With #allesdichtmachen, Dietrich Brüggemann provoked a scandal during the pandemic. The satirical videos with actors mocking corona measures were politically important, says the filmmaker. Now the “unprecedented incitement” against dissidents must finally be addressed.
“I will make a film about the Corona period at some point,” says Dietrich Brüggemann. “It will definitely be interesting.”
Nadine Dubois
Rarely have German filmmakers made a name for themselves as they did during Corona: In the protest action #allesdichtmachen in spring 2021, more than 50 actors ridiculed the Covid measures. Stars like Heike Makatsch and Jan Josef Liefers made “exercise of their right to failed satire” in YouTube clips, as the “FAZ” joked. The action, whose idea was inspired by director Dietrich Brüggemann, sparked outrage. Frightened stars deleted their videos. But three years later, the failings of German Corona policy are becoming increasingly clear. In retrospect, was the actors’ protest not so wrong after all? In Berlin’s Gleisdreieck Park, in a café near the allotment colony, Dietrich Brüggemann gets a lemonade and then gets started.
Mr. Brüggemann, do you have fond memories of #allesdichtmachen or would you rather forget the campaign?
No, why? I like talking about it too.
How present is time still?
A few days ago I spoke to an acquaintance. Her husband in particular thought the campaign was really bad at the time: Now they both told me that they had watched the videos again and that they were actually completely harmless. That’s how many people feel when they click on the videos today.
What motivated you to make the clips?
That was during this German mass hysteria. The restrictions were a huge disruption to life. You could easily cope with them if you had a solid middle-class existence. But the more you were confronted with the hardships of life, the harder it hit you.
You mean the lockdowns?
Yes, the consequences of the lockdown measures are easy to imagine in poorer sections of society: people sitting in a small apartment with several children. Then we imagine an aggressive man on top of that. Not to mention the damage that entire industries have suffered. Everything was subordinated to the incidence rate, and if you looked closely, there was nothing at all.
What, it was nothing?
Other countries were open and it was no worse than in Germany. The numbers went up and down in Switzerland, for example. So did our so-called “federal emergency brake” work in Switzerland too? Or did it simply not matter at all and have no effect whatsoever?
Who had the idea for the videos?
In February, I came into contact with a group of actors, seven or eight people, all of whom were questioning the German Corona policy, the lockdown madness.
Did you know these people well?
Just standing around and saying hello now and again at film events. But they were prominent people that I respected. The group had been thinking for a while: What could we do? Then I came along and said: The job of art is to celebrate the dominant ideology.
They wanted to try irony.
Criticism was completely fruitless anyway. It all fizzled out. So I said: “We need to make commercials for even more lockdown.” Many of those we asked thought it was great. Not all of them, of course. A few actors pulled out at the last minute, otherwise there would have been 60, not 53. Then the website went online on a Thursday evening at 6 p.m. The first reactions from friends and acquaintances in the industry were: “Hey, cool, makes you think.” And then, around nine or ten in the evening, the shitstorm hammered down: “You’re making fun of intensive care patients! How stupid can you be?” For a few weeks, the mood in Germany was something like someone had defecated on the holy of holies in St. Peter’s Basilica.
What did you expect?
I thought there might be trouble. But it was also possible that some people would be encouraged to think. But it was more likely that they would be angry. The only question is: about what? Millions of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. If I don’t like one of them, I don’t have to make a fuss. We didn’t spend any public money. We didn’t use taxpayers’ money to put up the videos in public places.
Can’t you understand that some people found it inappropriate? People were scared, perhaps they belonged to a risk group or had lost relatives.
I wasn’t making fun of people who had lost relatives or belonged to a risk group. I was making fun of a political process that led to old people having to die alone without their relatives being allowed to visit them. That children were locked up at home. The hysterical reaction didn’t come from that direction either. I didn’t hear anything at all from risk groups or people who had lost someone. The great outrage came from the usual loudmouths in the public.
How did you react?
I gave a few interviews and defended the action in public because I thought it was important. Artistically, it would have been smarter to just put it out there and say: “Go fight.” You’re not supposed to comment on your work. But politically, it was important to me.
You haven’t given many interviews. Why?
I wasn’t asked by the mainstream media. But that’s how they are. Very few of them go out and say: This guy is interesting, we’re going to interview him. Instead, they get their stuff fed to them by the PR industry. When someone like Veronica Kebekus or Carolin Ferres, or whatever they’re called, has a book with recipes for vegan pancakes and you only see these people on the supermarket checkout magazine and in the train customer magazine, it’s no coincidence.
