The author Juli Zeh (“Unterleuten”), who lives mainly in Brandenburg, has developed a soft spot for island life – and also thinks about Sylt and Rügen in the “Stern” interview.
For best-selling author Juli Zeh, Germany’s northernmost island, Sylt, is a kind of symbol and, above all, represents nostalgia. “Germany doesn’t have many islands, only this one is considered sophisticated. So everything that happens there is quickly hyped up,” says the author in “Stern”.
“Sylt is not a magnifying glass where one can particularly well examine social densities. The gap between rich and poor is increasing, the social classes are perhaps drifting apart and are hostile to one another. But Sylt is nothing more than a symbol of this development.” As a symbol of this, Sylt is “unbeatable” – “and that means that people take it seriously as such.”
Sylt stands for “no kind of escapism”
Twenty years ago, Zeh (“Unterleuten”, “Between Worlds”) spent a few months on Sylt as an island writer. In the particularly noble town of Kampen on Sylt, Zeh (49) noticed the fashion “that mother and daughters basically wear the same thing, in terms of clothes and hairstyles.” “The same applies to fathers and sons. It looked so bizarre that my husband and I thought about writing a satirical text about “The Children of Kampen.” But we would have had to go to Kampen more than once for that, so we didn’t do it .”
Overall, Zeh sees the preference for tranquil Sylt as “not a form of escapism or even a rejection of globalization on the part of the upper class.” “After a week in Hong Kong, it might as well be nice and manageable Kampen.” She thinks the same people fly to New York to shop “and probably also have a home on the Côte d’Azur or in St. Moritz.”
Zeh: “an almost aristocratic upper class”
Sylt is above all a kind of BRD idyll, nostalgia, and stands for “a retro myth,” says Zeh. “The upper ten thousand are living out their longing for the good old days when they were allowed to play an almost aristocratic upper class in this profane, staid West Germany.” In East Germany, Rügen has a similar status. “When it comes to Rügen, there are the same debates and arguments: Is the island too gentrified, can the residents still afford their own island?”
According to his own words, Zeh particularly enjoys spending time on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, which belongs to Spain. “The noise of the world is actually much less audible here.” Many of the worries and fears that people have on the mainland don’t matter. “I have to admit that it’s pleasant for me because it’s much more about the here and now, about being together, about the evening sky. You drift much less into political spaces, into questions about the future. I don’t want to judge that, but it takes place.”
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
