Essay »Glamor« – Ute Cohen pleads for being different

Anyone talking about the book “Glamor” has to talk about its author Ute Cohen. It is what was used to be called a lady of the world appreciatively. So a well -read, far -traveled, versatile woman who knows how to move safely on the social parquet.

That was not in her cradle. As a Bavarian workers’ child, she benefited from a scholarship from the Study Foundation of the German People, which made it possible for her to study and do history linguistics and history. Later she lived in Paris for many years, which she culturally shaped. In the meantime she lives in Berlin and publishes novels, essays and interviews (including Michel Houellebecq). As part of the “Cohen’s Club” series of events, she is a host of »BookSirées«, in which »free-standing, versatility and Savoir vivre appear. My guests are curious about life, feel the desire for language and know art and literature. ”So people like the cultural philosopher Bazon Brock and the author Peter Prange.

This biographical background is not unimportant to understand “glamor”. Because the book is about the spiritual world in which Ute Cohen moves and that sees it endangered. Now Germany has never been the land of glamor, rather that of the clerk. With glamor you combine glitter and pomp in this country – and are therefore thoroughly wrong.

Ute Cohen is also aware of this. Already in the introduction, using the example of actress Ava Gardner, she illustrates that glamor has nothing to do with attitude, that is, with an display, but with “Attitude” – the inner attitude is that gives the glamor its radiance.

But that’s exactly where the problem begins. 500 years of Protestantism have left their mark. This no longer even requires an official church. Anyone who has internalized their own thinking and acting through parents, teachers or false friends (because there is no priest who gives the path for new sins after confession), does violence in the long run. Even worse: he wants others to do castles and repentance themselves. Ute Cohen sees a danger in these armed figures, which with her “moralex hibitionism” also have life. She quotes the eccentric Austrian actor Helmut Berger: “The Germans have no idea about freedom.”

And what do these “lackluster virtue keepers” fight for freedom? Your tool is the “cult of authenticity”. Which gives you the core of the 184-page essay. Ute Cohen’s thinking revolves around the question: What is authentic? Inevitably one thinks of the standard phrase of forest and meadow psychology: “Be yourself!” But how does this self express yourself?

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Using David Bowie, Ute Cohen illustrates that authenticity, as they understand the “black and white thinkers”, is a construct, yes, a lie. Which is the authentic Bowie? The one who was Ziggy Stardust? Or his successor Aladdin Sane? Or the dandy of “Young Americans”? Or the Thin White Duke? Or in the end even the Bowie that nobody knew yet? At the latest now you understand that identity is not a reinforced concrete carrier, but a wobbly pudding that can take a wide variety of shapes depending on the phase of life.

Yes, identity is sometimes pure coincidence. Ute Cohen tells the curious story of Tom Wolfe (“Fegefeuer der Vanities”), who had a white suit for the summer. Only the tailor had chosen a fabric that was unsuitable for the hot season. So Wolfe made a virtue out of necessity and wore the white suit in winter. And lo and behold: all gaffed. Wolfe, always equipped with a fine feeling for social moods, term: unintentionally, he had created a trademark for himself. So he consistently wore the suit on all public occasions. People soon connected his person with this piece of clothing. A metamorphosis had taken place: the staged Wolfe was perceived as the authentic wolf.

In addition, the white suit awarded the writer Glamor. In a uniform world, which was characterized by jeans and business dressings, Wolfe optically protruded. Not everyone feels comfortable. Birds of paradise are admired, but also laughed at. The subtitle of the book addresses this: “On the risk of artistically staging”.

And yet Ute Cohen appeals to her readers to do exactly that. At a time when it unfortunately has become a matter of course to put people pedantic in drawers (in this regard, racists and Woke are more left -liberals than they like), the glamor is required. It is the statement that is visible from afar: »I am not one of them. I want to be different. ”And that ends the text – I have to go to the tailor.

Ute Cohen: Glamor. About the venture to stage yourself artistically. To Klampen Verlag, 184 pages, € 22.