Well, the singing is a little lacking, as could be heard when Thea Dorn read the opening pages of the "Satanic Verses", on which several songs are sung.

But that is not the main task of the members of the new PEN Berlin.

It was founded to do everything better than the established PEN Center Germany in its commitment to authors and freedom of expression.

And in the first direct comparison, PEN Berlin has now really done it better: while the PEN center appointed Salman Rushdie, who barely survived an assassination attempt the week before last, as an honorary member –

business as usual

with more than a hundred predecessors – PEN Berlin organized a solidarity event in the Berliner Ensemble within a week, at which twelve founding members read texts by Rushdie on Sunday evening.

It was also the first public event of the new PEN.

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

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She succeeded.

Because of the required objectivity.

The 100-minute round of reading was framed by Eva Menasse and Deniz Yücel, the dual directors of PEN Berlin.

No side blows against the competition (which, after the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, had certified Rushdie, who had been in hiding for years in a poisoned press statement on honorary membership, as living “in a luxury cage” at the time; FAZ of August 16).

No self-praise for your own performance either, instead thanks (“with a sigh”, according to Menasse) to the bodyguards of the State Criminal Police Office and the Berlin police, who guarded the event in general and individual guests specifically.

Among these was the Kurdish writer Meral Şimşek, who had only recently been able to leave Turkey with the help of PEN Berlin;

"Neither God nor our Prophet are offended"

Şimşek did not read, but he did, in Can Dündar, a prominent compatriot who has been living in exile in Berlin for several years.

During his appearance, he also recalled the satirist Aziz Nesin, who had translated excerpts from Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" into Turkish in a newspaper he published in the spring of 1993.

Thirty-five people were killed when an Islamist mob attacked a hotel in the central Anatolian city of Sivas on July 2, 1993, where Nesin was taking part in an Alevi cultural festival - the highest death toll ever recorded by the fatwa against Rushdie.

Nesin survived injured but died two years later.

He had dedicated his whole life to fighting for freedom of expression in Turkey.

The Istanbul-born German lawyer Seyran Ateş was an activist who introduced herself as a devout Muslim: "I am convinced that neither God nor our prophet are offended by the 'Satanic Verses'." Like Dündar, Sven Regener and Judith Schalansky she read from Rushdie's slightly fictionalized autobiography Joseph Anton, published in 2012.

And that's what Günter Wallraff, who was almost eighty years old, did too. He hid Rushdie in his house in Cologne for a few days in 1993.

Wallraff was unable to come to Berlin for health reasons, but transmitted his reading via video.

Four authors (in addition to Thea Dorn also Yassin Musharbash, Eren Güvercin and Deniz Yücel) had selected passages from the "Satanic Verses" for the Berlin evening.

It was a clearer message than last Friday's New York rally in support of Rushdie, when the book was read only once.

After the assassination, its printed editions are out of print worldwide;

Bertelsmann is now trying to urgently reprint for the German-speaking market.

Because the most impressive reaction to the assassination attempt is the widespread reading of this book.

It's a literary asset anyway.