Marc Fischer had a start like in a Hollywood film.
Photo: Enver Hirsch
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You always think that journalists are naturally open and curious people. Until you get to know some of them and realize that their professional approach is not much different than that of, say, a plumber – someone has to go where it stinks and ensure that the situation is clear.
For this reason alone, Marc Fischer was not a typical journalist. He was not drawn to the latrines of politics and society, but to people who created beauty – his last book is about the search for João Gilberto, the man who gave the world the bossa nova. And even when Marc Fischer dealt with smoking, it was not about nicotine and lung cancer, but about how a cigarette brings people closer and gives the moment a special value.
This way of writing, of course, was not a new hat. In portraits and reports, authors such as Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe had already adopted an unusual, literary narrative perspective in the 1960s and 1970s. The author no longer pretended to be objective and omniscient. He or she did not hide behind impersonal formulations, but confidently used the first person singular: “me”, “myself”, “I”. New Journalism is the name of these subjective texts, which – like Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” – were created under the influence of mind-expanding substances.
In the old FRG it took a little longer for the “I” to prevail. It was the Austrian Markus Peichl who, with “Tempo” in February 1986, not only spread a new magazine, but also a new attitude towards life. There was the travel journalist Helge Timmerberg, for whom every report became a trip into one’s own self. The columnist Maxim Biller, who fired “a hundred lines of hatred” month after month. And a certain Christian Kracht, who wrote an ode to the cheeseburger. It was sometimes strange, sometimes upsetting, often truthful in a strange way – and at some point tiring.
But just at the moment when one had read enough of New Journalism – because at some point there were too many untalented imitators – Marc Fischer appeared. “You recognize the winner at the start” says “Once upon a time in America”, and Fischer had a start like in a Hollywood film. It was in Canada, 1994. The young journalist visited the author of “Generation X”, Douglas Coupland, to compose a portrait. But when Fischer left Coupland again, the two had swapped roles: The writer wrote about meeting the young editor. 22 years later – the latter was already dead – Coupland called him “my German friend Marc Fischer”.
This was Fischer’s uniqueness: he didn’t work through a catalog of questions, but instead built up closeness. It could go so far that an appointment turned into a date. The interview with model Kate Moss turned into a love story that ended sadly the moment her boyfriend showed up. The reader, however, was happy because he recognized himself in the heartache of Marc Fischer. Because he understood the essence of first-person journalism. It was not about retelling in the style of »My most beautiful holiday experience«, but about exposing the emotional core of an encounter. When he talked about an hour-long drive with a 15-year-old, you learned more about the emotional life of a teenage girl than any of the Shell youth studies. And whoever stood in line with Fischer in front of Berghain suddenly understood what the fascination for this techno club was.
What counted was intensity and authenticity. Therefore it made no fundamental difference whether he met the Beastie Boys or attended a karaoke evening – Fischer let himself into the world he was describing without any ifs or buts. He was not an observer, but a participant. Right in the middle there instead of just. Even when he gave the main character a different name, as in the novel »Jäger«, people always believed they could hear Marc Fischer, no, feel.
That worked until the end. For his last report, he tried to track down João Gilberto in Brazil. He didn’t find it – and still found it. »Hobala«, the title of the book, is an expedition into the realm of longing. A journey that even Marc Fischer pushed to its emotional limits. Shortly before his 41st birthday, in April 2011, his life ended. Nobody really wanted to believe it. One journalist colleague wrote: “It’s so funny that Marc is dead because he was always much more alive than most of the others.”
For further reading: »Forever sexy. Die NEXUS-Texte «, 112 pp., Hardcover, out of print. “The thing about the self. Reportages «, KIWI, 304 pp., € 14.99. »Hobalala: In Search of João Gilberto«, Rogner & Bernhard, 200 p., € 9.90. “Hunter. Roman «, KIWI, 250 p., € 14.99.
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