Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz has outed himself as a bookworm. "We all - and I include myself in this - share a love of reading," said the SPD politician on Wednesday evening at the opening of the book fair in Leipzig. "Whether as a child in the evening before going to sleep, as a young politician on the train between Hamburg and Bonn, or now, whenever my time allows - books have accompanied me through my life for as long as I can remember."
He is no more committed to a particular genre than the trade fair is: Science or society, adventure or thriller, non-fiction or novel. "If you let yourself, there's a surprise waiting behind the book cover that we often miss out on online, because algorithms show us what we think is good anyway, or what we should think is good." If you allow yourself to, you will find something interesting, exciting or touching everywhere.
Whoever reads allows other perspectives than their own, takes a personal interest in developments, says Scholz. With every chapter, with every new page, opposites that seem unbridgeable in everyday life can be overcome. "Reading is therefore daily proof that we can understand each other despite our differences, that our societies in Germany and Europe are by no means doomed to drift apart."
