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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Self-analysis and great romantic literature: Sigmund Freud was separated from his bride Martha Bernays for four years. Almost entirely kept under lock and key until the early 2000s, the first volume of their correspondence, the approximately 1,500 letters of the so-called "bridal letters" has now just been published for the first time. The first of five planned volumes is discussed by Jean Bollack.
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The Austrian writer Josef Haslinger talks about his sexual encounters with paedophile priests as a boy in a Catholic boarding school. Instead of joining the chorus of moral outrage, he acknowledges the full spectrum of feelings that these episodes provoked, and argues that simple criminalisation is not the way forward.
Photo: Josef Haslinger by Tom Langdon
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In local elections at the beginning of the month, the Austrian state of Carinthia effectively granted a governing majority to a dead man. Eva Menasse looks at an idyllically beautiful corner of the world that has been dumbed-down to death. Photo by pixel0809
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This year's prestigious Büchner Prize went to Austrian writer Josef Winkler. He talks to Paul Jandl about dung heaps, patriarchs, the fear of speechlessness and the elegance of John Paul II's coffin. Photo © Jerry Bauer / SV
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Why Austria's far-right under Heinz-Christian Strache and the late Jörg Haider are celebrating their election triumph. By Doron Rabinovici
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Last week the 1945 Rechnitz massacre hit the headlines after British journalist David Litchfield maintained that Countess Margit von Batthyany, partial heir to the Thyssen industrial family, had taken part in the atrocity. But such speculations belong to the boulevard press. The real issue is the scandalous role of the German postwar criminal justice system in letting the perpetrators escape Germany unharmed. By Stefan Klemp
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A great theatre pair – director Luk Perceval and actor Thomas Thieme talk about fear, fury and self-hatred on the occasion of their five-hour Moliere marathon which just premiered at the Salzburg Festival. And about being a potato. By Peter Michalzik
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Dada is back. Erwin Wurm is the great grandson of the Surrealists. The hilarity and hidden meanings of his stagings and sculptures unsettle and get under your skin. To coincide with a major retrospective in Hamburg's Deichtorhallen, Werner Spies visited the artist in his studio in Vienna.
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In a major interview given a few years before his death, the irascible Austrian author Thomas Bernhard talks about the musicality of language, the eroticism of old men, the corruption of German writers, the twistedness of mankind, the similarities between Christianity and Nazism, the incurability of stupidity and what it means to be branded "Thomas Bernhard" for life. By Werner Wögerbauer (Photo © Andrej Reiser / Suhrkamp Verlag)
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Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke's political stance on Serbia has not been easy for Western intellectuals to swallow. With the recent scandal of the Heinrich Heine Prize - which was awarded to Handke and then retracted - the writer's views are back in the spotlight. In an in-depth interview with Martin Meyer and Andreas Breitenstein, Handke tries to clarify his understanding of what happened in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
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At the end of May, Austrian author Peter Handke was informed he had been selected as winner of this year's Heinrich Heine Prize awarded by the city of Dusseldorf. A controversy then flared up over Handke's support for Slobodan Milosevic, whereupon the prize was revoked. We've compiled the major voices from the ensuing debate in the German-language press.
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Were it not for Sigmund Freud, the couch would be a normal piece of
furniture. But what's normal anyway? 150 years after his birth, the man who
discovered the unconscious has been re-discovered, or maybe buried for
good. By Daniel Binswanger
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Viennese physicist Anton Zeilinger thinks about things that are impossible to imagine and so random even God wouldn't understand. His is the world of quantum teleportation. An interview by Mathias Plüss and Regina Hügli (Photo: Jacqueline Godany)
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In Michael Haneke's new film "Cache", a Parisian citizen is confronted with a dark episode from his childhood – and suddenly France's colonial history comes rushing to the surface. The Austrian director talked to Dominik Kamalzadeh about guilt, guilty consciences and the legacy of the Algerian war.
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250 years after his birth, 2006 is Mozart Year. To perform Mozart you need maturity without having lost a youthful touch. A new generation of young talents has put out a selection of recordings, from the sluggish to the sublime. By Wolfram Goertz
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