Bestselling author Dirk Oschmann falls during a reading in Ilmenau

Bestselling author and literature professor Dirk Oschmann fell off the stage during a reading in Ilmenau, Thuringia. He wanted to clear away the table he was sitting at with the evening's presenter, ran backwards and fell off the stage, which was over a meter high, as a dpa reporter observed. The audience had to leave the auditorium and an emergency doctor attended to Oschmann. He was taken to hospital with injuries, the organizers announced on request.

The accident happened half an hour after the start of the reading from Oschmann's bestseller "Der Osten, eine westdeutsche Erfindung". His book made it to the top of the non-fiction bestseller lists of "Spiegel" and "Focus" last year. The central thesis of his book is that the West has dominated the discourse since German reunification in 1990, setting itself as the norm and denigrating the East as a deviation. The book triggered a new East-West debate in the media and elsewhere. Oschmann was born in Gotha in 1967 and is a professor of literature at the University of Leipzig.