Introduction

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Juli Zeh has emerged as an enfant terrible of the German literary scene. As an author, public intellectual, and honorary judge at the constitutional court of Brandenburg, Zeh has publicly and repeatedly voiced opposition to governmental measures designed to mitigate the spread of the virus. Citing apparent harm to individual liberties, she has objected to mask mandates, vaccine requirements, lockdowns, and the temporary closure of schools and daycares. Also in the context of the pandemic, Zeh has authored two novels that encourage sympathy with rightwing extremists, Über Menschen (2021) and Zwischen Welten (2023, with Simon Urban). The controversies surrounding her recent public stances and literary content have paid off handsomely for Zeh. Not only did Über Menschen and Zwischen Welten occupy the top of the Spiegel bestseller list for months, but her previous novel about a healthcare dystopia, Corpus Delicti (2009), also enjoyed renewed interest. (Sarah Koellner addresses the popularity of Corpus Delicti in the context of the pandemic in her contribution to this forum.) These developments in Zeh's fiction and public persona leave many of us who have engaged with her previous work questioning our positions. What are our responsibilities when an author espouses views that are at best problematic and at worst dangerous? Should we respond, or does a response contribute to the attention Zeh is enjoying? At the same time, and given her popularity in Germany, is opting out of the conversation irresponsible? In short, what do we do with Juli Zeh? Over the last two decades, Zeh has consistently garnered both a popular and a critical reception, satisfying casual readers and scholars alike with her mix of thrilling plots, play on genre, and intellectual complexity. Having built her career and reputation at the nexus of literature, media, and the law, Zeh is a masterful writer of human conflict. Her characters antagonize one another, engaging in disputes that often serve as microcosms of larger sociological, economic, and political issues; she offers at once accessibility of writing and challenging ideas, pulp fiction and philosophical contemplation. The teenage school children in Spieltrieb (2004), for example, discuss game theory and quote Robert Musil and Friedrich Nietzsche as they develop their scheme to entrap a teacher in sexual misconduct. In Schilf (2007), the protagonist assuages his own feelings of guilt for a murder he has committed by imagining a multiverse in which versions of himself exist that had never committed such a crime—and not without contemplating what such an abdication of guilt would mean for Germany as well. Zeh has a penchant for the extreme, creating scenarios that probe boundaries of power, personal freedom, and even legality (a point that Kylie Giblett expands upon in her contribution to this forum, which focuses on jurisprudence in Zeh's work). What is more, Zeh employs distinctly German traditions in her writing, evoking the forest and fairytales (Biendarra; Geck), Heimat aesthetics and the Dorfroman (Biendarra; Klocke, “Die Provinz als Austragungsort”), and the Krimi to investigate issues of guilt, culpability, and power. At the same time, her experimental uses of digital media and self-referential intertextuality add to her oeuvre's complexity, challenging distinctions among fiction, reality, virtual, and material worlds. Zeh drew critics’ attention early in her career: Adler und Engel (2001) was awarded the Deutscher Buchpreis for best debut novel. She gained broader recognition among scholars with her wildly popular dystopian novel Corpus Delicti (2009), which alongside her essay with Ilja Trojanow, “Angriff auf die Freiheit: Sicherheitswahn, Überwachungsstaat und der Abbau bürgerlicher Rechte” (2009), responded to the proliferation of surveillance mechanisms instituted in Europe and the United States under the guise of the “war on terror.” Scholars have read Corpus Delicti as a warning about new surveillance technologies in the digital age (Graff; Koellner) and as an example of German literature's indisputable return to the political after decades of debate around that topic (Smith, “Juli Zeh and the Desire for the Political”; McCalmont and Maierhofer). They have debated whether Corpus Delicti constitutes a utopia or dystopia and what the employment of the respective genre means for the novel's political messaging (Smith, “Relevant Utopian Realism”; McCalmont and Maierhofer). Recognizing the witch motif that Zeh developed in Corpus Delicti, scholars have examined what the centuries-old trope means for a futuristic setting (Klocke, “Das Mittelalter ist keine Epoche”; Smith, “Relevant Utopian Realism”), with Sonja Klocke drawing a direct line from witches to terrorists to pandemics as sources of public fear and scapegoating. At times, Zeh has felt like a hero that (progressive) German studies scholars could get behind, fighting the powers-that-be in the public arena and voicing criticisms of control mechanisms operating in neoliberal society and the surveillance state. She does this not only in her writing but also in her skillful use of the media. Unlike any other writer of her generation, Zeh has positioned herself in the German tradition of the “author as public intellectual” in the feuilletons (print and digital), in radio