Im Schatten der Macht und wir werden diese Unterhaltung später übersetzen. Aber erstens, Jonathan, willkommen. Ist das dein erstes deutsche Podcast, den du sprichst, ich wundere? Nein. I think I've done a couple of German podcasts and a German TV show or two. Have you really? Yeah. My King book is translated into German, so it's available. Tell us, please, a little bit, apart from your German podcast experience, what are you maybe working on right now? What is your background? My name is Jonathan Eig. I am a former journalist. I still think of myself as a journalist. I'm the author of six books. The most recent book was a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. That won the Pulitzer Prize and now I'm working on a biography of George Soros the philanthropist and financier and one of the most controversial men in the world Do you have a fable for sort of finding out the controversies or is there an experience that everyone you dive into for longer than a few hours will have the odd controversy going?

There's almost always controversy You know, nobody lives a perfectly clean life, although my first book was about a baseball player named Lou Gehrig, and I didn't really find any dirt at all on him, I'm kind of sad to say. I believe it. I saw that movie once. Wasn't that about Lou Gehrig's disease, Lorenzo's oil? Oh, right. Yeah, that was about it. A long time ago. Excellent. Well, Jonathan, we're really, really excited to have you here. As you know, we are doing a case on Martin Luther King. We've found all the official information, if you will, about, you know, the certain milestones, the events leading up to his assassination. But what we were really interested in was the person. Usually we're always looking at people who stand in the shadow of power, who have become sort of on the negative receiving end of power. And so that's how we came to talk about Martin Luther King. So let me get to my first question, which was in your research, what did you find most moving about King's relationships with his family and close allies, and particularly during moments of personal crisis?

Well, King was a much more sensitive person than I expected to find. You know, he was very insecure in many ways. He attempted suicide twice as a teenager. He struggled with mental health issues all his life. And in a very strange way, it's funny to say this because he's America's greatest protest leader, but he really disliked confrontation. He couldn't say no to people. Und er struggled zu stand up wenn er was challenged. So, even his father, he couldn't stand up to his own father. Und wenn presidents disappointed him, wenn politicians disappointed him, oder wenn police officials... He was willing to go to jail, but he had a very difficult time looking people in the face and arguing with them and differing with them. And I thought that was fascinating. It just goes to show that he was overcoming his own insecurities when he did rise up to challenge authority.

That is interesting because in a person that takes on this kind of leadership, you wouldn't expect them to have an awful lot of, I'm going to call it, people-pleasing qualities. And yet that's a little bit what you're saying, which feels like it's almost an antithesis to leadership, to solid leadership and consequent leadership. Would you describe it that way? I would agree. And that's partly why he was not a great leader in certain respects. He was not good at organizing teams. He was not good at giving orders. He was not good at being a boss. He was very good at highlighting problems and inspiring people to follow him and to join him and to build bridges. Very good. But not good at leadership in the way that you think of as a CEO or a military general. Not good at all in those ways. Maybe the quality that it took for this kind of leadership was more inspiration and less sort of organizational vision. What would you think? I would agree. I think he saw his role as being a spotlight. His job was not to muscle things through or to solve every problem. His job was to shine a light on the problems until the point that it reached that we had to do something about that and then to help build coalitions to solve the problem.

That's amazing, that's the first time I've heard that said about him but you're not for nothing the author that did actually find out things that we didn't previously know about Martin Luther King so what we do know a little bit is about his struggles with security and we'll get to that later but we're looking more at the inner struggles and in my reading I came across mention of mental health challenges such as depression and even anxiety Would you say that those are the two very modern mental health challenges, if you will? Would you say that that's something that characterized both the person and the path that he took? No question that he suffered all his life from mental health issues. And he was clearly struggling with depression numerous times, although they didn't call it that. He called it exhaustion. He was hospitalized at least half a dozen times. In fact, when he got the news that he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was in the hospital being treated for what he called exhaustion, and he couldn't sleep, he required medication, and he'd taken sleeping pills, and when he got the call that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize, he thought he was dreaming.

So, it's just a really good reminder that it was right in front of us, really. If you followed his career, you would see, oh, well, King's in the hospital again. And why is he in the hospital? Well, reporters would ask him and he would say, well, doctors just want me to stay here a while. And he welcomed it just to get a rest, just to get a break. And of course, as I said earlier, he attempted suicide twice as a teenager. So, I think this was something that he learned to live with. Would you say that made him a stronger or more authentic, of course also more empathy kind of leader? Is that maybe part of the magic? Yeah, I think King's great gift is his ability to love others and love is a form of empathy. And when you've struggled with these feelings, even when you're in a position of leadership and the whole world is looking up to you and you know how vulnerable you are, That makes it easy to see the others' struggles, and it makes it easy to see that even when, People that you think look like they have perfect lives probably don't. And I think that King's great gift was his ability to reach out and to find the words that made others feel like they wanted to join him in this movement. And that's because he had this great sense of empathy. Love is the word he used the most, agape.

That form of love was at the core of everything he did. That's amazing. So, one part that threw me for a loop, because I just wasn't familiar with this information, was that he was said to have committed several infidelities. And there's no judgment there, of course, but I'm wondering, how did this affect his ability to, what we call it today, stand in his truth? Did he experience any doubt at all, do you think? Now, from what you're saying from depression, that I'm guessing he did. But did his personal transgressions make him a greater target for those in power, meaning not just the infidelity, but also the mental health issues? Were these challenges to standing in his truth, and were they an extra big cross or target on his back for those in power? I think there are a couple of questions there. Let me deal with the first one.

