De-Integrate!

Max Czollek is a poet, publicist, and political scientist. He received his doctorate from the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technische Universität Berlin and is particularly well known for his theatrical and essayistic work surrounding memory culture, integration, and Jewish identity in post-war Germany.Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator, activist, and freelance literary translator. Beginning in Fall 2022, he will be a Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan. Jon received his PhD from UC Berkeley in German and Medieval Studies after studying Translation, History, and Literature in Heidelberg and Santa Cruz. He lives and works between Ann Arbor, Northern California, and Berlin.

• Introduction:De-Integrate Yourselves!Chapter 1The Theater of Memory: Staged RemembranceChapter 2Normality Reloaded: SchlaaaaandChapter 3The Early Years: Integrating NazisChapter 4Integration Theater! Leitkultur and Ministries of HeimatChapter 5That German Desire: On the Function of the JewsChapter 6Wowschwitz, or: Can We Laugh about Auschwitz?Chapter 7Alternatives for Germans: What We Can Learn from the AfDChapter 8“No Integration”: De-Integration and Its ProgenitorsChapter 9Like They Do in Babylon: On Jewish DiversityChapter 10Inglourious Poets: Revenge as Self-EmpowermentChapter 11Ahasver’s Hell: Or, Things Will Never Be ‘All Good’ AgainChapter 12The Beginning Is Nigh: DE-INTEGRATIЯAcknowledgmentsReferences

Praise for De-Integrate!“The continuing influence of the past on the present—and what Czollek sees as Germany’s collective reluctance to acknowledge it—informs his latest book, De-Integrate!, a collection of politically charged essays and historical reflections that came out in August 2018 and is still making waves in the country. In it, he argues that Germany, eager to shed its past, isn’t reckoning with the rise of anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism. And with the book’s title, he is calling on people who have been ostracized or singled out to stop trying to fit in and embrace their ‘otherness’ so Germany can become a truly multicultural, pluralistic society.”—Valeriya Safronova, The New York Times“This 31-year-old author writes scathingly and entertainingly, he provokes and puzzles. De-Integrate! is an important contribution to the sometimes hysterical debate on integration”—Manfred Koch, Neue Zürcher Zeitung“De-Integrate! is a well-researched, stringently argued, sometimes even funny polemic, which has come at just the right time.”—Ulrich Gutmair, taz“An important book.”—Literatur Spiegel“Unapologetic and pugnacious, loud and sexy.”—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“Sharp-tongued and entertaining, provocative and irritating.”—Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag“A renunciation (…) of the German self-adulation as world champions when it comes to a culture of remembrance.”—Die Zeit