When she moved to Berlin, she suddenly found red swastikas on the apartment door.

And in the stairwell she met the caretaker, who washed her up again and again, and then carried buckets in his hand with red water sloshing in them.

Now she is a member of the jury for the German Book Prize.

How can one be excluded when one has been called to it, Selma Wels asked in the Literaturhaus Frankfurt, for which she helped put together the program of the "Wir sind hier" festival.

For the second time.

And again to commemorate the victims of the attack in Hanau this Saturday two years ago.

Florian Balke

Culture editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Even as the founder and director of the Binooki publishing house, with which she translated Turkish literature into German for ten years, she had the feeling that she was bumping into invisible walls in the literary world: "You remain an outsider."

Her Turkish first name comes from Arabic, reported Wels.

Since her current surname was added at her wedding, many have thought it was Selma Lagerlöf's.

She learned at elementary school in Pforzheim that equal opportunities are linked to names, origins, skin color and religion.

The opening evening, which had more than a thousand digital viewers, from Braunschweig to Constance and Leipzig to Cologne, was often about the fact that it also fails due to maliciousness, inexperience and carelessness.

As well as the fact that this urgently needs to change.

"The way we speak today, we will be able to live tomorrow," said Hauke ​​Hückstädt, the director of the literature store, in greeting.

After the attack in Hanau, she decided to go into party politics, said the Frankfurt cultural politician Mirrianne Mahn (Die Grünen): "Three years ago I would have shown everyone the bird." Now she is a city councilor and chairs the culture committee of the city parliament and became known in October 2021 when she interrupted the presentation of the peace prize in the Paulskirche with a reminder to the book fair to clarify her relationship with the presence of right-wing publishers.

Did the performance bring anything, asked Dunja Hayali, who moderated the evening.

Or the book fair boycott by the author Jasmina Kuhnke, which started it all?

"After the intervention in the Paulskirche, I understand why people don't go there," replied Mahn.

She was previously against the boycott of the book show.

The threats she experienced after her protest at the Peace Prize changed that.

Book fair without real publishers, please

And there is something else: "The book fair serves as a networking meeting." Do you really want to offer a publisher the opportunity to network whose books contain things that reminded Mahn of statements made by the Hanau assassin?

Do you want to put something like that next to the "Blue Sofa"?

"If that's the case, then I want people to say that.

But then shut up next February 19th.” And no wreaths laid or produced in the Paulskirche.