Ferdinand von Schirach: Terror

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 Schirachis 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 Tushinghamis 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.

First published in 2017

by Faber and Faber Ltd

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This ebook edition first published in 2017

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© 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 ( info@kiepenheuer-medien.de), and in the UK by International Performing Rights Ltd, Top Floor, 3 Macroom Road, London W9 3HY ( info@iprltd.co.uk). No performance may be given

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ISBN 978–0–571–34076–7