Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

26/05/2005

Loveable losers in the Ruhrpott

Author and cabarettist Frank Goosen talks with Iris Alanyali.

Tumult in Germany's ruling SPD. First Chairman Franz Müntefering breaks ranks by launching a damning critique of capitalism (in which he compares hedge funders to locusts). Then the party suffers a dramatic defeat in the state elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and a former stronghold of the "worker's party". As a result, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) has decided to push federal elections forward a year, to the fall of 2005. Overnight, Germany finds itself in the midst of a federal election campaign that the conservative CDU seems guaranteed to win. But according to writer and comedian Frank Goosen, those who set the process in motion have greater things on their minds: like soccer.

Die Welt: Since "Liegen lernen" ("Learning to Lie") and "Pokorny lacht", novels about the fight for survival of lovable losers in the Ruhrpott, you have been named a "brilliant raconteur of manly abyss". What's going on in Bochum at the moment?

Frank Goosen: I think Bochumers are more concerned about the totally unnecessary descent of the VfL (the Bochum soccer club) into the second league than the results of the election, from which nobody expected very much - other than the CDU supporters.

NRW soccer teams never have much luck. Is misery also an opportunity, after which things have to get better?

Don't forget: Borussia Dortmund was German champion twice and it won the Champion's League, and Schalke (the team of Gelsenkirchen) has also shown Europe a thing or two. And misery is never an opportunity. It sucks when your own club drops down a league - no denying it. Then you can be sarcastic with songs like: "We do down, we go up, and in between the UEFA Cup!" But we shouldn't just make fun. A very good film on the VfL fans asks: Who needs a champagne breakfast with Real Madrid? I say: me!

And how does one feel after having brought the Chancellor down? Do you think some voters are regretting their vote after the new federal elections were announced?

No, it was too decisive for that. This kind of surprising, cocky offensive defence goes over well, especially here in the Ruhrpott. Whether it's enough to keep a 60 year old from premature retirement is doubtful. But anyway, Schröder could go down in German history as the first Chancellor to make a graceful exit. That counts for something – even in Bochum.

Like the capitalism critique...

The shocking thing about the so-called capitalism critique was that the locusts act as though they were caught red-handed, while it should be most clear to precisely them that no policy will ever result from all the blabber. Meanwhile the evilly-gagged members of party known as the SPD heaved a collective sigh of relief. A tough case of an oppressed personality reached a head: finally we could say what we actually mean! The SPD can finally be the SPD again!

Did the Ruhrpott take vengeance on its own party? Why now? After all, the last 39 years weren't exactly rosy.

When you stand on the Gasometer in Oberhausen with the Audio Guide in your ear, a friendly voice invites you to look around and imagine that in Oberhausen alone, 120,000 people once worked in steel – and today nobody does. If you think about the fact that in the 50s, almost 500,000 people were mining and today it's about 40,000! The fact that this region is not a total slum, and that the much talked-of "structural change" occurred without blood being spilled is an accomplishment that social democracy can wear with pride. But that's not to deny the massive problems. Today it's being said that the whole process was too softly cushioned but I don't even want to think about how things would look here if it had been done differently.

CDUer Jürgen Rüttgers says, "I am the Chairman of the workers party in North Rhine-Westphalia!". Where is the the authentic Ruhrpott to be found?


Is Bavaria still a state of Alpine farmers? No. Nonetheless, they still like to dance around, slapping their lederhosened asses. What I mean is this: they stylise themselves and what they consider to be traditions and customs. And that's exactly what's happening now in the Ruhrpott. For several generations, life was nothing more than work, and this attitude was passed on in the genes. Our generation watched our fathers destroy themselves with work and we don't aspire to that. And still, we climb up to the top of the former blast furnaces at Meiderich North and get all proud. Sometimes I feel as though I myself drove into the Prosper Haniel to dig the black gold out of the earth's lap with my bare hands. For decades the talk was of bad air, ugly cities, ugly people who only had fries, beer and soccer on their minds, while the municipality countered: "A strong piece of Germany". And so green! Today there's a new self-confidence: we're audacious, we're loud and we get things done. Whether it's true or not – we're stylising ourselves. With mining lamps rather than lederhose.

Your new novel "Pink Moon" is the sad story of a man looking for his lost father. That seems symbolic now, somehow. Has the Ruhrpott lost its legal guardian with the loss of the SPD? Is this the beginning of a new kind of seriousness?

Yeah, for sure. And the fun society is dead, and the postwar era is finally over - for the twelfth time. All nonsense. The Ruhrpott grew up and left home long ago.

*

The writer Frank Goosen was born in 1969 in Bochum, grew up there and continues to live there. He is both a writer and an award-winning cabaret artist. "Liegen Lernen" was made into a film: "Learning to Lie". His latest novel "Pink Moon" from Eichborn will appear in August.

