Political scientist, journalist and Green Party veteran Paul Nellen has died.

Paul Nellen
Februar 26, 1947 – June 29, 2022
In his memory, some friends and companions wrote:
“Today our dear friend, fellow activist, journalist and translator Paul Nellen passed away after a long serious illness. Until the end, although limited by his ALS disease, he was a fighter for a humane society. As a co-founder and board member of our association Secular Islam Hamburg, he stood for secularism against Islamism.
We mourn Paul and miss him and promise we will keep going.”
(Necla Kelek, sociologist and publicist)

In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, our friend and comrade-without-arms, the eternally hopeful “Despite-all-this-Green” Paul Nellen, since always until yesterday still fighting for a secular society, a Hamburg resident by choice, who always liked to come also to Berlin and was a passionate cyclist but also motorcyclist, has unfortunately now said goodbye to us forever. May he rest in peace.
For about a year Paul suffered from the incurable disease ALS, he was several times in intensive care units in Hamburg hospitals and finally had to be cared for around the clock and supplied with oxygen through a mask. He could no longer move at all. In the end, it was very difficult for him to endure this condition, so that the day before yesterday, his palliative care doctor decided to give him morphine. Perhaps this then enabled him to let go – which, of course, he surely found difficult.
Paul lived his last days in an intensive care facility in Bad Oldesloe, where he was cared for around the clock by an intensive care and respiratory health team. He felt well cared for and looked after there, as he assured me during my very last telephone conversation with him (with the support of his nurse, who held his cell phone to his ear) three weeks ago.
(Eberhard Schwartz, host of the Friedenau Salon Talks, where Paul Nellen was a frequent guest and a few times moderator.)
“Oh Paul!
What we’d all love to say to you still.
How you have driven and encouraged us through wit and acumen and perseverance.
Since the times of the anti-nuclear movement, the fight for the rights of indigenous people, then in the Islamism debate and together for freedom without hijab and for a burqa ban.
Your knowledge of the history of Islam and Iran.
The day the verdict was pronounced against the Islamists in Paris, who threatened and are threatening not only Paris but all of Europe, you left.
You did and wrote what you could! Thank you!
May the woke youth read your articles in schools!
I will miss you and we will miss you in the public argument.
Your laughter in my ears.
(Eva Quistorp, co-founder of the Green Party)
A selection of Paul Nellen’s texts and radio manuscripts can be read on his homepage: http://www.life-info.de/inh1./texte/paulnellen.html.

As a translator, he most recently translated Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s bestseller The Disuniting of America into German (“Die Spaltung Amerikas, ibidem 2020).
Paul Nellen was also a writer for the online magazine Achse des Guten (Axis of Good), which published his critical, politically incorrect writing. Here is their obituary.