And precisely that was also Charlie Hebdo’s story up until the attacks. A few months ago the newspaper Le Monde published an article entitled ‘Charlie Hebdo: Twenty-Two Years of Trials’. Indeed the magazine has been sued by practically everyone who could sue – from every possible religious organisation to politicians and journalists. The Catholic Church alone took out fourteen different lawsuits against Charlie Hebdo – and lost every one of them. This places the magazine in a long tradition.
One famous trial arising from a cartoon took place in Paris on 14th November 1831. The defendant was Charles Philipon, then thirty-one years old, publisher of various satirical magazines. Philipon owned the largest lithographic publishing house in Paris. He was a republican who was both disappointed and repulsed by the lust for power shown by King Louis Philippe I, who was meant to be a ‘Citizen King’. A caricature of the King appeared in one of his newspapers – initially overlooked by the censors – painting over the ideals of the revolution. Philipon was charged with lèse-majesté and Heinrich Heine wrote a contemporary account of his trial. Philipon initially argued in court that he had not attacked the King in person but rather ‘political power in abstract form’ – and that he had a right to do this. The judges shook their heads. Then Philipon said that the charge contravened the freedom of speech and of the press that had been established in 1830. He was wrong. The charter of 1830 – along with the constitution – precluded freedom of speech where the King was concerned. Philipon did not give up. He explained to his judges that if one was determined to recognise the King in one drawing, one could do so in any drawing. And that anyone who drew anything could therefore be accused of lèse-majesté.
The judges stared at the defendant with incomprehension. And what Philipon did next was brilliant. He took a piece of paper and drew on it the face of King Louis Philippe, a fat man with soft features and a double chin. And then he altered this face by adding three more sketches, removing it ever further from what it had been – until practically only the shape of the King’s head remained. And this was the outline of a pear. So that Philipon was drawing a pear and not the King.
Of course he was found guilty anyway – this sometimes happens, even with brilliant defences – but Philipon published his closing speech and the drawings in the satirical magazines La Caricature and Le Charivari, and the matter became a great success. The King became widely known as ‘the pear’ and now all anyone who wanted to criticise the hated July monarchy and the King needed to do was draw a pear.
Today no one risks criminal prosecution for depicting the King or the Federal Chancellor as a piece of fruit any more. The German satirical magazine Titanic was the first to apply the same term to Helmut Kohl in 1982. A book was published in 1983 by Pit Knorr, a writer and cofounder of Titanic, and illustrated by Hans Traxler entitled Pear: The Book about the Chancellor. A hand book for upcoming chancers and rotten rascals in this country of ours. In 1987 the youth wing of Kohl’s party adopted this image and even produced a pear-shaped election sticker. Perhaps that is actually the cleverest way to deal with satire. By the way, Helmut Kohl, who has probably had to put up with more insults than any of us, never sued Titanic even though he would certainly have won a number of those cases.
A couple of weeks ago the newspaper of the Greek governing party, Syriza, published a cartoon of Wolfgang Schäuble. Its title was: ‘The negotiations have begun.’ Schäuble was shown in a Nazi uniform. The two speech bubbles said: ‘We insist on making soap from your fat’ and ‘We will only discuss turning your ashes into fertiliser’. This was clearly satire. And it was obvious from Schäuble’s spokesman how angry he was. But he said this was freedom of speech. In the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo Angela Merkel was depicted in the same uniform. She was pointing stooping Greeks in the direction of a gas chamber and underneath this stood: ‘Go in there, that’s where your debts will be written off.’ And the current cover shows the drowned body of a child refugee on a beach with a billboard in the background carrying a McDonald’s ad for ‘Two kids’ menus for the price of one’. I am convinced that solidarity will soon come to an end and the call ‘satire is free’ will quickly be forgotten. Yesterday one large German news agency wrote that ‘Charlie Hebdo is losing sympathy’.
Ladies and gentlemen, everyone who is in the public eye – and many people in this room are – is exposed to criticism. This can hurt or upset anyone. Sometimes that criticism consists of mockery and ridicule, sometimes it is cruel and nasty, sometimes banal and stupid and unfortunately there are times when it can be intelligent and justified. We quarrel with it, write letters, make phone calls, complain to anybody who will listen and ultimately we might even sue in court. But even if it goes way beyond what is allowed, we don’t murder our critics and once we have calmed down again we know that they have to exist – even if we can’t abide them.
