Mick Hartley

A couple of stories from Der Spiegel – not unrelated. First off:

Twenty-four years ago, the curtain never quite raised on the Rainer Werner Fassbinder play "Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod." The Jewish community, flexing its muscles for one of the first times since World War II, blasted the piece for being anti-Semitic and managed to prevent its debut.

But on Thursday night, the play will finally take to the stage for a long delayed opening night in Mülheim's Theater an der Ruhr. And, over two decades later, feelings about the play among Germany's Jews haven't changed.

The play, written in 1975 and based on a book by German novelist Gerhard Zwerenz, will be shown alongside two other Fassbinder works, "Nur eine Scheibe Brot" and "Blut am Hals der Katze." It is being directed by Roberto Ciulli. It tells the story of a rich Jewish real estate magnate who buys up properties and sells them at a profit. One particularly controversial line has a competitor complaining "the Jew is sucking us dry, he's drinking our blood and makes us unhappy, because he's Jewish and we are the guilty ones? If he had stayed where he came from or had been gassed, I could sleep better at night."

Many saw the play as an attempt to relativize the crimes of the Nazis and, on opening night, protesters in the audience occupied the stage just after the piece began and prevented its showing. A second attempt to stage the play, in 1998 at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, was called off after the Central Council of Jews in Germany refused to cooperate with the showing. The protest in the media was likewise intense, with SPIEGEL publisher Rudolf Augstein coining the phrase, "Away with the Garbage."

Michael Rubinstein, managing director of the Jewish Community, Duisburg, Mülheim/Ruhr, Oberhausen, said he hadn't yet seen the piece, which can be translated as "Garbage, the City and Death," but he's read the play.
"This play works with anti-Semitic clichés," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE, adding that it had anti-Semitic overtones 20 years ago and still does today

Now, however, times have changed. Rubinstein says his organisation has no plans to protest the opening, preferring to let the public decide…."I am excited to see their reaction."

The second story (Spiegel link in German only):

A German publisher has cancelled plans to publish a mass-market novel out of fears that it might face violent protests due to a rude reference to the Koran, Der Spiegel magazine reported Saturday.

The crime novel – about the "honour killing" of a Muslim woman – had been scheduled for September publication, but the Droste publishing company of Dusseldorf decided not to print it . . .

It said the publisher had first asked the author, Gabriele Brinkmann, writing under the pen name WW Domsky, to tone down dialogue in "To Those Worthy of Honour" which might be construed as offensive, but she had refused.

Spiegel reported that the offensive phrase in question was a character saying: "You can shove your Koran up …" If that is the place where the sun does not shine then it would have found itself in the company of the Red Flag and a portion of Christmas pudding.
Publisher Felix Droste had asked an expert on Islamic society to study whether the crime story's text could compromise the safety of his firm or his family, and the expert suggested the phrase be modified. But the author refused to alter it to "You can shove your honour up …"