Playing with the dirty kids (archive)

Outside of Switzerland, Charles Lewinsky with his Jewish family saga "Melnitz" and the play "An ordinary Jew" known. The author used to be successful in the field of entertainment, but he wrote the most popular soap on Swiss television "Melnitz", his novel "Midsummer" and the narrative volume "Ten and one night" he wrote down in the serious literary sky. A political novel by Charles Lewinsky has now been published.

By Eva Pfister

Symbolic minaret in Geneva, built to protest the ban on minarets. (AP)

"double pass" denounces the double standard in dealing with foreigners and fits the current situation in Switzerland, in which xenophobic currents gain weight, as the popular vote against the construction of minarets has shown. It is piquant "double pass" initially as a sequel novel of all times in the right-wing conservative newspaper "The world week" published. Eva Pfister met Charles Lewinsky in Zurich and asked him what attracted him to writing a newspaper novel.

"I like to try out forms, and the sequel is an old literary form that has recently become somewhat extinct, but you have great role models up to names as venerable as Dickens. It is an appealing task, firstly, every week write and still get an entire story arc, and it’s also appealing to incorporate news, things that happened this week."

"double pass" is now available as a book and can be easily read in one go. Charles Lewinsky wrote a contemporary novel in the best traditional sense with strongly drawn characters in black and white, which are not too deep psychologically, but provide an apt social panorama. The novel is about an African footballer, favorite child of the right-wing politician Eidenbenz, who is also the president of an important football club. Tom Keita scores goals, which is why all doors are open to him, society is fond of him just like television, and the Swiss passport is just a formality. There comes a visitor from Tom’s homeland Guinea. A distant cousin – also called Keita – came to Switzerland illegally. Tom wants to take him in, but his fiance, a near-miss Swiss, makes sure he disappears into the clandestine state.

Charles Lewinsky has carefully researched how to deal with asylum-seeking foreigners in Switzerland. Particularly impressive is his description of a so-called reception point for asylum seekers, a house with waiting rooms, dormitories and offices, in which the applicants get their information within 48 hours, in the worst case one "Nonoccurrence decision". This episode reads as if Lewinsky had been involved in an application.

"No, I didn’t go there, the descriptions were enough for me. There are such small details that I find terribly interesting, for example that the security there is not guaranteed by police officers or officials, but by a private security company. It reminded me a bit of how Americans are now hiring private people to wage their wars, obviously we’re doing it in Switzerland on a very small scale."

Swiss asylum practice is not free from absurdities. For example, people without valid papers are not granted asylum, but they cannot be deported because they have no papers. So they are banned from working and, with food vouchers, put in emergency shelters, where they are only allowed to stay at night. Quote from "double pass":

"The house was empty. And yet his door was locked at nine in the morning, and only unlocked in the evening at seven. And on time. It had happened more than once that the three of them had stood there a few minutes ahead of time, and Ms. Abderhalden, who had the key, had also arrived. They had then waited together, the three on one side of the entrance and Frau Abderhalden on the other, and only when the church clock struck the hour did she put the key in the lock and turn it over. , As I said: a difficult to understand custom."

Lewinsky reinforces the impression of absurdity by taking the perspective of foreigners who are amazed at these practices. Has the author also spoken to asylum seekers??

"When I had a demonstration of these sans papers, as it is called in Switzerland, here in Zurich, the people who did not have valid papers were talking to a few people affected. I noticed that there are two views. Some of them were already well set up by their organizations, they actually spoke exactly like the Swiss stakeholders, and others, what fascinated me, had a very naive view, it felt like they were in a dream here, they understand at all not how Switzerland works, and since we Swiss don’t always understand how our country works, it’s not surprising."

In addition to swipes on the media and C-celebrities, the novel captivates with the not exactly flattering portrait of a politician. Eidenbenz is jovial and smart without being particularly intelligent, but he knows how to keep xenophobic instincts going. It is clear that this politician is based at the SVP, the Swiss People’s Party.

The author has the disassembly of this man carried out by the environment: son Philipp opposes increasingly successfully against his papa, likewise the wife Sonja, who begins to think independently after a crisis. Lewinsky puts the most pointed criticism in the mind of a pollster, with whom Eidenbenz keeps up to date on the political trends:

"You managed – very skillfully, I have to say – to blame the small group of foreigners from problem states for all the negative effects of everyday life in Switzerland. And to define yourself and your party as the only ones who are ready to fight against it. With this you give your voters the opportunity to perceive their own prejudices as patriotic sensations." (Out: "double pass")

From this pollster, Eidenbenz must now learn that approval of his policy has weakened because:

"People want to be able to feel that they face foreigners without prejudice."

On this point, however, the pollster has in "double pass" deceived. Almost 58 percent of the Swiss voted against the construction of minarets on November 29. And the newspaper that made the most mood against this "Symbol of Islamic land grabbing", as you can read in it is just that "Weltwoche", in the "double pass" was printed as a sequel.

This weekly newspaper has a longstanding liberal tradition, but for some time it has almost become a court journal, if not to say, the campaign paper of the right-wing conservative Swiss People’s Party. Charles Lewinsky and "The world week" – that is strange and has been criticized a lot in Switzerland. At first he too had reservations:

"My first reflex when the request came was: Don’t play with the grubby children, you can’t publish anything in a newspaper whose opinion you don’t share. And when they asked two or three times, I said to myself: Okay, if you commit yourself not to change a word and if you accept my topic, which is diametrically opposed to what is otherwise published in this magazine, then if I do that, it’s a way, maybe to give these readers a different view of things."

In fact, Lewinsky’s political satire takes on "Weltwoche" in some episodes like a targeted provocation. How did the readers react??

"Oddly, not at all. I haven’t received a letter to the editor or a reader’s email in the course of a year. I have no idea how the regular readers reacted. Maybe they just leafed through it because they didn’t like it."

There remains an unease. Editor-in-Chief Roger Köppel brags, with the example of Lewinsky’s novel "lived diversity of opinion" to have given. But in the number in which the last episode of "double pass" appeared, he was already calling to the next Coup of the People’s Party on: The contract on the free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU should be canceled, there are simply too many Germans in Switzerland, Romanians and Bulgarians, who are also likely to enter soon, not to be thought of.

This political constellation reads "double pass" but too harmless, especially since the end seems almost fairytale. Tom Keita shows solidarity with his cousin, Sonja Eidenbenz specifically exposes the hypocrisy of her surroundings, Eidenbenz seems in the end. Did the author deliberately want to set a happy ending as a sign of hope? No, says Charles Lewinsky, who sees only a fairytale element:

"In the very last episode, and I think you can stop doing that, namely that his friend from his own village does without Switzerland and accompanies him, that’s a fairy tale. But what happens last? A delegation from another country, paid by Switzerland, arrives and is paid for everyone who takes it in at home, regardless of whether it belongs there or not, just so that Switzerland can get rid of it. It’s not fairytale, it’s more nightmarish and very, very close to reality."

Charles Lewinsky: "double pass", Roman, Nagel & Kimche, Zurich 2009, 320 pages, 19.90 euros

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