German author defends dystopian ‘health dictatorship’ novel with Covid-19 parallels

A decade ago, Julie Zeh, one of Germany’s most respected novelists, wrote a novel about a dystopian society with eerie echoes of today’s Covid-19 reality.

Corpus Delicti became a bestseller and is rising again in the book charts, telling of a society where healthy living is the highest obligation of all citizens and is used to justify tracking, punishment and social exclusion.

A citizen can expect to be dragged before a court if they fail to file monthly sleep and nutritional plans, or if their exercise sensor implant shows a slump in physical activity.

In the opening chapter Zeh sketches out the manifesto of the state where the most common greeting is “Santé” and health the highest goal of the political and justice systems: “A person who doesn’t pursue healthy living will not become sick; they are already.”

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The book, now read in schools, asks searching questions about how far a state can and will go in limiting citizens’ rights: not after a terrorist attack but in pursuit of the promise of a long and healthy life.

A decade on, as lockdown restrictions are lifting in Germany, Zeh has released a follow-up book, and in interviews suggests Germans have been exposed in the pandemic to a massive campaign of emotional intimidation. Unless they do what is demanded of them, she says, the authorities say they will be to blame for the further spread of the virus and deaths in at-risk groups.

“That leads to contrary reactions and resistance among some people,” she told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily. “This is an unnecessary dilemma that torments people: an artificially created antagonism between human rights and human lives.”

Early and widespread Covid-19 testing and a six-week lockdown have kept Germany’s death toll relatively low – one-fifth of the UK’s to date despite a quarter more people. This has in turn seen a remarkable vote of confidence in chancellor Angela Merkel and her ruling Christian Democratic Union. It is up to 40 per cent in polls – levels of support not seen since the days of Helmut Kohl.

Yet the lockdown measures have prompted considerable public protest as well as attempts to co-opt the emerging protest movement by the far-left, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists.

They have embraced Corpus Delicti as a foretaste of what is to come if a second wave of Covid-19 sees restrictions reimposed. The heroine of Zeh’s novel, Mia Holl, has become a poster girl for their protest, declaring: “I revoke trust in a state that knows better what is good for me than me myself.”

Pushback

Though wary of her new readers, Zeh has defended her novel and its warnings, triggering a pushback from Der Spiegel magazine, the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) daily and other media outlets. They suggest the 45-year-old writer has confused her fictional morality tale with the current, fast-moving, real-life health drama where actual lives are at stake.

“If Julie Zeh cannot adapt to the reality changing before her eyes,” the conservative FAZ suggested, “and instead presents the same routine, then this won’t help her in a complicated situation.”

In the last month across Europe arguments have taken place about the tension between political pragmatism and constitutional principles. And Germany’s two dictatorships in the last century have left people here sensitive to anything with a whiff of a power grab.

With a deliberate nod to the emergency laws that sealed the 1933 Nazi takeover, some protesters dubbed Germany’s lockdown rules an “enabling act”.

Zeh has distanced herself from the conspiracy theorists, insisting Germany’s democratic values have not been undermined by a temporary suspension of some fundamental rights.

However, she says her 2009 novel has become an unplanned commentary on the Covid-19 crisis, and its warnings about a “health dictatorship” remain valid. For her the pandemic has been less a break with old ways and more an exercise in continuity: the latest hit for the 21st century western world’s growing army of anxiety addicts.