and television, and at events, where she has intervened in human rights discourses since the early 2000s. Lars Richter has pointed out the significance of embodiment that Zeh has brought to this role, showing how Zeh's public activity—and her insistence on being seen at addresses, demonstrations, in videos, photos, and online—is a way of physically grounding the message so that she cannot be ignored. More recently, Zeh has responded to issues like climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, issues in which the balance of individual liberties and the public good take on new dimensions and require new consideration. (Richter addresses the influence she holds as a recognized public intellectual in his contribution to this forum.) Given her popularity, her position as a public intellectual, and her often controversial stances, much scholarly work is being undertaken on Zeh currently. Since 2021, edition text + kritik has published two volumes dedicated to her, one in 2021, Juli Zeh. Divergenzen des Schreibens (edited by Klaus Schenk and Christina Rossi), and a second in January 2023, titled simply Juli Zeh (edited by Heinz-Peter Preußer). In April 2022, the Literaturarchiv Marbach hosted a 2-day conference, “Text und Engagement. Das literarische Werk Juli Zehs,” with a resulting volume (Juli Zeh. Text und Engagement, edited by Erik Schilling) appearing with J. B. Metzler in 2024. In 2022, a panel at the 46th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association was devoted to the author, “Zeh in the Age of the Pandemic,” which has led to this German Quarterly forum. A volume that includes authors from this forum, preliminarily titled Juli Zeh: A Critical Companion, is expected to appear with De Gruyter in late 2024. To many scholars who have long enjoyed Zeh's play with genre, intertextuality, conflict, and medium, the rather simplistic turn in her writing and libertarian public persona during the Covid-19 pandemic have been rather jarring. Perhaps her libertarianism should not have been surprising, though, given that she has long written about mistrust in government in her fiction. Previously, her outspokenness on issues of biopower, personal freedom, and the protection of privacy felt incisive and bold. A somewhat more generalized mistrust of government began to appear in Unterleuten (2016), alongside the novel's criticism of capitalist superstructures that privilege profit over the well-being of working-class people. In light of the pandemic and increasing ethno-nationalism in Europe and the United States, however, Zeh's once empowering calls to fight the (bio)powers-that-be have turned into a conservative-populist stance that privileges narrow visions of community where privacy and individualism are most valued and where even white supremacy seems acceptable under these rubrics. Issues of privacy, power, and community have taken on a different meaning in our current situation. We are faced with questions of what we are willing to sacrifice, even if only temporarily, to keep others safe, and what behaviors and attitudes white people in particular must change in order to help build communities that are welcoming and diverse. Juli Zeh might seem to be an odd choice for The German Quarterly to devote an entire forum section to. She certainly is not the most sophisticated German-language author currently active; the quality of her writing is uneven and, as scholars and critics have argued, her complexity has declined in recent years. Zeh comes into this journal's spotlight because her attitudes and behaviors as an author and public intellectual prompt us, as a discipline, to examine our responsibility. Zeh brings the tensions of our time to the fore and not only through her (sometimes poignant, sometimes cumbersome) literary depictions. Engaging with Zeh means grappling with arguments that we might disagree with; confronting the temptations and justifications of “cancel culture” within our own discipline; thinking carefully about what authors and works to devote our time, energy, and influence to; and what the social (and for the author potentially financial) ramifications of this attention might mean. The scholars participating in this forum have chosen to engage, at least for now. Rather than cancel Zeh—which would be hubristic thinking anyway, given her popularity in Germany—we choose to offer a critical examination of her views, as voiced in her fiction and non-fiction writing and public statements. We choose to meet her where she is and enter the fray. Let us start by taking Zeh at face value. She has expressed her concern repeatedly that in its current state, democracy in Europe is ill-equipped to manage—even survive—crises such as the one presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. In a 2022 interview with Zeit-Online, for example, she stated: “Es hat sich gezeigt, dass wir schlechter als gedacht in der Lage sind, drängende Probleme mit der gebotenen Sachlichkeit zu behandeln. [...] Statt von nüchterner Analyse war der Diskurs oft von Misstrauen, gegenseitigen Verdächtigungen und Vorhaltungen, überbordenden Gefühlen und moralischer Überheblichkeit auf allen Seiten geprägt” (Zeh, “Corona-Pandemie”). The cause of this polarization and heightened rhetoric, according to Zeh, was the government's swift rollout of health protection measures, which left little time for public debate