This article
was originally published in German in Die Welt on Wednesday May 25, 2005.

translation: nb

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

This kiss for the whole world

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Who actually owns "intellectual property"?  The German media that defend the concept of intellectual property as "real" property are the first to appropriate such rights, and they are using this idea as a defensive weapon. With lawmakers extending copyright laws and new structures emerging on the internet, intellectual property poses a serious challenge to the public domain. A survey of the German media landscape by Thierry Chervel
read more

Suddenly we know we are many

Wednesday 4th January, 2012

Why the Russian youth have tolerated the political situation in their country for so long and why they are no longer tolerant. The poet Natalia Klyuchareva explains the background to the protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on December 10th. Image: Leonid Faerberg
read more

The Republic of Europe

Tuesday 20 December, 2011

Thanks to Radoslaw Sikorski's speech in Berlin, Poland has at last joined the big European debate about restructuring the EU in connection with the euro crisis. The "European Reformation" advocated by Germany does not mean that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation will be established in Europe, but instead – let us hope – the Republic of Europe. By Adam Krzeminski
read more

Brown is not red

Tuesday 13 December, 2011

TeaserPicFilmmaker and theatre director Andres Veiel disagrees with the parallels currently being drawn between left-wing and right-wing violence in Germany. The RAF is the wrong model for the Zwickau neo-Nazi group, the so-called "Brown Army Faction" responsible for a series of murders of Turkish small business owners. Unlike the RAF, this group never publicly claimed responsibility for their crimes. Veiel is emphatic - you have to look at the biographies of the perpetrators. An interview with Heike Karen Runge.
read more

Legacy of denial

Tuesday 29 November, 2011

TeaserPicGermany has been rocked by the disclosures surrounding the series of neo-Nazi murders of Turkish citizens. In the wake of these events, Former GDR dissident Freya Klier calls for an honest look at the xenophobia cultivated by the policies of the former East Germany, where the core of the so-called "Brown Army Faction" was based. And demands that East Germans finally confront a long-denied past. (Photo: © Nadja Klier)
read more

Nausea in Paris

Monday 14 November, 2011

TeaserPicIn response to the arson attack on the offices of the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on November 2, Danish critic and semiotician Frederik Stjernfelt is nauseated by the opinions voiced against the publication, especially in the British and American media. Why don't they see that Islamism is right-wing extremism?
read more

Just one pyramid

Monday 10 October, 2011

Activist and author, Andri Snaer Magnason is among the Icelandic guests of honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. His book and film "Dreamland" is both an ecological call to action and a polemic. "The politicians took one of the most beautiful parts of Iceland and offered it to unscrupulous companies," says the author in a critique of his native country. By Daniela Zinser
read more

Dark side of the light

Monday 3 October 2011

In their book "Lügendes Licht" (lying light) Thomas Worm and Claudia Karstedt explore the darker side of the EU ban on incandescent bulbs. From disposal issues to energy efficiency, the low-energy bulb is not necessarily a beacon of a greener future. By Brigitte Werneburg
read more

Lubricious puritanism

Tuesday 30 August, 2011

The malice of the American media in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a symptom of sexual uptightness that borders on the sinister, and the feminists have joined forces with the religious Right to see it through. We can learn much from America, but not when it comes to the art of love. By Pascal Bruckner
read more

Much ado about Sarrazin

Monday 22 August 2011

Published a year ago, the controversial book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany is doing away with itself) by former banker and Berlin Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin sparked intense discussion. Hamed Abdel-Samad asks: what has the Sarrazin debate achieved beyond polarisation and insult? And how can Germany avoid cultivating its own classes of "future foreigners"?
read more

Economic giant, political dwarf

Wednesday 3 August, 2011

Germany's growing imbalance between economic and political competence is worsening the European crisis and indeed the crisis of Nato. The country has ceased to make any political signals at all and demonstrates a conspicuous lack of responsibility for what takes place beyond its own borders. This smug isolationism is linked to strains of old anti-Western and anti-political, anti-parliamentarian sentiment that is pure provincialism. By Karl Heinz Bohrer
read more

Sound and fury

Monday 11 April 2011

Budapest is shimmering with culture but Hungary's nationalist government is throwing its weight about in cultural life, effecting censorship through budget cuts and putting its own people in the top-level cultural positions. Government tolerance of hate campaigns against Jews and gays has provoked the likes of Andras Schiff, Agnes Heller, Bela Tarr and Andre Fischer to raise their voices in defence of basic human rights. But a lot of people are simply scared. By Volker Hagedorn
read more

The self-determination delusion

Monday 28 March, 2011

TeaserPicA Dutch action group for free will wants to give all people the right to assisted suicide. But can this be achieved without us ending up somewhere we never wanted to go? Gerbert van Loenen has grave doubts.
read more

Revolution without guarantee

Monday 21 February, 2011

Saying revolution and freedom is not the same as saying democracy, respect for minorities, equal rights and good relations with neighbouring nations. All this has yet to be achieved. We welcome the Arab revolution and will continue to watch with our eyes open to the potential dangers. By Andre Glucksmann
read more

Pascal Bruckner and the reality disconnect

Friday 14 January, 2011

The French writer Pascal Bruckner wants to forbid a word. Which sounds more like a typically German obsession. But for Bruckner, "Islamophobia" is one of "those expressions which we dearly need to banish from our vocabulary". One asks oneself with some trepidation which other words we "dearly need" to get rid of: Right-wing populism? Racism? Relativism? By Alan Posener
read more