He was absolutely torn by his own failures as a person and he was aware that he was not living up to the words that he preached and he often preached about the sense of guilt that we have at our sins and he talked about having this sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde psychology that all of us have to wrestle with, knowing our own flaws, knowing our own failures and going on with life Und er wusste, dass er eine Sache auf die Sonntag und etwas anderes war, und er hatte viele Erfahrungen mit anderen Frauen. Es war eine ganze Zeit, eine ganze Zeit in seiner Leben. Man könnte sagen, dass ein paar Dinge an sein könnte, dass er seine mentalen Probleme ist.

Er überquete his depression, his anxieties, by losing himself in the pleasure of sexual relations. That's possible. I'm just speculating. But he also knew that it added to his sense of guilt. And it also, as you suggested, the second part of your question, it put a target on his back. Because once the federal government, the FBI in particular, learned about his infidelities, they began threatening him, saying, you're going to be exposed as a fraud. Und sie sogar versucht, ihre Brüder zu verabschieden. Sie senden tapes von einem his hotel rooms zu seinem Haus, hoping das seine Frau würde hören, und das seine Brüder zu verabschieden. Sie also senden ein letter zu ihm, das er zu verabschieden, und die Medien waren zu finden, und das die nur für ihn für ihn war, war das Suicide. So die FBI war aware of seine Infidelties, und sie versucht es zu nicht nur zu verabschieden, King, but to disrupt the entire civil rights movement.

His wife, Coretta, I know this wasn't in the question, so maybe if it's not the subject, then we can leave it out. But I'm wondering, because she was such a formidable woman in her own right and later went on to achieve incredible things, what do you think her role was next to him, also knowing about these infidelities, still opting to stand by him, as they used to say? Why would she stay? Was it because she also felt a strong call to this mission, do you think? I think she loved him. So she felt a strong calling to him. And she felt a strong calling to the mission. And she knew how important she was to the entire civil rights campaign. Now remember, she discovered that he was cheating on her before they were even married. Oh. So this was a constant throughout their marriage. she would deny it in later years and she would maintain that she believed he was absolutely, completely loyal, but she knew and I discovered a recording that she made in which she, said that she discovered that while they were still engaged that he was seeing another woman, so she knew what she was getting into and she believed that she was strong enough, that their love was strong enough to endure this and that she was not going to be.

Pushed aside, she was not going to be discouraged, she was not going to be bullied by the federal government and those who were trying to undermine her marriage and her work in the civil rights movement. Maybe it was also, now I'm speculating with a lot less information than what you have, but maybe she also had a different idea of what loyalty was, or loyalty of the heart even. That's what I was thinking, because I was wondering, you know, why would you stay if it weren't for the idea that some ideas are bigger than maybe day-to-day transgressions. Would you think that could be a possibility?

I think it absolutely could be a possibility. You know, maybe she felt like her dignity, her family, and her philosophical, intellectual contributions to the movement were all more important than her own pain that she must have felt at having her husband engage in infidelities. Last question, Jonathan, going back to the systemic power that Martin Luther King and indeed those who followed him were up against, what was it ultimately that the establishment was so worried about with Martin Luther King? What did they think, had he succeeded, would happen? And what would have success been, I wonder? Black people would have more power. They would be treated fairly. Why should that be a problem? Well, if you think your job is to maintain white supremacy and it's been working really well for 300 years, then you think King is a threat you think the civil rights movement is a threat, you know hoarding power is perhaps human nature we've seen it over and over again people feel like.

The world is better if they're in charge and they see sharing power as a threat, und die Idee, dass das group von Menschen gegründet hat, für hundreds of Jahre, hat sich gegründet für hundreds of Jahre, und wir sind noch immer wieder als second-class citizens, und jetzt sie're demanding justice. King ist sagen, wir sind nicht hier zu nehmen, wir sind hier zu machen, wir sind hier zu machen, wir sind hier zu machen, wir sind hier zu machen, wir sind hier zu share in die beauty of what this country kann, und zu fulfill die promise of democracy. Aber J. Edgar Hoover und viele, viele andere sah das als ein threat ...to their own security.

Hmm. It's in some ways, it reminds me of the new feminist wave we have now where the perception sometimes is that women want everything. They want the whole world when really we just want what the men, the male counterpart has. So I guess always the existing power will be feeling that this isn't about equality. This is about taking things away from me. Maybe there's a universal theme there. Es ist also, ja, ich glaube, es ist fear of change, zu some extent. Ja. All right, Jonathan, danke so much für Ihre Zeit. Ich wirklich empfehle dies, weil, zu sagen, das war also ein personales Ding für mich. Ich habe ein Quote von Martin Luther King in meinem Jahrzehnt, wenn ich 18 Jahre alt bin. So ich bin ein lang-term Observer. Oh, great, which quote? Ja, es war Teil von his Ich habe a Dream speech. Und ich kann nicht eigentlich das ganze Thema erinnern, aber ich erinnere mich, dass ich mit I have a dream begann. Und es war nur eine der Dinge, die mich viel inspiriert, als ich ein Teenager war. Also ich freue mich besonders, dass du Zeit mit uns sprechen kannst. Das ist großartig. Danke. Danke. Danke an unser Team von Open Minds Media. Executive Producer Rüdiger Barth. Konzeption Peter Greve, Rüdiger Barth und Manfred Neumann.

Producer Ricardia Bramley. Den Schnitt machte Lilly Johannsen. Zusätzliche Unterstützung von Falko Schulte.