Should the rules be any different for religious communities? I don’t think so. I can find no justification for blasphemy to merit any special punishment today. Why should someone’s religion receive greater protection from insults than, for example, their sexual orientation, the colour of their skin or their nationality? I believe in the calm, free spirit of our constitution, in its superior tolerance and its benign view of humanity. And that is why I am convinced that religions – just like all other ideas too – may be exposed to criticism. And this is especially true when acts of violence are justified on religious grounds.
But the fundamental issue, ladies and gentlemen, is another one. Modern states came into existence because people were able to refrain from exacting personal justice. They transferred their anger and their need for revenge to the state. They handed in their weapons. The state alone should have the power to punish. It alone should be able to undertake proceedings recognised by all. The term ‘monopoly on violence’ has been in use since it was coined by the great sociologist of the last century Max Weber, but of course the practice itself is much older. It forms the contract between the citizens and their state, the foundation of our communal life: we refrain from violence and in return we are guaranteed orderly treatment. This was never easy. It took centuries to get this far. The history of this contract is the history of the development of the modern rule of law and it is through this that we became who we are now.
And this is why a terrorist attack cannot be compared with a husband killing his wife or a thief robbing a bank. It is not a breach of the rule of law: it is an attack on the rule of law. We carry out discussions in the newspapers, on television and on the internet supported by our constitution while the terrorists’ sole aim is to smash it into pieces. In the face of the reality of terrorism our declaration that ‘satire is free’ is naive and helpless. We talk about the finely calibrated boundaries of pencil drawings while Islamists’ appetite for murder is unsated. Their bloody deeds are not contributions to any discussion and their victims bear no guilt for these acts of personal justice – no matter whether what they did was permitted or not.
And what conclusions do we draw from all of this?
I remain convinced that enlightened democracies can only tackle terrorists, people who want to destroy our society, within the means of the law. This is the only way for a state based on justice to manifest its resilience and integrity. In our anger, in our desire for revenge, we are always in danger of forgetting this. Guantánamo is just one of the terrible examples of what happens when we do so.
But there is another consequence that is harder to measure and less obvious. You will certainly remember that representatives of the governments of almost all free nations declared after the attack that it had not only been an attack on life but an ‘attack on freedom of speech and of the press’. Those were the words of Angela Merkel, for example. And that is certainly what was planned. But in reality this terrorist act strengthened freedom of speech more than anything else. Soon after the attack, all over France and the whole of Europe, in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Milan, Rome and Vienna, people took to
the streets. On 11th January 2015 there were 1.5 million people in Paris and over 3.7 million across the country. One commentator observed that this was more people than had ever demonstrated together in France in support of a single cause since the French Revolution. Many of them carried banners with the words ‘Je suis Charlie’. They mourned for the dead and they demonstrated for the right to freedom of expression. I don’t think a basic right has ever had so much support.
That some of the staff of Charlie Hebdo left the magazine after the attacks is only too understandable. And the fact that other journalists no longer dare to express themselves freely about Islam is shocking. Perhaps prizes like this one can offer them some support.
However, the more profound truth is that it is not terrorists who will destroy our society. They cannot do that. We ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, are the only ones who can seriously endanger our values. Only we, the democrats, can damage democracy. And that can happen quickly. The populists are now on the rise. Politicians are demanding tougher laws and the secret services greater powers. Parties everywhere talk of a ‘threat of the Islamisation of Europe’ and feel ‘vindicated’ by the attacks in Paris. There are demands for a database of suspicious persons and intensive surveillance of the internet. This is the real effect of terrorism, one that is indirect and therefore dangerous.
A few weeks ago I was queuing at Zurich airport behind a very elegant lady who was around ninety years old. She appeared a little confused and unable to cope with the situation. Her hand baggage was checked, she had to take off her shoes and her body was patted down. I could see how unpleasant she found it all. In her handbag there was a small bottle of perfume. The security guard said she had to put it in a plastic bag. Of course the old lady didn’t have one with her. The guard wanted to take the bottle away from her. And then something unusual happened. The other passengers began to protest. They got quite loud and in the end the guard hesitantly returned the lady’s perfume. The terrorists, ladies and gentlemen, have nearly won already. We need to be careful.
