Exberliner Issue 171 May 2018

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Letters to
the editor
This month: our cinema trailer
featuring Berlin personality
Rummelsnuff and an article in
our April Brazil issue offend
two readers.
“I don’t want to be
a Berliner any more.”
Guten Tag, I would like to get my opinion
about your trailer off of my chest. I love
black humour and sarcasm but this video
won’t increase your circulation – I assume
that is the point of running it. As a Berliner
I feel pretty bad when I see this commercial.
If the tourists, immigrants and temporary
residents are supposed to see and hear
Berliners like that, then I don’t want to be
a Berliner any more. With that appearance,
Berliners can maybe work as a bouncer for
dubious clubs, but he doesn’t represent me.
Thank you for your attention.
— Sincerely, Peter
“Does this not look
slightly racist to you?”
Dear Exberliner, I am Brazilian, a Berlin resident
and reader of your magazine. I bought
April’s edition yesterday to have it as Sunday
reading and to my surprise most of it is about
‘Brazil in Berlin’. So far so good, but then I
reached page 18. There’s a two-page story
called “Why I married my German wife”. It’s
about four Brazilian guys that shamelessly fool
their respective German wives with lies and
betrayals in order to get German citizenship.
Before I even start, let’s do a short analysis
of the illustration that was published with
the story: A dark-skinned man portrayed as
the chesthair-out-of-shirt Latino stereotype
sneaks a passport out of the pocket of a white
skinned woman. Does this not look slightly
racist to you? With his other hand he holds
a ring. A true gold digger act performed by a
darked-skinned male against a white-skinned
female. No need to say this already started
out on the wrong foot. You want to know if
marrying a German person for a visa is worth
it? Well, how about opening the scope a little
and talking about a whole new wave of marriages
that are impulsed by visas, performed
by an innumerous number of non-European
nationalities coming together with European
nationalities, motivated by love, friendship,
political points of view or even money? Off
the top of my head I can give you at least five
examples of this kind of marriage that would
make an exciting, diverse story with no need
to offend a nationality.
Do you even realise how this one-sided
story touches Brazilian people? People that
struggle for acceptance in a foreign country?
How this offends our culture and specially
touches the reputation of Brazilian immigrants?
Why didn’t you hear other stories?
This piece reinforces a bad stereotype
and it’s offensive. I hope Exberliner is
capable of an apology, for these miserable,
miserable pages. — Roberta
Dear Roberta,
The article in question wasn’t supposed to
portray “Brazilian people”, how or why they
marry, or who does or does not marry for
citizenship. Its scope was a lot more humble
and limited: under the tag ‘confession’, we
ran a rather anecdotal story of four friends
from Brazil who happen to share the same
story of love and deception – at least in the
way they all boasted marrying their German
girlfriends for a visa. Granted, the story is
pretty one-dimensional – as told from the
men’s perspective. Granted, “marrying for a
visa” isn’t a Brazilian thing. It just happened
that these four were Brazilian, that Alice
Klar knew them (and in some cases their
wives!) and that they were willing to talk to
us (although anonymously).
As for the illustration, you’re totally right:
the guy (intentionally) does look like the
cliché ‘Latin lover’, a cliché used and abused
by the men of the story. The German women
allegedly fell for just that – and all the exoticism
that comes with it.
As for the ‘passport stealing’ – it’s obviously
a visual metaphor. It’s a barter: the
women get to marry a dream lover, the
men get to solve their visa problem. Who’s
the cheater, who’s the cheated? As the story
shows, some of the men end up falling into
their own trap.
All in all, we thought that the material
made for a quite universally entertaining story;
a story that tells us more about the quirks
of the human psyche than it does about one
nationality or another. This is the way you
read it. It’s not the way we intended it.
This was only one story in a 15-page
Brazil special. We also portrayed six talented
Brazilians who call Berlin home and wrote
at length about Brazilian food, culture and
places. Some readers enjoyed it, including
some fellow Brazilians. You didn’t – and
we’re sorry for that. Let us just assure you
that we never meant to offend you or other
Brazilians. If you found this article upsetting,
we can only apologise.
— Exberliner team
www.berlindrawingroom.com
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