A booth of publishers of the New Right at the Frankfurt Book Fair led to a controversy shortly before the fair's official opening.
The Anne Frank educational institution expressed its solidarity in a statement published on Tuesday with the author Jasmina Kuhnke, who had canceled her appearance at the book fair because of the Junge Europa publishing house represented there.
Frankfurt / Main - "It is a disaster for our culture of open debate when those affected by racism, anti-Semitism and misanthropy withdraw from the Frankfurt Book Fair as the largest debate fair in the country because they don't feel safe there," said Meron Mendel, the director the educational institution.
"In Germany we now have to document racist and anti-Semitic attacks on people on a daily basis," said Mendel.
“Attacks like those in Halle, Hanau or the murder of Walter Lübcke make it abundantly clear that the poisonous ideology of the right represents a real danger to human life.
Anyone who offers them a podium on prominent bourgeois platforms such as the Frankfurt Book Fair contributes to the further normalization and spread of human hatred. "
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Michael Müller, cultural policy spokesman for the left parliamentary group in the Frankfurter-Römer, expressed a similar opinion.
"The Frankfurt Book Fair must not offer these publishers a stage, not even in the back corner," he emphasized.
The basic right to freedom of expression in Germany is "certainly not curtailed".
Freedom of expression is a valuable asset, stressed book fair director Juergen Boos on Tuesday.
“The book fair is the place that stands for it.
And unfortunately we also have to endure opinions or the presence of people who I would not necessarily like to have here. ”The book fair stands for this open discourse.
“We will always have the whole spectrum here, as long as people want to show themselves here.
But we don't have to like it.
But it has to be possible because for us freedom of expression, the freedom to publish, is the highest good. "
The presence of new right-wing publishers had already led to protests and a demonstration in 2017.
dpa