Politische Gegenwartsliteratur zwischen Kunstfreiheit (Art. 5 Abs. 3 Satz 1 deutsches GG) und ethischer Verantwortung des*der Schriftsteller*in:

Abstract

Political writing was understood as a means of precise social observation in the 1930s. Political literature became a critique of society ranging from open to subversive from the 1960s onwards, only to mark a retreat at the beginning of the 1980s. Political literature has experienced a revival since the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, with Juli Zeh calling on writers to have a say in politics and participating on the front lines of the public sphere. Contemporary political literature is individual and not anchored in institutions; it is sub-divided and has ceased to be holistic – the present-day challenges are too unmanageable and too fast-moving. Numerous committed writers are confronting the current social discourses on climate, the Covid-19 pandemic, migration, right-wing radicalism, war and much more in a multi-faceted manner. In this context of the revival of the ‘political’ through literature, the potential impact of the written and spoken word in the public sphere and how the latter is dealt with comes up for debate once again. In Germany, under certain conditions, writing enjoys the constitutional protection of artistic freedom (Art. 5 (3)(1) Basic Law), which is more effective the more fictional and unrealistic a literary work is. The legal understanding of fiction and fact, on the other hand, differs significantly from literary theory; the legal concept of art remains imprecise, just as the concept of the ‘political’ has a fluid effect in literature. Within this framework of conceptual boundaries that are difficult to define, an attempt is made to advance the idea of the political writer’s ethical and moral responsibility in the 21^st century: Artistic freedom is essentially opposed to the sole violation of other fundamental rights (principle of proportionality). Considering this, if the legal restriction of political writing in Germany proves to be of little use in criticizing ethically questionable statements in narrative fiction, this begs the question: how appropriate is it to place the writer’s responsibility on the level of morality and ethics? In this article, an attempt will be made to approach the concept of ethical and moral responsibility, especially that of the author of political novels, as a specific feature of normative-critical speech in the public sphere. Juli Zeh’s novels Corpus Delicti: ein Prozess (2009) (The Method 2014) and Über Menschen (On people 2021) will be used as examples. Although in different ways, due to the 12-year interval between them, both novels appear to be morally questionable in that they adopt just one stance and, from here, attempt to persuade the reader of Zeh’s own convictions.