Press Release, April 16, 2026
Literature: For the Freedom of Criticism and Reply
PEN Berlin—you can rely on it—always defends freedom of expression, including where it is sharp, polemical, and hurtful. An entire cultural genre, literary criticism, lives in part from this polemical sharpness.
The literary critic (and PEN Berlin member) Denis Scheck has now come under massive attack because, in his program Druckfrisch—a performative format that must translate intellectual judgments into images—he theatrically consigns books to the trash or the used-book bin, including (also) books by women. The accusation is not that his judgments are wrong, but that they are sexist.
Those who dish it out must also be able to take it. When authors—such as Sophie Passmann, also a member of PEN Berlin, Elke Heidenreich, and Ildikó von Kürthy—challenge the verdicts and judgments of literary criticism, contradict them, and thus repay critics in kind, this is not only their right. It is what creates the productive climate of tension in which discussion about books becomes a passionate debate.
Books thrive on this form of public dispute. Marcel Reich-Ranicki once—legend has it—tore Günter Grass’s novel Ein weites Feld to pieces on the cover of Der Spiegel. It was not beautiful, not appropriate, not pedagogically valuable, and perhaps not even fair—but it was literary criticism. We need spaces for sharp debate about what is good and what is bad. And everyone is entitled to take part in that debate.
“There is, however, a vast difference between participating in a debate—also a debate about literary criticism and sexism—on the basis of the stronger argument, and demanding that the ‘bad man’ finally be shown the door,” said PEN Berlin spokesperson Deniz Yücel. “We therefore very much hope that those responsible at ARD will withstand the pressure currently being exerted on them, rather than cancelling Druckfrisch over the present controversy—possibly after a brief grace period so that it attracts less attention.”
PEN Berlin. We stand by our word.