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Deniz Yucel
Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa
After the narrow non-voting and the subsequent loud resignation of the PEN President Deniz Yücel, the interim board of the German section is now looking for a personnel reorganization that will satisfy everyone.
Apparently, the writers' association had hoped that the journalist Yücel's presidency in October 2021 would give it greater public recognition than the German PEN center had enjoyed in previous years - and ultimately got it.
Albeit in a rather ugly way: E-mails that have become public substantiate the deep rifts between the political-activist camp around Yücel on the one hand and the established but little profiled traditionalists on the other.
They accused each other of bullying
Now a new leadership is needed that can reconcile the warring camps.
We are therefore looking for a person who, like Yücel recently, audibly advocates freedom of expression and is not afraid of rough debates - but who is also accepted by those who formed the opposing "men's choir" from which the interim president Maxi Obexer spoke in the SPIEGEL interview.
And in fact, she already exists, this one person who does justice to all interests.
It is obvious: a man who stands up for the rights of the minority like no other and at the same time embodies traditional bourgeois values must become president now.
If PEN has a future, then only with Uwe Tellkamp.
