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Martin Reichert: Anyone who knew him liked him

You never know a person completely. There are always corners, corners or extensive basements that elude our view. Often this is a blessing. Sometimes, rather rarely, a curse. When a darkness germinates at this angle, devouring man. Whole.

Anyone who knew Martin Reichert will have to live with this curse. Because those who knew him liked him. As a colleague, friend, person. As a poet who would only have rolled his eyes at this attribution. But that's how he wrote, with a light hand and staying power.

Order one last beer when everyone has long since left, and outside the big window it will be dawn in the big city and people with the same faces rush to the train.

I first met Martin in 2004, in writing. In a column for the »taz« he wrote about the fashion of the fur-wreathed anorak hood at the time. He wrote a brief cultural history of the hood, from the Inuit to the hipsters, and paid tribute to the "pleasant social blinkered effect" of this fashionable detail with humour-subdued malice: "You don't see misery left or right and always have a goal in mind."

There was nothing ostentatious about the sentence. And yet she was clairvoyant, correct and to the point. Like Martin himself, who, like all sensitive and intelligent people at the same time, tended to hide his light under a bushel.

He was born in 1973 in Wittlich, in a side valley of the Moselle. "On the right side of the Rhine", as he once said, the Roman side, not the barbaric side. It was one of his theories, presented with a faint smile, that an invisible border still runs through the country along the Limes today. And that it makes a difference whether you have seen the light of day on this side or on the other side.

Once again, together with the parents, walk the steep path through the vineyards covered with slate quarry in the golden October light. The knees. The hips. The heart. The beautiful view of the Moselle valley and back there, the old castle.

There was no blunt pride in provincial origin from this. Rather, an awareness of the value and weight of one's origin itself, a clear view of rural life between kitsch and reality – which he later summed up in his book »Landlust« with one of his elegant sentences: »If you really want to get back to nature, you have to go to Obi.«

In addition to his apartment in Neukölln, the Slovenian Adriatic coast, where his husband Bostjan came from, became his second home.

Take another dip in the cooled waters of the Gulf of Trieste before heading home, back to Germany. Balancing once more between the rocks, swallowing sea water once more and listening to the waves crashing against the beach and turning the stones into marbles that rub against each other wet, a pebble sound. Get out of the water once more and wrap yourself in a towel and look out at the bay where the freighters are at anchor.

He studied history, but soon made a name for himself as a journalist and later as an editor in Berlin with texts on other areas. For the »Victory Column« or »Men« he wrote about topics that would be attributed to the LGBTQ movement today. As a gay man "from the provinces", he was rather sceptical about this abbreviation throughout his life.

Perhaps this outsider's view was a prerequisite for his precise analyses of the passage of time. When he finally came out and ventured into the clubs of the bigger cities, they were empty: "It was," he once said, "as if a neutron bomb had hit." The reason for this was the devastating decimations of the AIDS epidemic, which he was to investigate in his book "The Capsule" for Suhrkamp.

Buying flowers together once again

Martin went on to write other books about the "shoulder bag generation" and the relationship between men and women. He was in charge of the magazine of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and worked for many years as an editor of the »taz am Wochenende«. No one mastered the »taz«-typical art of casually finding topics and theses during a smoking break in the stairwell as brilliantly as Martin. Intrigues could never be made with him. He was a friend of prosperousness also in personal dealings.

Once again buy flowers together and olives pickled with herbs and go to the stand with the freshly squeezed, sweet and sour orange juice, "I invite you". And: "Let's stay in touch, shall we?"

Since February 1, 2023, SPIEGEL has also benefited from Martin's talents. He wrote, edited and sometimes managed the affairs of the cultural department. The »taz« did not want to let him go completely and had granted him a right of return. We didn't want to let him go either. He had only just begun.

Most recently, he conducted an interview with »tagesschau« spokesman Constantin Schreiber about happiness. And he concluded his obituary for Karstadt with the words: "Stay a little longer." He was able to refine even the most banal template with his stardust. And to strike a tone that is exemplarily immortalized in his last »taz« column from 2018:

Pull the door behind you once again in the house you have just shared and at the same time know that you will never come back. It won't be until years later that the feelings will be as untraceable as the books you've left lying around somewhere on the second floor.

On May 26, our friend and colleague Martin Reichert took his own life. And we are infinitely sad.

Let's stay connected, shall we?