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
Germany as a culture does not correspond to the German nation. Which means that the much-quoted truth that the Germans were united by their literature or their language has always also been a lie. For German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani the most German of German writers is none other than Franz Kafka.
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Ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has just written his memoirs "Decisions", in which he relates at length what a smashing job he made of everything. And along the way he reveals a singular lack of literary talent. Writer Georg M. Oswald journeys into a rosy past.
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With this story, journalist Kathrin Passig won one of the most prestigious literary awards in German letters, the Ingeborg Bachman Prize. (Photo © Johannes Jander)
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The well-loved German poet and artist Robert Gernhardt died on June 30, 2006. We publish a selection of his poems in English with the kind permission of his translator Ursula Runde, and several drawings from Gernhardt's "German Readers" series.
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German star comic artist Ralf König on burqas in Germany, the Pope in Cologne and his gay Islamist satire "Jinn Jinn". An interview with Wieland Freund.
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The Ingeborg Bachmann Competition has just ended in Klagenfurt. One of the participants was writer Clemens Meyer, whose debut novel "Als wir träumten" was highly acclaimed at the Leipzig Book Fair in March. He spoke with Gerrit Bartels just before the competition about Klagenfurt, his writing and tattoos.
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2006 is the 150th anniversary of the death of German poet Heinrich Heine and the debate surrounding this year's literary Heinrich-Heine Prize is currently filling out the feuilletons. Here we publish writer Georg Klein's compilation of his top ten favourite Heine quotes on that most controversial of subjects: religion.
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Update: Romanian-German poet Oskar Pastior was imprisoned in a Soviet Gulag from 1945 to 1949. The new novel of this year's Nobel laureate Herta Müller is based on interviews with Pastior and other Gulag survivors.
The prestigious Georg Büchner Prize for literature is to be awarded to poet Oskar Pastior. Martin Lüdke welcomes the long overdue decision to honour the work of a mild mannered word wizard.
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Like hero, like author. Ilija Trojanow, world traveller, author of travel books and Mecca pilgrim, has written an astounding biographical novel about Richard Francis Burton, Mecca pilgrim, author of travel books and world traveller. By Karl-Markus Gauß
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Poet Helga M. Novak talks to Uta Beiküfner about the fascination of socialism, travelling to where the action is and the unexpected blessings of the madhouse. (Photo © Renate von Mangoldt)
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Bookseller and editor Bettina Wassmann has been at the heart of the German book trade for almost forty-five years. She talks with Gabriele Goettle about her apprenticeship in Berlin and the heyday of the political bookstore, her philosopher husband Alfred Sohn-Rethel and making literary history.
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On Christmas Eve Joshka, a demolition contractor, takes a stroll round the old theme park in the woods which he has been hired to tear down... A short story by Georg Klein
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Christa Wolf died on 1 Dec, aged 82. Fifteen years after reunification, Christa Wolf, a prominent German writer who chose to remain in East Germany and who was later branded a "state poet", talks with Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns and Stephan Lebert about private chats with Honecker, a German society in check mate, the influence of Goethe, the shortcomings of Brecht, and the lasting effects of Utopia.
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Gingerbread hearts, 4711, the lovely Petra and appalling paintings. Author Feridun Zaimoglu describes how growing up on a German diet eventually bore literary fruit.
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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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