Max Czollek is a poet, publicist, and political scientist. He received his doctorate from the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technische Universitt Berlin and is particularly well known for his theatrical and essayistic work surrounding memory culture, integration, and Jewish identity in post-war Germany. Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator, activist, and freelance literary translator. Beginning in Fall 2022, he will be a Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan. Jon received his PhD from UC Berkeley in German and Medieval Studies after studying Translation, History, and Literature in Heidelberg and Santa Cruz. He lives and works between Ann Arbor, Northern California, and Berlin.
Praise for De-Integrate! The continuing influence of the past on the present-and what Czollek sees as Germany's collective reluctance to acknowledge it-informs his latest book, De-Integrate!, a collection of politically charged essays and historical reflections that came out in August 2018 and is still making waves in the country. In it, he argues that Germany, eager to shed its past, isn't reckoning with the rise of anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism. And with the book's title, he is calling on people who have been ostracized or singled out to stop trying to fit in and embrace their 'otherness' so Germany can become a truly multicultural, pluralistic society. -Valeriya Safronova, The New York Times This 31-year-old author writes scathingly and entertainingly, he provokes and puzzles. De-Integrate! is an important contribution to the sometimes hysterical debate on integration -Manfred Koch, Neue Zu rcher Zeitung De-Integrate! is a well-researched, stringently argued, sometimes even funny polemic, which has come at just the right time. -Ulrich Gutmair, taz An important book. -Literatur Spiegel Unapologetic and pugnacious, loud and sexy. -Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Sharp-tongued and entertaining, provocative and irritating. -Neue Zurcher Zeitung am Sonntag A renunciation (...) of the German self-adulation as world champions when it comes to a culture of remembrance. -Die Zeit