DER FALL TELLKAMP – Streit um die Meinungsfreiheit

I ve been working on this film for more than two years. I have lived in Dresden myself, I know the places and the people involved. My film is an attempt to overcome the speechlessness in the debate beyond the politically extreme.

„We are treated as if we were criminals,“ says Uwe Tellkamp, who is giving interviews again for the first time for this film. By „we,“ he means himself and the controversial Dresden bookseller Susanne Dagen. Her „Buchhaus Loschwitz“ was long considered the central location of the bourgeois center in Dresden, today, the new front lines are particularly evident here. Until 2006, cultural scientist Paul Kaiser still organized a discussion series in the book house. Today he says, „The Buchhaus was a free-spirited place, but with the offensive commitment to Götz Kubitschek, the red line was crossed for me.“ Dagen cooperates with Götz Kubitschek’s Antaios Verlag, which has been listed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case since 2021. In the same year, the situation threatened to escalate: A butyric acid bomb was thrown into the Loschwitz bookstore.

Uwe Tellkamp and Susanne Dagen have become polarizing figures. After many disputes and open letters, there is now hardly any direct confrontation, instead silence, hardened fronts. How could it happen that a circle of intellectuals who once enjoyed discussion has abandoned the culture of argument and can now no longer debate with each other?  In the film, Uwe Tellkamp, Susanne Dagen and Paul Kaiser are joined by, among others, the writer Monika Maron, the author Ingo Schulze, the theater maker Heiki Ikkola, the author Jana Hensel, the theologian and politician Frank Richter, and the journalists Stefan Locke (FAZ) and Martin Machowecz (DIE ZEIT).

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