Margarete Stokowski (born April 14, 1986[1] in Zabrze, Poland[2]) is a Polish-German writer and essayist. She is best known for her weekly essays for the magazine Spiegel Online where she writes about the current state of feminism in Germany.[3] The numbers of clicks on her essays reach up to 900,000.[4] The Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that she is the "loudest voice of German feminism" in 2019.[5]
Stokowski advocates freedom for every gender and often criticizes neoliberalism for the oppression of women especially, but also men. According to her views, the modern German society often misleads women into buying goods they don't need or being unhappy with their own bodies by setting up impossible-to-reach beauty standards. She states that a non-patriarchal world would be better for everybody and sees the fear of losing power as the main motivation for some people to cling on to patriarchy. Stokowski is a sharp observer and critic of right-wing tendencies all over the world.[6]
She appeared alongside the Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, in an advertising campaign for a problematic promotion of COVID-19 vaccines named "Ich schütze mich" (I protect myself).[7]
As of July 2019, Stokowski has published two books off her own, namely Untenrum frei (Freedom "Down There") in 2016 and Die letzten Tage des Patriarchats (The last days of patriarchy) in 2018. Both works were very successful and reached high positions in the bestseller rankings.[8][9]
In September 2019, Stokowski was awarded the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis for her critical analysis in her columns.[10]
Personal life
Stokowski was born in Poland in 1986. Her parents named her after the female protagonist of the novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.[11] On her German identity card, Hindenberg (the name of Zabrze from 1915 – 1946) is listed as her birthplace instead of Zabrze.[12]
In 2018, Stokowski cancelled an already sold-out reading at the Lehmkuhl bookstore in Munich because it also carried right-wing primary texts from Verlag Antaios.[19] In a 2019 article, Stokowski criticized the German cult of asparagus, which she called "the old White man of cuisine."[20] The Free Democratic Party chairman Christian Lindner quoted the article during a party conference while claiming that German asparagus production is under attack.[21][22]
jeder tag …. In: Christiane Frohmann (Ed.): Tausend Tode schreiben. Berlin 2015, ISBN978-3-944195-55-1.
Sie hat ‚ficken‘ gesagt. In: Volker Surmann, Heiko Werning (Ed.): Ist das jetzt Satire oder was? Beiträge zur humoristischen Lage der Nation. Satyr, Berlin 2015, ISBN978-3-944035-62-8.
frau k. In: Christoph Buchwald, Ulrike Almut Sandig (Ed.): Jahrbuch der Lyrik 2017.Schöffling, Frankfurt am Main 20, ISBN978-3-89561-680-8.
Forward to: Charles Fourier: Die Freiheit in der Liebe. Ein Essay. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2017, ISBN978-3-96054-055-7.
Stadt, Land, Fluss beim Sex – Mein Leben als feministische Kolumnistin. In: Peter Felixberger, Armin Nassehi (Ed.): Kursbuch 192. Frauen II. Kursbuch Kulturstiftung, Hamburg 2017, ISBN978-3-96196-000-2.
Afterword, in: Olympe de Gouges: Die Rechte der Frau und andere Texte. Reclam-Verlag, Ditzingen 2018, ISBN978-3-15-019527-7.
Zurück. In: Lina Muzur (Ed.): Sagte sie. 17 Erzählungen über Sex und Macht. Hanser Berlin, Berlin 2018, ISBN978-3-446-26074-0.
Sprache. In: Fatma Aydemir, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah (Ed.): Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum. Ullstein fünf, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-96101-036-3
Forward to: Virginia Woolf: Ein eigenes Zimmer. Fischer Taschenbuch, Berlin 2019, ISBN978-3-596-52235-4.
^Stokowski, Margarete (2018). Die letzten Tage des Patriarchats [The last days of patriarchy] (in German). Hamburg: Rowohlt. p. 157. ISBN978-3-498-06363-4.
^Haberl, Tobias (6 June 2019). "Die Deuterin" [The Interpreter]. Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Munich.
^"Frauenschwarm. Wo steht der deutsche Feminismus. Ein Porträt seiner lautesten Stimme: Margarete Stokowski". Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin (in German). 7 June 2019. p. 1.
