Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
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We present the books that shaped Germany's literary world this autumn, with futuristic novels about clones and time standing still, two major tomes on the fall of the Wall, and a sampling of bookish delights from around the globe.
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Essays by Karl Schlögel and Andrzej Stasiuk, memoirs by Martin Walser and Luc Bondy, histories of German fascination for Russia and a friendship with Hitler, a Weber biography and a book on painter Gerhard Richter.
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A monumental Mao biography, an essay on hate, a book about a 1969 failed bomb attack in Berlin's Jewish Community Centre, and a study of "mental capitalism" on the pervasiveness of advertising.
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Eberhard Havekost is being hyped as one of the hot "Young German Artists". His subjects are banal, he copies copies, he's interested in surfaces. Art critic Elke Buhr ventures to ask if there's any depth.
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Wolfgang Kemp takes a poke at Unesco in this week's Merkur. Die Weltwoche pays a visit to Ilse Aichinger. Der Spiegel visits Giuliano Ferrara, publisher of Italy's most exciting newspaper. Outlook India covers the "Mama industry". Le Point is astonished at France's new iconoclasts and The New Republic writes on French anti-anti-Americanism. Elet es Irodalom warns against throwing out the baby of Islam with its radical bathwater.
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Does the future of classical music lie in China? International stars like Lang Lang and Yundi Li are just the tip of the iceberg. On tour with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmoniker, Claus Spahn reports on the classical craze in the People's Republic. (Photo: Berliner Philharmoniker/Andreas Knapp)
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A visual disaster for today's Germany: the disfigurement of a splendid new train station in the heart of Berlin. By Horst Bredekamp (Image © GMP)
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Moritz Rinke, playwright and astute observer of the passing political scene, comments on Gerhard Schröder's cozy relationship with artists and the media. And the fact that while everybody seemed to like him, nobody really got to know him.
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The riots in the French suburbs are taking place in an atmosphere rife with male violence where girls and women live in fear.
If we really want to address the problem of burning cars,
then we must also tackle the problem of burning girls. By Alice Schwarzer
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The New York Review of Books visits the radical religious school Madrassa Haqqania in Pakistan. Artist Rajeev Sethi remembers in Outlook India how Indira Gandhi told him how to get the best out of bad design. In L'Express, Caroline Fourest and Francois Burgat fight tooth and nail over Islamic feminism. In Revista de Libros, Rafael Gumucio bemoans the disastrous influence of Nabokov and Borges. In The Guardian, a group of authors speak out against Britain's planned blasphemy ban. In the Hungarian Heti Valaggazdasag, Janos Ladany warns of the consequences of poverty among the Roma. And Jonathan Lethem extols the delights of Italo Calvino in the New York Times.
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Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier talks about sexual fantasies, the Pope, America, slavery and his new film "Manderlay" with an undaunted Katja Nicodemus.
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French philosopher Andre Glucksmann sees the rioting French suburbs as an expression of hatred. You can blame socio-economic conditions, he says, but you won't get to the root of the problem until you look this hatred in the eye.
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The magazines this week are full of the events in France. The Spectator sees an Islamic conspiracy behind the riots. By contrast, Die Weltwoche and Le Point see nothing but infantile self-destruction. For The New Yorker the American integration model is the most successful. Lawrence Lessig explains in Foreign Policy why he doesn't want Europeans in ICANN. Canadian Pianist Angela Hewitt tells in the TLS where the best grand pianos are had. The New York Times is against the National Book Award in particular and the award culture in general.
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Joachim Radkau has written a monumental biography of Max Weber, the father of sociology. Relying heavily on private letters, he draws close parallels between Weber's intellectual and erotic life - which was at first unfulfilled and then both uninhibitied and extra-marital. All very interesting, but does it help us understand Weber's work? By Robert Leicht
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Part three: Zarqawi moved effortlessly from one battlefield to the next, from the
Iraqi desert to Berlin and into cyberspace. His Internet website was his own private stage. Hostages, the President of the United States and Europe's heads of
state were just bit-part actors in a drama directed by him alone. The last
part of our series. By Urs Gehriger
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French author Francois Bon has spent years giving writing workshops to youths in the suburbs that are now being set ablaze. He looks critically at where the violence originated and with despair at where it's headed.
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Part two: Young men travelled to Iraq to be knighted as warriors by Zarqawi. But for
the Prince of Al-Qaida, only the most devout were good enough – and they feared neither death nor torture. Part two in our series. By Urs Gehriger and Marwan Shehadeh
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A look at the unfunky Jazzrock, one-sided musical dialogues, impressive faux-pas and high-spirited communication games between Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley of this year's Berlin Jazz Festival and the Total Music Meeting for improvised music. By Markus Schneider
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Al-Qaida top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on June 7, 2006,
when the US army bombed the house he was visiting. Before that, he was Al-Qaida's commander in Iraq and an idol for Islamists throughout the world - a
man who took the knife into his own hands to slaughter
enemies. Part One of a three-part series tells of al-Zarqawi's rise to be Iraq's most-wanted terrorist. By Urs Gehriger
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In Der Spiegel, Hans Magnus Enzensberger considers the Islamic radicals to be the losers that the Nazis once were. Elet es Irodalom celebrates the Hungarian novel of the century: Peter Nadas' "Parallel Stories".The New Yorker asks if the CIA can legally kill its prisoners abroad. Polityka sees the results of the most recent presidential election in Poland as evidence that the country is still split along the border of 1918. Le Nouvel Observateur asks if France's failure to integrate immigrants relates to its unwillingness to confront its colonial history. Al Ahram reports that the religious authorities in Egypt have forbidden the publication of a book on Wahhabism. And, according to New York Times Magazine, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is the fruit fly of literary Darwinism.
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Ukrainian poet and playwright Yuri Andrukhovych talks to Barbara Burckhardt about his new play "Orpheus, Illegal", the
Orange Revolution, euphoria, disillusionment and Bubabu.
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The soccer exhibition in Berlin's Martin Gropius Bau, "Rundlederwelten" lends new meaning to what we thought was just a sport. By Thomas Medicus (Fussball © Markus Lüpertz)
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In Merkur, author Bernard Schlink looks at the shifting usage of the German word "Opfer". DU wanders through the hip city of Istanbul. In L'espresso, Andrzej Stasiuk poeticises on his bleak and bleary, beautiful and dreary homeland. The New York Times Magazine visits Nepalese Maoist rebels in flip-flop fighting boots. A battle rages in Plus-Minus over the future of the family. The TLS and The Economist investigate the now you see it now you don't British class system. In Elet es Irodalom, photographer Patrick Zachmann reflects on the ups and downs of Hungarian history - mostly on the downs. And the Nouvel Obs portrays the battle lines drawn around Michel Houellebecq's latest book.
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