The fair management has set up a dead-end area about 30 meters long and five meters wide for the weekly conservative newspaper Junge Freiheit in the corner of a hall.
By doing so, they hope the publishing house will be “better controlled”, according to dpa quoting a spokeswoman of the exhibition management.
“All of Germany complains about the increasing polarisation and division of our society. And what does the Frankfurt Book Fair do? It confines publishers of uncomfortable authors, topics, publications – this is a scandal!” JF editor-in-chief Dieter Stein commented on the quarantine policy
Already last year, the exhibition management headed by director Juergen Boos had a one-sided political position and discriminated against publishers with conservative and libertarian authors.
Despite the discriminatory attitude on display by management, the JF stand attracted a large influx of visitors. This time however, the exhibition management wants to prevent this by isolating conservatives and they have mounted a veritable campaign to do so.
“The book management is obliged to behave politically neutral. The unilateral approach of the trade fair management was irresponsible in 2017 and led to escalations,” Stein noted.
The JF has been an exhibitor at the Frankfurt Book Fair every year for 25 years already, with prominent speakers and authors such as Peter Scholl-Latour, Matthias Matussek, Birgit Kelle and Martin van Creveld. “We have never experienced such a negative offensive in these 25 years,” said Stein.
The JF editor-in-chief called on the management of the Book Fair to return to an open discourse and ensure that the Fair “remains a marketplace for the many ideas and opinions in a democracy”.
The JF is the largest conservative weekly newspaper in Germany. It has been published since 1994 in Berlin and is one of the very few newspapers that has continuously increased their paper edition sales, going against the industry trend.
“Junge Freiheit makes an important contribution to more diversity, more skepticism and thus more democracy in Germany,” said Roger Köppel, editor-in-chief of the Swiss Weltwoche.