Castrum Verlag: Using Goethe to confront the present

“Don’t read it, sell it!” calls Ledio Albani across the Leipzig Book Fair. The publisher, dressed in a black slim-fit suit with a pocket square, is addressing author Sebastian Schwaerzel, who is reading while smoking an e-cigarette.

“

Don’t read it, sell it!

The scene unfolds at the March 2026 book fair. Schwaerzel wears a black leather jacket and sunglasses and studies a small black book. He tells a young colleague that the Quran is striking. She replies that its use of a past tense for future events is especially interesting because it expresses certainty that those events will happen.

The exchange captures the literary world the article examines: young people on the German right who may be less interested in party politics than in classics, language and the pose of intellectual opposition. Their fascination with literature does not stand apart from their political ideas. It can also provide an aesthetic form for authoritarian thinking.

“

The Quran is pretty intense.

Castrum Verlag has built its profile around this desire for literary dissent. The article examines why the publisher is now moving away from an earlier aesthetic posture and drawing closer to the AfD. Its central question is how a passion for books becomes connected to a broader political milieu that presents itself through style, cultural references and opposition to the present.

“

The prophetic past tense is pretty cool. You use a past tense for something that lies in the future because you are so certain that it will happen.