Tobias Haberkorn from the magazine “Berlin Review”: German media deny reality

Mr. Haberkorn, how did the idea for Berlin Review come about?

From the dissatisfaction that, as an author, I no longer knew who I should be writing for. I missed a magazine that was more in-depth and serious than the newspaper features section, but not as slow and withdrawn as academic journals. That's exactly what Berlin Review strives to be.

Through more depth and longer texts?

Yes. And as a small indie project, we have the opportunity to focus specifically on things and set priorities. I think this focus resonates with people and that it can lead to a more interesting identity, precisely because you don't have to cover everything.

Do you have any international role models?

Certainly the London or New York Review of Books. When you, as an author, write a column or review for the arts section and only have half a page, you can't really get into the discussion of the topics you find in the books. With us, you can. But it's also clear that it's difficult to reach a larger audience with long book reviews alone. Therefore, like the two magazines mentioned, we publish political essays, which often have a literary component.

How would you describe the political stance of the Berlin Review?

We're definitely left-wing, and we try not to be stupid. Is it too bold a thesis to claim that seriousness itself gives rise to a political stance? That's at least our line of thinking.

How many people work on Berlin Review?

The core team consists of six people. We started with four, but now it's a dynamic group, still far too small to continue working consistently and at the pace we've set ourselves.

How big is the output?

We publish an online edition every six weeks with a batch of 10 to 15 articles. Last year, we published two print editions, and this year, we're publishing three.

What probably also interests many ambitious intellectuals: How do you set up such a magazine economically?

It was a process that took about two years. It was made possible by a mix of funding. We received start-up funding and Senate funding for events. There's a foundation that supports us. And we also took out a few loans.

Berlin is in your title. How important is the city for you?

There's a lot of criticism of Berlin, and in many ways, rightly so. But I don't believe that what we do and how we do it could be done in any other city in Europe. On the one hand, there's a vacuum here – in a way, it's still not clear who sets the intellectual tone in Berlin. And there's the very large number of non-German – and not necessarily German-speaking – writers, theorists, and academics who have moved here or fled, or are here on one of the many scholarship programs. They don't really get a foothold in the German discourse, and the German discourse doesn't understand this internationality. We're at that interface.

You have lived in Paris and Rome: Has Berlin lost some of its appeal recently?

Certainly. Everything has become more expensive, and the winter is as gray as ever. The bad international press, the whole issue of repression and cancellation, is playing a role, at least in the culture. The extreme polarization on the topic of Israel and Palestine is scaring people away and silencing them. Many are leaving.

Or they simply don't come to Berlin anymore, we hear again and again from cultural circles.

In Germany in general, I've noticed that long-established institutions have an uncertain identity. If you look through the publishing programs of Suhrkamp, ​​Hanser, Rowohlt, or Fischer, for example, it's very difficult to distinguish them. They all, more or less reluctantly, chase the same trends. There's a certain German sensibility that's beautiful on the one hand—that people are very open to outside influences—but on the other hand, it's also very much in tune with the wind. When I talk to French or Italian authors, I get the impression that they don't think too much about how to position themselves, but simply work within their expertise, and usually do it very well. Added to this is a large, highly nervous, and constantly self-reflecting landscape of cultural journalism in this country.

"Regarding Germany's Israel policy," you recently wrote in a newsletter, "all I can think of is shame. The entire political class, and with it a large part of the media, has failed."

This was also due to the very recent statement by the German Foreign Minister, who said in Tel Aviv that it was perfectly clear that Israel could not be accused of violating international law with regard to Gaza: aid deliveries were now resuming after two and a half months of blockade. This is so obviously wrong and does not correspond to any current international discussion or opinion held by any other Western European government that it simply shames me. It is a denial of reality. And the leading German media have encouraged this by disregarding journalistic standards or by framing the Middle East issue exclusively in terms of anti-Semitism. Many people now seem to be realizing that the German-Israeli friendship has a fundamental problem. This could have been noticed years ago.

Do you pursue a kind of journalistic line with your authors and pieces, which otherwise find no place in the German newspaper landscape?

After October 7, and even after we had perhaps published some good texts on the subject, we received an insane number of texts commissioned by other media outlets, which were then refused publication for political reasons. Recently, I read in the Süddeutsche Zeitung again, disparagingly, about the "Free Palestine" blather that is supposedly obligatory in the art world. To dismiss protests against the mass killing of people in this way is not only tactless, it is simply inhumane. But apparently there are still journalists who find it normal or even smart. And of course, the many non-German-socialized politically interested people who don't understand this country at all, especially when it comes to this topic, also notice this.

Among the top three texts on your website currently: Omer Bartov on the "Israeli genocide in Gaza" and a text by Judith Butler, who called the Hamas massacre on October 7 an act of "resistance" and thereby discredited herself in the eyes of many. Apparently not for you?

The text by Judith Butler, which we published and translated, is about the Trump decree that allows only two genders. Anyone who can't watch the aforementioned video by Butler in its entirety and acknowledge that she condemns the Hamas massacre as horrific is simply not a serious journalist. Berlin Review is a magazine with a general interest in culture. We couldn't choose that our launch was three and a half months before October 7th. Then it became clear that we had to take a stand. In the first issue, for example, we published Adania Shibli , whose prize at the book fair was canceled and who is Palestinian. But many Israeli authors also write for us. It's important to us to orient ourselves on this topic to the international discussion, as found, for example, in reputable American or French media.

Berlin Review is a magazine for books and ideas – and for the "drifting present." In which direction are we drifting right now?

I grew up in the 2000s , and for the first time since then, perhaps it's fair to say that the future is completely unclear, but also completely open. The greatest danger I see in my immediate environment is that thinking is no longer free because everyone is retreating into their media-optimized, secure worlds. While you constantly see the world's brutality and violence in your feed, you can no longer establish an interpersonal or even rational relationship with it. You can no longer identify the causes, let alone address them. We create this magazine to combat this.