Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters opened the 73rd Frankfurt Book Fair with an appeal for a creative “awakening”.

Grütters said on Tuesday evening in the Frankfurt Festhalle: "Today we are celebrating the return of the literary and journalistic world to Frankfurt." After a year and a half of the corona pandemic, in which reading material was even more "food for the soul" than usual, the Frankfurt Book Fair continues " the sails for a new departure ”.

The fair, which lasts until Sunday with 2000 exhibitors from 80 countries, has 1400 events under the motto “How do we want to live?”.

After the 2020 Book Fair was only held digitally due to the pandemic, there will be another indoor exhibition and additional digital offers in 2021. In order to make this possible, this year's book fair will be funded with up to seven million euros from the federal culture budget, according to the CDU politician. This enables, for example, a discount on the stand fees for the exhibitors. The fair is the world's largest platform for the book and publishing industry. Grütters thanked everyone who “kept the book industry alive and, by and large, brought it safely through the crisis”.

On the occasion of the appearance of the host country Canada, the Minister of State for Culture praised the role of the translator.

“Diversity needs translators, and the most capable translator is literature itself.” Because it explores what it takes to be human in a complex way.

“It reveals why people think, feel, love, believe and act the way they do.

It is therefore a source of understanding and compassion and, as such, is sorely necessary in a world in which differences and ambivalences are increasingly met with resistance, ”says Grütters.

"Means for time travel and machines for compassion"

The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (81), known for her dystopian novels - connected live from her home country - said with a view to the pandemic: “We members of humankind have gone through very difficult times here on planet earth - and it is not over yet. "Corona has shown" how fragile we are as humans ", but also how resilient and creative.

This is particularly evident in the literature that also keeps an eye on coming crises such as climate change.

"Every time you read a book, you hear a voice speaking to you - and no matter how isolated you feel, you know you are not alone," said Atwood.

Books are "a means of traveling back in time and machines for compassion".

They are systemically important, like pharmacies.

Atwood also advocated cultural diversity in society: "Nature has nothing to do with monocultures."

In Frankfurt, the Governor General of Canada, Mary May Simon, emphasized the importance of books, but also of the oral tradition of indigenous peoples: “Our stories connect us and give us strength.

We have to tell each other our good stories, but also our bad ones. "