Anna Mayr's "Die Elenden": Sprachrohr of the Unheard

Unemployment is frightening, but society needs it – so the thesis of Anna Mayr in her non-fiction book "Die Elenden", which was published on 17 August 2020. In it, she depicts poverty from the perspective of those affected and thus exposes the flaws in the system. A review by Max Schäfer.

Anna Mayr had to grow up in poverty. She lived in a prefabricated building in a town on the edge of the Ruhr area. The reason: she is the daughter of two long-term unemployed people. At school, she could not join in when her classmates talked about the latest cinema film. As a teenager, she could not follow fashion trends; instead, she had to buy her clothes in end-of-season sales – except for the time when self-printed cotton drawstring bags were in fashion. But she escaped poverty. She had a good A-level grade, received a scholarship and studied geography and literature. Afterwards, she attended the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich. In 2017, she was nominated with a team from Correctiv for the Reporter Prize, and in 2018 for the Nannen Prize. Today she is an editor in the politics section of Die Zeit. 

This reads like a clichéd success story that corresponds to the narrative of the American Dream: a poor girl has a dream and works hard to make it come true. And she succeeded. Anna Mayr could have told this upward mobility story. She could write about her difficult childhood. A review of such a book would certainly be fitting in a Sprachrohr edition with the overarching theme "Comfort Zones". However, in "Die Elenden", Anna Mayr does not depict her successful upward mobility story, which could give all readers courage. She also does not want to tell her individual case story and show how terrible it was. She asks the question "Why?". She wants to show why it was so and what system lies behind it. 

At the beginning of her book, she establishes why we need unemployment at all: "On the one hand, we need the unemployed on a psychological level to distinguish ourselves from them. And on the other hand, on an economic level, we need the unemployed so that people will take badly paid rubbish jobs. For someone to go out into the field to pick asparagus, there needs to be something worse. That is unemployment." And she describes what effects unemployment has on people. She emphasises the importance of work. It has an identity-forming effect; just like consumption: "If you are excluded from that, then you have no chance of building an identity for yourself." The poor can be recognised by their clothing. This further stigmatises and excludes them. Social participation is ruled out, which leads to psychological problems for many. 

How can the problem be solved? She first argues against tackling symptoms alone through social workers and psychologists, and considers that the money from the follow-up costs of unemployment should be given directly to families, because participation is only possible through money. She also rejects unconditional basic income; just as she rejects calls for more education. 

Mayr herself fundamentally wants to rethink the relationship to work. The profession should no longer be the most relevant information about people. This would change, according to Mayr, the attitude towards what gives a person their value. 

"Die Elenden" describes very well what poverty means in Germany. In doing so, the book is divided. It is analytical on the one hand, but also personal on the other. Anna Mayr makes herself the protagonist of the story. It is not an analysis from the outside; rather, readers take on the author's perspective together with her. This creates empathy; however, it takes readers out of their comfort zone and confronts them with their own fear of downward mobility. It becomes clear that the story is about people who often find themselves in hardship through no fault of their own, and not about the abstract stereotype of social scroungers. The discussion of the consequences of unemployment and exclusion from society creates a new understanding of unemployment. A new problem awareness among readers can thus be created, so that the unemployed are no longer looked down upon.  

So it is really not a success story that neoliberal politicians use as an example to show that the promise of upward mobility is real. It is a critique of capitalism. However, it differs in its standpoint. Anna Mayr writes as the daughter of unemployed people and repeatedly takes the perspective of her childhood. It is not a conventional analysis by journalists or social scientists. As the voice of the destitute, she wrests the power of interpretation from academics for a moment regarding the people of her social background.