominik Butzmann / DER SPIEGEL, Courtesy Martin Eder / VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2020
Friedrich brings his Stasi files in the Ferrari.
It's a Saturday morning in September, the Ferrari is light gray, the files are thick.
It is in a big black shopping bag that says: Power To The Players.
Holger Friedrich wears Budapest shoes, without socks, as he likes.
He also has the pretty little travel bag made of soft leather with him.
That could mean light luggage for the escape.
That's his dress code.
He usually wears very good shirts and a beard that is less reminiscent of a hipster than of a tsar's murderer.
He sits down at my kitchen table.
The file waits in the chair like a dog.
The clutter, he says, has been in the Ferrari's trunk for weeks.
Friedrich has a weakness for symbolism.
The bag, the files, the car, the beard, the smile.
No socks.
It's his game, not hers.
Almost exactly a year ago he and his wife Silke surprisingly introduced themselves as the new owners of the Berliner Verlag, in which the "Berliner Zeitung" appears.
Two good-looking, well-dressed East people who were unknown on the decks of the old West German publishing ships.
The new.
In their first public appearances, they seemed pleased that they had no idea of the so-called laws of the newspaper market.
For 30 years, various west owners from Hamburg, Cologne and London had experimented with the "Berliner Zeitung".
It seemed as if she would finally return to the East, another, new, self-confident East.
The two Friedrichs called it "punk".
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