KATHRIN HARTMANN

Economists and large sections of the middle class are convinced that Germany would not have come through the crisis so well without Hartz IV. This cynical consensus contrasts with more than 16 million Germans who live in or on the edge of poverty - dispossessed, disenfranchised, discriminated against.
Kathrin Hartman shows how such discourses have become a pattern of rhetorical division and defamation: Summarised under the pejorative term "underclass", these poor people, especially the unemployed, are primarily met with contempt and mistrust. The distorted image of the lazy unemployed serves to justify far-reaching social cuts and to set citizens against each other.

The staging of the spectre of the "social parasite" is intended to distract from a policy that favours the rich and robs the general public. After all, the only way to justify the growing gap between rich and poor is to use the terms "fairness of performance" versus "social parasites". But if the middle class steps downwards out of fear of decline instead of showing solidarity, the distribution from the bottom to the top will continue.
Hartmann explains this using the example of German and international discussions - highly topical, in the Austria of the Kurz-Strache government.

Moderator: Robert Misik, author and journalist

Kathrin Hartmann, born in Ulm in 1972, studied art history, philosophy and Scandinavian studies in Frankfurt/Main. After a traineeship at the »Frankfurter Rundschau«, she worked there as an editor for news and politics. From 2006 to 2009, she worked as an editor at »Neon«. In 2009, Blessing published "Ende der Märchenstunde. Wie die Industrie die Lohas und Lifestyle-Ökos vereinnahmt", followed in 2012 by "Wir müssen leider draußen bleiben" about the new poverty and in 2015 by "Aus kontrolliertem Raubbau" about the ideology of the green economy. Kathrin Hartmann lives and works in Munich. In February 2018, her book „Die grüne Lüge“ (Blessing) will be published with Werner Boote, with whom she wrote the concept for his film "The Green Lie" and is involved in it. www.ende-der-maerchenstunde.de