The big interview

Sarrazin: “Things have gotten much worse”

(Bild: Stefan Boness / SZ-Photo / picturedesk.com)

INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK. His bestseller "Deutschland schafft sich ab" hit like a bomb. 14 years later, Thilo Sarrazin follows up. "Everything has gotten much worse," says the most successful and controversial non-fiction author in an interview with Conny Bischofberger. A conversation about dramatic shortcomings in immigration policy and their serious consequences.

"Sarrazin?" He pronounces his name carefully, with an implied question mark after it. We already know each other personally and are therefore conducting the interview on the phone as an exception. The 79-year-old is sitting at a table in the garden, just like the last time I visited him at his home in the west of Berlin. "I was just answering questions from a Catholic magazine by email," says Sarrazin, explaining that he and his cat "Leo" are doing well.

Since the uncomfortable lateral thinker presented his new book last week, he has once again become a sought-after conversation partner. "Germany on the wrong track", coupled with his limited optimism about the future and relentless criticism of a failed migration policy, is sure to cause a lot of controversy again. His former party, the SPD, therefore expelled its decades-long member (1973 - 2020) from the party. The accusation: Sarrazin is xenophobic and Islamophobic. Yet much of what the controversial author said and wrote long before the refugee crisis in 2015 has since become consensus.

"Krone": Mr. Sarrazin, your new book also revolves around the topic of immigration. Why is this topic so important to you?
Thilo Sarrazin: I always talk about demographics and immigration, simply because we cannot assess the issue of immigration without our own birth rate. Ultimately, the question is where Western societies are heading demographically if each generation is a third smaller than the previous one. Why is this topic so important to me? If we fill this gap with immigrants from other cultures, it will mean the end of our society.