The very meat of politics in Joschka Fischer’s Mein langer Lauf zu mir selbst
Active in the German student movement in the 1960s, associated with the radical “Putzgrupppe” in the 1970s, first Minister for the Environment in the world in the 1980s, and second longest serving foreign minister in German postwar history since (1998-2005), Joschka Fischer raised particular expectations with the publication of Mein langer Lauf zu mir selbst in 1999. Due to the similarity between its title and the infamous German expression “der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen” (the long march through the institutions), the book was approached by many with the hope it would contain personal reflections about the politician’s career from street-fighter to thorough-bred politician. Instead, the book is a commented documentation of how Fischer transformed himself from an overweight figure (181cm, 112kg, 48 year old) to a dynamic marathon-proof athlete (75kg, 50 year old), a political memoir of apolitical confessions. The edited personal journal of Fischer’s day-to-day dieting and training schedules stimulated a variety of discussions around the complementary relationship between private and political life spheres that the author establishes. Addressing the discrepancy between form and content, the majority of the responses still came to the conclusion that the Lauf is a memoir that is not political in the conventional sense; but that it is not entirely apolitical either. This in mind my paper focuses on how Fischer creates the character “Fischer” as a literary vehicle for the particular role as politician he sees and wants to project himself in. While many readings have disregarded the artfulness of the Lauf, a detailed analysis of the literary techniques employed in it reveals how Fischer translates the very meat of politics into the story of his struggle with obesity.
Angela Kölling holds an M.A. in English, Political Science and Philosophy. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the School of European Languages and Literatures at the University of Auckland. The title of her thesis is “Literatures on the Loose” and investigates the relationship between current German and French literary non-fiction works and the tradition of what Anglo-American writers and critics refer to as “creative nonfiction.” The paper she is going to present at this conference is based on one of the chapters of this work.