Would you have spoken to the mainstream media?
Of course I would have spoken to a “Süddeutsche Zeitung” newspaper. I had a telephone interview with “Spiegel” newspaper, from which a few sentences were incorporated into a text. These “Spiegel”, “SZ” and “Zeit” journalists have a vocabulary that is constantly “categorizing” from the high pulpit. There is an incredible arrogance there.
Did you move in lateral thinker circles?
Of course. If the state decrees that we shut down public life, that we simply confiscate basic rights, that we no longer meet until further notice, that we stay at home and so on, and anyone who questions this is insulted as a “lateral thinker”, then I am obviously a lateral thinker too.
You thought the lockdown was wrong. Were you anti-vaxxer?
The corona vaccination is something completely different from conventional vaccinations. Research into mRNA has been going on for decades, but it has never been used on humans. Suddenly it is being rolled out billions of times, and then there is unprecedented agitation against everyone who does not take it without objection. What do we think of this with a little distance?
Have you been vaccinated?
Have I been vaccinated? Dear audience, that is the exciting question: Tune in again next week. And until then, think your own thoughts.
What did you think about masks?
Leading scientists such as Martin Kulldorff, a former professor at Harvard, and Jay Bhattacharya demonstrated early on that masks are epidemiologically ineffective. You can also just look at the curves, countries with mandatory masks, countries without: is there a difference? No. In 2020, we were all running around with rags. It was called an “everyday mask”. A year later, the everyday mask was no longer effective. You had to wear a medical mask. Another year later, it had to be an FFP2 mask. Aha, so we were constantly running around with the wrong masks?
“Have I been vaccinated? Dear audience, that is the exciting question: Tune in again next week.” – Filmmaker Dietrich Brüggemann.
Ralf Mueller / Imago
Maybe we’ve simply learned something new.
Sweden had no mask requirement, no lockdown. It is always said that Sweden is so sparsely populated that people live in wooden houses and can only wave to their neighbors from a distance. Christian Drosten was recently able to say this again in this newspaper without contradiction. Yet Sweden is even more urbanized than Germany. Sweden consists of three large metropolitan areas, Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg. That is where most people live. Life went on. Even in large parts of the USA.
Especially in New York, one saw the horrific images.
And yet, after the initial shock, large parts of the USA did not carry on like Germany did. It doesn’t matter what I say here, the important thing is that I am not alone. An estimated third of Germans are still stunned and want to come to terms with the past. I will make a film about that time at some point. It will definitely be interesting.
What kind of movie?
Seven or eight protagonists who go through these years. Completely sober, almost documentary. People in the Corona era. But you would have to do thorough research for that. Have conversations with people, get it out of their memories.
Getting funding for a Corona film would certainly be complicated.
The committees would probably be horrified.
Are you worried that you won’t be able to make films anymore?
I have just filmed a “Tatort” and there will be another one next year. There are also plans for movies. Things are not as hot as they seem. But it is a schizophrenic situation. In the film world, everything continues, but I don’t have to show my face in the literary world. I wrote a novel that was supposed to be published by Kanon. Then suddenly they didn’t want it anymore.
Were there any objections to the content?
No. The contract was a done deal. Two weeks after #allesdichtmachen I thought: I’ll call the publisher. He’ll definitely say to me: “Boy, this is a storm in a teacup, write the novel.” But then I got him on the phone and he was hesitant: “We’ve thought about it very carefully.” People always think about it very carefully. In any case, they decided not to do the book “in consultation with the shareholders,” as they always say. And then he asks me not to tell anyone about it. That’s why I’m so happy to tell people about it.
What was the argument?
He said there was no room for artists who misunderstood their freedom of expression. Those were really his words. There is a tradition in literature that publishers support politically controversial authors. This goes back to Heine and Julius Campe. My book ended up with an editor at Hoffmann & Campe, who said it was great, one of the best he had read in the last twenty years. But because of the upheavals of the past few years, it was not possible to place it on the market. Or the label Grand Hotel van Cleef, which kicked out my band Theodor Shitstorm: I wrote to all of these people, asking whether they still thought that was right today. No one ever replied. They are obviously embarrassed, and I think that is a good sign overall.
