Anger and wit: Wiglaf Droste was a literary rock star

Great satirists can be recognized by the fact that they get us on their side and make us laugh with them at their opponents, even if we don’t even know these opponents and therefore can’t actually make a judgment. How many people who enjoy reading Heinrich Heine’s satirical writings have studied August von Platen, Ludwig Börne or Wolfgang Menzel? It doesn’t matter, we’re convinced by the virtuosity of the mockery and scolding. If satire is great art, its aim becomes secondary, if not irrelevant – even if the victims’ pain tells them otherwise. This is one of the reasons why the writings of Jonathan Swift and Karl Kraus can still be read with pleasure and profit, even though the victims who impaled them on the pen have largely been forgotten. Satirists punish twice: they not only execute, but also ensure that those executed survive – but only in the mockery that was fatal for them.

The writer Wiglaf Droste did not like to be called a satirist. But it is probably this side of his work that ensures his lasting literary fame. He started out as a cultural journalist in West Berlin in the 1980s, but from the start he was characterized by a very personal style and a love of polemics. In later years he tended to use quieter tones and also wrote idyllic pieces. He also went public with poems and songs. But the texts in which he simultaneously playfully and brutally dealt with unpleasant figures in public life and their cultural products remain unforgettable. In fact, he often hit the mark, although not always. Sometimes he opened feuds out of the sheer desire for a ruckus, like an intellectual bar brawler. Five years ago today, Droste died in Pottenstein, Franconia, at the age of just 57. The journalist Christof Meueler has now written the first biography about the writer. Today he heads the features section of the “nd” and previously worked in the features section of the “Junge Welt”, where he was Droste’s editor for many years. Droste had already fallen out with the “nd” in 1994 and then with the “Taz” in 2006. He wrote for the “JW” until the end of his life.

In his book “Keeping the World in Check,” Meueler refrains from quoting too extensively from Droste’s writings. If you want to get to know Droste, you should first pick up the selection and estate volumes that his publisher Klaus Bittermann published. Anyone who already appreciates Droste’s work will make surprising discoveries in this entertaining and informative biography. Who would have known that Droste, who had a baroque shape in his middle years, was a slim boy in his youth and a talented gymnast and handball player? Or that Droste once lived with a punk impresaria in Berlin who is now running for the AfD? Or that the later CDU European politician Elmar Brok almost managed to send Droste to the Bundeswehr? Christof Meueler spoke to dozens of people who lived, worked and argued with Droste. The fact that he lets her speak directly in the text gives the biography a high degree of credibility.

Surprisingly, the leitmotif of the story is music. We learn that Droste, born in Herford in 1961 and raised in Bielefeld, sang in a band at a young age. Later, he not only often wrote about concerts, but also appeared as a singer with the jazz trio Spardosen-Terzett. He got angry when people called him an “amateur singer,” even though, strictly speaking, that was true. Meueler shows that one must also see the key to Droste’s writing in this only half-requited love of music: Droste became a “master of the small form” because he wanted to be a rock star in literature and was actually at the height of his fame . Droste wrote quickly and briefly, addicted to the excitement his articles caused in public and the applause when he read on the big stage. There was no leisure for novels: “Wiglaf made singles, not albums.” Droste also lived like a rock star: unstable in love, given to intoxication, with highs and very deep lows. And as it should be, he burned out all too early.

“Wiglaf was an extreme egomaniac,” reports star chef Vincent Klink, who edited the culinary campaign publication “Häuptling Eigener Herd” with him for many years. Christian Y. Schmidt, Droste’s colleague on the “Titanic”, adds: “Wiglaf was quickly offended and also resentful, at times he seemed like a child.” The fact that Droste acted destructively not only against his enemies, but also against his friends is confirmed his ex-girlfriend Claudia Aldenhoven: »Emotions quickly ran high at Wiglaf. Strong affection and admiration could quickly turn into hatred and rejection. He longed for absolute closeness, for great friendships, only to be able to destroy them again when he had them.” The man who saw himself as a “solitary bloc” regularly failed to be reliable as an editor or publisher other people to work together. His romantic relationships never lasted longer than a few years, and he struggled with the responsibilities of fathering a son.

As stubborn and resentful as Westphalian Droste was, there was at least one notable change of heart in his life: While Droste, like many Western leftists in the 1990s, routinely made fun of the “Zonis,” he became increasingly fond of East Germany after the turn of the millennium. A partner from the East may have played just as much a role as his admiration for the poet Peter Hacks. Droste left Berlin and settled in Leipzig. He went on tour with the East German jazz luminaries Uschi Brüning and Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky. As a town clerk in Rheinsberg, Brandenburg, he felt so comfortable that for a while his texts were unusually peaceful and even somewhat shallow. In his later years, it was primarily Eastern media such as “Das Magazin”, “Junge Welt” and MDR that remained as journalistic bases for him.

There is little more to know about why this brilliant author ultimately fell silent than this: “Wiglaf drank when he was feeling well and he drank when he was feeling bad.” Christof Meueler reports without embellishment on the last years of Droste’s life, of failed rescue attempts, short, happy escapades and ever-worsening breakdowns. This last chapter is not only sad, it is also infuriating. One would love to know Droste was still among the living and regret the texts lost to senseless self-destruction. Today one looks in vain for an author who shows the “real reality” behind society’s lies with so much wit and such great effect, and who does not take the sensitivities of his own milieu into account. Droste truly deserves his fame. But it would be better if we knew what he wrote about the misery that surrounds us today.

Christof Meueler: Keeping the world in check. The life of Wiglaf Droste. Edition Tiamat, 304 pages, hardcover, €30.
Book launch on May 21st in Berlin, 7.30 p.m. in the Fahimi Bar, Skalitzer Str. 133; on May 30th at 7 p.m. in the nd-Literatursalon in FMP1, Franz Mehring Place 1 and on June 2nd. in Bielefeld at 4 p.m., Meller Str. 2.

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