Even if the name is on the cover, politicians often don’t write their books themselves – because not everyone can do it or has the time to do so. There are ghostwriters for that. But how do they work?
Did the Green Chancellor candidate Plagiarism Annalena Baerbock in her book? Many people are concerned with this question right now. “Little things were blown up”, complained about the Greens federal manager Michael Kellner on Friday in the ZDF “Morgenmagazin”.
The media scientist Stefan Weber had accused Baerbock of several literal takeovers in her new book “Jetzt. How we renew our country”. Weber spoke of copyright infringement. The party then spoke of attempted character assassination and hired a lawyer. The passages described are generally accessible facts or known green positions.
Ghostwriters often do the writing
Baerbock defended himself against the allegations on Thursday evening at “Brigitte live”. “I wrote a book in which I wanted to make it clear who I am, what drives me and what I want to change.” She had “had a lot of conversations and ideas from others also flowed in,” added the chancellor candidate. She made it clear that she took the public sources that exist. But she has not written a non-fiction book or a scientific paper. That is why there are no footnotes.
Many celebrities, politicians and business leaders like to publish books about themselves, their thoughts, world views and experiences. But mostly they did not write their own works from start to finish. Ghostwriters often do this.
How do these scribes work? The journalist and author Hajo Schmumacher explains. He has written his own books, but also for politicians: Malu Dreyer, Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, and Klaus Wowereit, the former Governing Mayor of Berlin.
Close cooperation between writer: in and protagonist
“We sat together for hours and hours and she told me everything about her life and her politics”, reports Schumacher about the work with Dreyer on her biography in the podcast “today important” by stern and RTL. This is how it went at Wowereit. Schumacher calls it “supervised biography writing”.
There is often a “ghostwriter agreement”. The author or ghostwriter thus undertakes to conceal their own authorship. The namesake – i.e. the person who is named as the author on the book cover – is allowed to publish the work as his own. In 2009 it ruled that such an agreement was “not immoral”.
The publisher’s founder and former ghostwriter Bernhard Salomon described ghostwriting to the Austrian newspaper in 2012 as follows: “Ghostwriting has different levels. It starts with normal editing – the editor finally also intervenes in the text – and goes so far that a book is based on interviews is written. ” Sometimes people with stories approach the publishers with a concept, sometimes the other way around.
“Many ghostwriters are editors who have expanded their scope of action. Journalists and writers also often take on the authorship for others,” said Salomon.
“Good thing” that most politicians do not write themselves
But the important thing is the chemistry between the ghostwriter and the person who has the story, Andrea Fehringer told the “press”: “At the beginning you meet and get to know each other. Only when the chemistry is right and there is trust, you draw up a contract and begins with the preparatory work in the form of interviews. ”
Most politicians don’t write their books themselves – and that’s a good thing, says Schumacher. “Politicians have press people, speechwriters and ghostwriters for good reasons. If they should write books all day, they should rule.”
Using Baerbock as an example, he further explains why she does not check what has been written herself: “You can only put this book into print when you know that she is a candidate for Chancellor. You can prepare something beforehand, but then things get hectic. Because that Craft requires that you then make the nomination, that moment on stage with Habeck – that has to be the start. (…) Then it has to happen very quickly: Then the manuscripts have to go to the printer, then everything has to be set and made and distributed and advertised. That means there is a huge time pressure. ” Fact check teams would then review what was written.
Writing is a craft that you have to master
“As Annalena Baerbock – or Roland Koch or Ole von Beust or Olaf Scholz, whoever – you have to be able to rely on people to work cleanly,” says Schumacher.
But why don’t politicians write their own books? “If Angela Merkel wrote the way she speaks, or Olaf Scholz, then you would take these people aside, maybe even hug them, and say, ‘Hey, I see the beauty of your thoughts, I also see the noble intention , but stop writing that down. ‘”explains Schumacher. Because writing is a craft that you have to master.
Many politicians: Hajo Schumacher would advise against writing a book. Many would not even have the patience to do so. Fehringer said of the work as a ghostwriter: “We are the hands on the keyboard for the people who tell us their lives. It is often difficult to put the tone and style of what is spoken on paper.”
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