Sarrazin doesn’t attach any particular importance to this. “You can be unpopular. But you also have to have the right people who support you,” says Sarrazin, referring to his circle of supporters when he was still in politics. In the end he had hardly any support in the SPD.
None of this stopped him from writing. His current book is his eighth. Be misunderstood as a business model? Sarrazin would probably never admit that.
Sarrazin says of himself that he is a humorous person. As if to illustrate this, he later talks about “Pharaoh’s Revenge,” as he called the diarrheal illness he contracted while vacationing in Egypt in the 1990s.
“Many things can only be dealt with with irony,” explains Sarrazin. He says it’s a good way to mock his opponent. He just doesn’t notice it straight away. But irony is a “sharp sword,” he warns, that should only be used carefully.
He apparently believes that this is why he is so often misunderstood, and immediately gives an example: At the beginning of the millennium, a journalist who was “hostile” to him misunderstood an “obviously” ironic comment he made. In an interview about the city’s austerity measures, Sarrazin said: “The civil servants are walking around pale and smelly because the workload is so high.” The journalist used this to construct a story against him. The result: “I didn’t talk to him for a year,” says Sarrazin. “I found myself being abused.”
Sarrazin’s humor also has limits.
Meanwhile, he can’t often laugh at the ZDF “heute show” contributions. He often finds the program too left-wing, too missionary, he says. “She uses 90 percent of her satirical abilities to achieve what she considers to be politically correct goals.” Sarrazin continues to look at her, out of habit, but also because he wants to see his prejudices confirmed.
As a rule, his wife Ursula Sarrazin, his closest supporter, explains Sarrazin, a former teacher. She agreed with his theses and helped him with his works. They married in 1974, a year after Sarrazin joined the SPD. The two of them loved traveling, and in November the Sarrazin couple are going to Vietnam for three weeks. They recently visited friends in Mallorca. And regularly, “several months a year”, they are in their holiday home on Usedom.
There is a drawing by her two sons on the dining room wall. Sarrazin says he commissioned this from a Polish painter on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz in the early 1990s. He has a good relationship with them; they still live in Berlin. He doesn’t want to answer any further questions, including those about grandchildren. His family: private matter.
Sarrazin prefers to talk about himself. As an author, he is either a hate figure or a cult figure. In between? There is little.
He now tells an anecdote to illustrate this. During a trip to the city, two young people of Turkish origin asked him for a selfie. Like so many people, they had not read his books. But having heard of him and his theses: “The more sensible of you know that I am absolutely right.”
And on the same day he was insulted in a subway station by a middle-aged man, dressed alternatively, who was “obviously socialized as a left-wing radical.” “People like you should be killed,” the man shouted to him – unfortunately, this man was too “cowardly” for a discussion and told him this when the subway doors were already closing, says Sarrazin.
Because of such incidents, he no longer takes the subway too often, but when in doubt prefers to take a taxi when going to Kreuzberg or Neukölln. Where Sarrazin suspects he is most likely to be attacked for his publications.
In addition to reading, Sarrazin likes to unwind while playing golf. He became an “old-age golfer”. Occasionally he plays together with his former boss, ex-mayor Klaus Wowereit. He maintains a friendly relationship with him – the two share the same ironic humor, says Sarrazin. Despite all the friendship: Wowereit did not want to comment on Sarrazin when asked by t-online.
Does he regret anything in his life? Sarrazin has to think about the question for a long time.
After just under two minutes he finds an answer: the move from Bonn to Mainz in 1991, when he became State Secretary for Finance in the Rhineland-Palatinate capital. Not least because he had to give up his private environment.
And regarding his comments? Didn’t he exaggerate in one way or another? No, he would write it all again exactly the same. He doesn’t have to show any remorse, he says, especially not for “Germany is abolishing itself.” On the contrary: “I can certainly feel proud of the continuity of my achievements.” An unmistakable statement.