It is silly to believe that the state is defenceless against terrorism. But neither war cries nor acts of blind rage are any use to us now. It is only prudence, only the constitution, only the rule of law that can provide us with lasting protection. If we betray the rules we have given ourselves, we will lose. On 22nd July 2011 Anders Breivik murdered seventy-seven people in Norway, including thirty-two children and young people, out of completely insane pseudo-political motives. But afterwards Norway passed no new surveillance laws and did not set up body scanners outside schools and holiday camps. Prime Minister Stoltenberg did the opposite. At the memorial service in Oslo Cathedral he said: ‘We will never give up our values. Our response is: more democracy, more openness, more humanity. We will show the world that democracy gets stronger when most depends on it.’ Stoltenberg’s words moved me a great deal at the time and they still do now. They are the core of what should matter to us. We must confront fanatics with what they fear and hate most of all: our tolerance, our sense of humanity, our freedom and our laws.
Tucholsky died in 1935. Erich Kästner would later describe him as the ‘short, fat Berliner who tried to avert a catastrophe with a typewriter’. But do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what drove him, just like his role model Heinrich Heine and later Stefan Zweig, Elias Canetti, Thomas Mann and so many others to criticise their countries? It was not malice, hatred or wilful destruction. It was the opposite. To put it in one word – one that might be too pathetic by today’s standards – it was their profound love of freedom, of the wonderful richness of life. Or, in more modern terms, their conviction that we should live only in an enlightened, nuanced and liberal society.
Recently I spent a while watching the Christopher Street Day parade. A tall, incredibly beautiful black man was dancing in the street. He was naked apart from an awfully tight pair of briefs and the white angel wings he wore on his back. Passers-by stared at him. A short Arab man was standing by the kerb with his wife and child. He was no more than five feet two inches tall, bearded and rather hunched. As the dancer approached the Arab, I thought: this is not going to go well. He stopped in front of him, bent down, took his face in both hands and kissed him on the mouth. The Arab went red, but then he beamed and chuckled silently.
The world we live in is not perfect, but it is better than in previous centuries. And in this world we need Charlie Hebdo, and we need you, Monsieur Biard. Your magazine is irreverent and flippant and angry and every now and again it is insufferable. It often oversteps the mark of what is allowed. But this makes it an expression and representation of our liberty. It is part of the world that was created through so many centuries of struggle, repression and pain. No one in their right mind can want us to retreat back behind the Enlightenment once again, and Benjamin Franklin’s warning is even more pertinent now than it was in his own time: ‘If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.’
Dear Monsieur Biard, we therefore ask you to keep going with Charlie Hebdo. Keep going come what may, keep doing exactly what you are doing for as long as you possibly can.
FERDINAND VON SCHIRACH
About the Author
Ferdinand von Schirach is a German lawyer and writer, who lives in Berlin. His story collections Crime and Guilt and novels The Collini Case and The Girl Who Wasn’t There (Tabu) have been published in more than forty countries and sold millions of copies worldwide. The first production of Terror took place on the same evening in October 2015 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Schauspiel Frankfurt. It has since been staged in Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, the USA and Venezuela. Further openings are to follow in China, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
David Tushingham is a dramaturg and translator who has worked extensively as a curator for European festivals including the Wiener Festwochen, the Ruhrtriennale, Theater der Welt and the Salzburg Festival. As a translator he specialises in the work of contemporary German playwrights, including Roland Schimmelpfennig, Dea Loher, Falk Richter and Rainald Goetz. He has also adapted Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories for the National Theatre.
Copyright
First published in 2017
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2017
All rights reserved
© Ferdinand von Schirach, 2016
Translations © David Tushingham, 2017
Ferdinand von Schirach is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Performing rights are represented by Gustav Kiepenheuer, Bühnenvertriebs-GmbH, Berlin, Schweinfurthstr. 60, D-14195 Berlin, Germany ([email protected]), and in the UK by International Performing Rights Ltd, Top Floor, 3 Macroom Road, London W9 3HY ([email protected]). No performance may be given
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–34076–7
are-buttons">share
Terror Page 8
