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Juli Zeh, writer and judge at the Brandenburg Constitutional Court. © Soeren Stache/dpa
The author Juli Zeh (“Unterleuten”), who lives mainly in Brandenburg, has developed a soft spot for island life - and also thinks about Sylt and Rügen in the “Stern” interview.
Hamburg - For best-selling author Juli Zeh, Germany's northernmost island, Sylt, is a kind of symbol and, above all, represents nostalgia. “Germany doesn't have many islands, only this one is considered sophisticated. “In this respect, everything that happens there is quickly hyped up,” says the author in “Stern”. “Sylt is not a magnifying glass where one could particularly well examine social condensations. The gap between rich and poor is increasing, the social classes are perhaps drifting apart and becoming hostile to each other. But Sylt is nothing more than a symbol for this development.” But as a symbol of this, Sylt is “unbeatable” - “and that means that people take it seriously as such.”
Twenty years ago, Zeh ("Unterleuten", "Between Worlds") spent a few months on Sylt as an island writer. In the particularly noble town of Kampen on Sylt, Zeh (49) noticed the fashion “that mother and daughters basically wear the same thing, in terms of clothes and hairstyles”. “The same applies to fathers and sons. It looked so bizarre that my husband and I thought about writing a satirical text about “The Children of Kampen”. But we would have had to go to Kampen more than once to do that, so we didn’t.”
Overall, Zeh sees the preference for tranquil Sylt as “not a form of escapism or even a rejection of globalization on the part of the upper class.” “After a week in Hong Kong, it might as well be nice and manageable Kampen.” She says that the same people fly to New York to shop “and probably also have a home on the Côte d'Azur or in St. Moritz.”
Sylt is above all a kind of BRD idyll, nostalgia, and stands for “a retro myth,” says Zeh. “The upper ten thousand are living out their longing for the good old days when they were allowed to play an almost aristocratic upper class in this profane, staid West Germany.” Rügen has a similar status in East Germany. “When it comes to Rügen, there are the same debates and arguments: Is the island too gentrified, can the residents still afford their own island?”
According to his own words, Zeh particularly enjoys spending time on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, which belongs to Spain. “The noise of the world is actually much less audible here.” Many of the worries and fears that people have on the mainland don’t play a role. “I have to admit that it is pleasant for me because it is much more about the here and now, about being together, about the evening sky. You drift much less into political spaces and into questions about the future. I don’t want to judge it, but it’s happening.” dpa