and instead relied on the public's emotional buy-in. The pedagogical and moralizing tone that the government employed to this end has, in Zeh's view, marginalized dissenting voices and created mistrust among the populace: “Manche Maβnahmen sind womöglich unausweichlich und deshalb sinnvoll. Aber das Ganze kommt doch in einer pädagogischen Verpackung daher. Es wird mit Wenn-dann-Szenarios gearbeitet und mit moralischen Zuschreibungen” (Zeh, “Warum”). Such measures as lockdowns and vaccination requirements have been excessive, in her view, amounting to little more than exercises in control, and the government employed both alarmist and moralizing rhetoric to convince people to relinquish individual liberties. (In her contribution to this forum, Sonja Klocke points out Zeh's own alarmist rhetoric.) In her last two novels, Zeh has attempted to provide models for mending the rift she sees in German society: Both Über Menschen and Zwischen Welten feature left-center protagonists who step outside their normal social circles and find themselves sympathizing with rightwing extremists. When Radio-Eins moderator and author Knut Elstermann asked Zeh at a public event about the protagonist in Über Menschen befriending a Nazi (“Kann man überhaupt mit so jemandem reden, der so tief im braunen Sumpf steckt?”), Zeh responded “Ja, kann man!” The Zeit reporter covering the event goes on to relay Zeh's phrasing: “Wenn man sich von dem Gedanken verabschiede, dass man die Mama sei und den anderen erziehen müsse” (“Juli Zeh”). Here, she intimates that the ideological entrenchment of rightwing extremists is not what hinders communication (and hence democracy) but rather those who speak with a moral objection to extremism. Tone policing of this kind is a preferred tactic for Zeh: In numerous interviews, she accuses those who challenge her of using a patronizing or moralizing stance. While Zeh claims to want people from across the political and ideological spectrum to engage in discussion with one another, the voices she includes and omits, and the way she portrays those voices on each side, present a rather skewed picture. The onus appears to be on those who stand on the left, framed in Zeh's fiction as arrogant and neurotic, to open themselves up to reactionary conservatives, who are represented as pragmatic and downtrodden. (Thomas Fuhr expands on Zeh's portrayal of progressives versus conservatives in his contribution to this forum.) In her latest two fictional works, the voices she chooses to elevate espouse individualism and racism, not exactly the rhetoric that preserves democracy and creates community. Condoning white supremacy is not a fair parameter for discourse across the ideological spectrum. Engaging with Juli Zeh now requires that we call her out on the white fragility and unchecked privilege that permeate her recent literary and public intellectual projects. She belongs to a demographic group that is most likely to survive the virus, which is perhaps why governmental restrictions meant to contain it seem like an affront rather than a protection to her. Similarly, rightwing extremism might not have a negative material or physical impact on her life as a white person in Germany. That her privilege-laden view of the virus is connected to her privilege-laden way of thinking about social inequities is made clear in her recent statement about Germany's military support of the war in Ukraine: “Aber die Vernunft sagt: Eine gerechte Welt hat nie existiert und ist genauso illusorisch wie die Abschaffung von Krankheit und Tod. Man kann darüber verzweifeln und wird doch immer wieder auf das Machbare zurückgeworfen. Das Schicksal zwingt uns zu Kompromissen” (Dorn and Zeh). In this interview with Thea Dorn, Zeh defends her stance that Germany should not deliver weapons to Ukraine and that Europe should negotiate with Putin, even though, as Dorn points out, negotiations would leave him with unearned power. While Zeh's fear of escalation of war in Europe is understandable (although that eventuality is certainly debatable), her laissez-faire attitude about both injustice and illness is troubling—and her framing of injustice as something as natural and inevitable as death simply unacceptable. By the end of Über Menschen, the protagonist Dora has developed the mantra trotz allem. She has forged emotional connections with the self-proclaimed “Dorfnazi” next door, with another neighbor who makes racist jokes, and with the AfD-voting same-sex couple down the street, trotz allem. Trotz what, exactly, though? She enjoys the benefits of being white in their company. They have been kind to her, and so she chooses to look past the attitudes and behaviors they practice that harm non-white people. Should we continue to engage with Zeh trotz allem? No. Nobody has that privilege, and we certainly cannot accept the terms she suggests. As stated above, engaging with Zeh moving forward requires that we check the white privilege and fragility of her positioning. An examination of race in her work is long overdue. Moreover, we need to call Zeh out on her skewed notion of fairness, her alarmist rhetoric, and her characterization of people by types. After that work is done, scholars can better evaluate whether to continue devoting their time and energy to her. This forum represents a first step in that work

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