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.
more
Boris von Haken's revelation, that the revered musicologist Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht was involved in the murder of 14,000 Jews in Crimea, is a catastrophe for German musicology, says Die Welt. The FAZ asks why Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's sentence was kept so quiet. Alexander Kluge celebrates the Net in the spirit of the quantum. And with the Demjanjuk trial underway, the Tagesspiegel remembers the uprising in Sobibor.
read more
A rotting plague corpse in wax speaks volumes about contemporary Naples. Die Zeit tells a horrifying story about the former doyen of German musicology Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht - years after his death he has now been implicated in the murder of 14,000 Jews in Crimea. Oliver Reese's Frankfurt production of "Phaedra" is a celebration of the art of gesture. The Romanian poet Werner Söllner talks about his years as Securitate informer. And, the FR asks, was the Romanian revolution really a revolution after all?
read more
The taz bathes in light, in Wolfsburg of all places. Herta Müller explains how literature helps the oppressed. The artist Parastou Forouhar is being kept in Iran against her will. Mircea Cartarescu explains why it is so hard to purge Romania of the Securitate. The poet Durs Grünbein wonders why people feel so aggressive when they see the sculptures of Markus Lüpertz. Navid Kermani says Switzerland has a fundamentalist problem - abut it's not Islamic.
read more
The Swiss anti-minaret vote has been the focus of feuilleton attention this week. The NZZ calls it a disgrace for journalism. Tariq Ramadam says the Muslims should have been more active in preventing it. Historian Hamed Abdel-Samad looks at Islam's failure to modernise and says it's time the Muslims engaged in self-criticism if they don't like others doing it. Mario Vargas Llosa praises the EU as the only political project that is both revolutionary and real. And the Tagesschau, Germany's oldest news institution, comes under fire for its stultifying depiction of the world.
read more
In the NZZ, Danish author Jens Christian Gröndahl explains what the opening of the Northern Sea Route is doing to the Scandinavian mind. The FR smells the putrefaction in Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Dead City", approvingly. The FAZ is gobsmacked by the conservative French cabinet, which is standing united behind its gay minister of culture. Something is rotten in the state of the theatre, cries the Tagesspiegel, if it is untouched by the crisis. And in the SZ, psychologist Peter Kruse analyses Frank Schirrmacher's fear of losing control.
read more
Claude Lanzmann is in shock: cinema-goers in Hamburg who wanted to see his film "Why Israel", were attacked by a mob to shouts of "Jewish pigs" - and no one paid any attention. Jonathan Littell sends a reportage from Chechnya, where reality is two bullets in the head. Last week's interview with Imre Kertesz in Die Welt has sparked much anti-Semitic spitting in Hungary, the German paper reports. And according to the SZ, Botticelli did more for male than female sexuality: he introduced vulnerability.
read more
Die Welt remembers how the NZZ reported on the fall of the Wall: increasing its font-size by one point. Bernard-Henri Levy rails against the accepted myth that the collapse of communism was unforeseeable. Imre Kertesz explains why he is so happy to live in Berlin. Ulrich Beck expresses his respect for the pluck of France's undocumented workers. And when presented with a Heiner Müller who hates the innocent, the FR is hugely relieved to switch to Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Â
read more
Much has been written on the Wall this week. Author Volker Braun remembers how important literature was, while it was still standing. Olaf Briese muses on its Bauhaus aesthetic. Author Reinhard Jirgl remembers disdainfully how it fell during a semi-hostile civil-service takeover. And Andrzej Stasiuk remembers how Germans on either side of it quivered in fear while the Poles tormented the Russian bear.
read more
Historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen explains the difference between the Holocaust and other genocides: it was the work of an international genocide coalition. Swiss author Lukas Bärfuss worries about the spread of blank spots in the IT landscape. German Symphony Orchestra conductor Ingo Metzmacher worries about the hollow sound of classical music. The NZZ raises the threat level for hurricane Silvio. And Victor Erofeyev has given up on the Russian intelligentsia, which is having a crisis in the crisis.
read more
The Frankfurt Book Fair ends as it began: with a scandal. Austrian novelist Robert Menasse deplores the colonialism within the EU. The SZ delights in the sumptuous storytelling of Peter Paul Rubens. The Prague newspaper Lidove Noviny comments on a new document that cements the case against the communist informer, Milan Kundera . Die Welt wonders, as did Derrida, why Van Gogh painted two left shoes. And the FR celebrates the widening girth of Germany's new novels.Â
read more
If it weren't for North Korea, comments the literary blogger Han Han, China would look substantially older. Ai Weiwei's mammoth exhibition in Munich's Haus der Kunst has not disappointed the critics. The taz finds out exactly what it cost to translate Walt Whitman into German. Herta Müller's ex-husband Richard Wagner defends her against accusations of revanchism by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. And Katrin Schmidt has won the German Book Prize for her unsentimental portrayal of a convalescent stroke victim.
read more
The feuilletons congratulate Herta Müller on her Nobel Prize, a victory against totalitarian abuse of language. Die Welt decodes C.G. Jung's Carolingian miniscule. The NZZ travels to Leipzig to honour the civil rights activists behind the 1989 October 9th demonstrations. Author Dietmar Dath defends the petition for a German withdrawal from Afghanistan. And Chinese author Ma Jian worries about the aggression simmering below the surface prosperity in China.
read more
Navid Kermani is worried that the West will fail the Iranian democratic movement a second time round. Two of Kleist's plays reap critical praise: Andrea Breth's "Broken Jug" and Andreas Kriegenburg's "Prince of Homburg". Historian Heinrich August Winkler reminds the Europeans where their values originated. The NZZ explains how the Russians managed to get "Gulag Archipelago" onto the school curriculum without having to rethink the past. And a reunited Germany goes to the shrink.
read more
Henryk M. Broder worries about the growing opposition to Israel's right to exist - from clever, sensitive and critically-minded European intellectuals. The German election campaign is ruled by fear, and the fear of fear, according to der Spiegel. Egypt's literary culture is blossoming - thanks to the economic boom in Saudi Arabia. And there are a string of interviews with prominent Chinese writers, such as Yan Lianke, Liao Yiwu and Yang Lian, who are being barred from flying to Frankfurt for the Book Fair.
read more
Realities and Perceptions of China: The China symposium leading up to the Frankfurt Book Fair is unanimously considered to have been a disaster while Chinese artist Ai Weiwei provides graphic evidence of the brutality of the Chinese police. A visit to the Impressionism exhibition in Vienna persuades Arno Widmann that art and commerce are part of the same picture. And supposedly pacifistic calls for a withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan raise Thea Dorn's hackles.
read more
RSS
Twitter
