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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The history of German terrorism was also the story of the amour fou between Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader. But this affair caused the breakup of Ensslin's relationship with Bernward Vesper, who was also the father of her child. Their letters, dating from 1968/69, while Ensslin was in Stammheim, offer profound insights into the political pathology of the time. By Gerd Koenen.
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The path of gentrification has, more often than not, been paved by artists. But Hamburg's creative community wants to jam the economic development machine instead. Here is their manifesto.
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Claus Leggewie and Harald Welzer have written a book about the end of the world as we knew it. Jan Feddersen grills them on climate change and the role of democracy in a political system that has had no new ideas since the fall of the Wall.
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"Herta Müller has eyes like spotlights that drive out the darkness night after night." So begins Verena Auffermann's portrait of this year's literary Nobel laureate, in her book about 99 women writers, "Leidenschaften".
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Romanian novelist Mircea Cartarescu celebrates Herta Müller's Nobel Prize, raising his glass to a writer with an inner sword and a literary style that is pure poetry.
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UPDATE: The German Book Prize 2009 has been awarded to Katrin Schmidt for her novel "You're Not Going to Die". Read excerpts from all the shortlisted titles - including one from the Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller's novel "Everything I Own I Carry With Me".
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Twenty years after Ceausescu's execution, his secret service is still active - only its name has changed. Secret files are being manipulated; shadowing and smear campaigns continue. For the first time, Romanian-born German writer Herta Müller describes her long history of Securitate persecution, uncertain of how much she has yet to endure.
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In a footnote to his latest book, Timothy Garton Ash distances himself from the term "Enlightenment fundamentalism", which he had used in reference to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. John Gray picked up on the ammendment immediately and took him to task in The New Statesman. Perlentaucher editor Thierry Chervel is baffled by Gray's twisted pessimism.
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Alham Abrahimnejad is a women's rights activist who fled Iran two years ago and now lives in Berlin. She talks to Waltraud Schwab about her fear of being sent back home, the soul of the Iranian protest and her lack of freedom in Germany.
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The death of student Benno Ohnesorg saw the birth of the West German '68 movement. Now evidence has emerged that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the West German police officer who shot him during a demonstration against the Shah, was a Stasi spy. Wolfgang Kraushaar, an acclaimed chronicler of '68, asks whether the killing was an unofficial East German act of state.
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We are about to close the chapter on the age of the printed book. It is a time for bullet biting and belt tightening, but not mourning. Jürgen Neffe takes a refreshingly postive look into our post-Gutenbergian future.
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An exhibition in ZKM Karlsruhe explores the enormous range of artistic processes that exist between the moment of conception and finished work. By Kathrin Peters
Image: Dieter Appelt "Partitur" © 2009 ZKM
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In this, the Mendelssohn bicentennial year, Martin Geck looks at why the wealthy middle-class composer, who was Europe's most successful musician in the final decade of his life, brought out the very worst in Richard Wagner.
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Since being diagnosed with lung cancer last year, Christoph Schlingensief has made his illness the subject of a theatre trilogy. In what he describes as a readymade opera, "Mea Culpa", the final part now playing in Vienna's Burgtheater, is a mature, elegiac and exhibitionistic parody of everything the world has ever constructed around the big C. By Peter Michalzik
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The idea that 1989 came out of thin air speaks volumes about historical insensitivities and limited horizons. The fall of the Berlin Wall was preceded by years of erosion and attrition. Historian Karl Schlögel looks at the molecular movements on the margins of history that are much more powerful than any deeds of "great men".
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