Die Tageszeitung 12.06.2007

In an interview with Stefan Reinicke, historian Ulrich Herbert voices optimism about the state of compensation for former slave workers during the Nazi era, and approval for the project for an exhibition on slave labour. "Yes, absolutely. When the topic of slave labour comes up in the evening news, the images always show concentration camp inmates. In Germany, slave labour is associated with Auschwitz and the Holocaust, not with camps for foreigners in Duisburg, Karlsruhe or in the Bavarian Forest. Few are aware that there were ten million slave workers in Germany. And just as few are conscious of how blurred the borders were - and that slave labour included everything from nursemaids in German families to concentration camp inmates in the Dora underground arms factory."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 12.06.2007

Lothar Müller has read a masterfully edited excerpt from Günter Grass' autobiography "Beim Häuten der Zwiebel" ("Peeling the Onion") in The New Yorker, in which Grass admits to having served in the Waffen SS (press reactions to the book here). "The text 'How I spent the War' is not the preprint of one chapter of Grass' book. It is a breathtakingly abridged version, a thirteen-page condensation of over one hundred pages (75 - 181) of the German original. Its major achievement is to preserve the onion's core. And only the core. It boldly crops the metaphor of the onion, and the entire apparatus of encapsulating and peeling. It handles the knife with sublime dexterity, removing half a sentence here, two whole sentences there and in other places entire pages."


Die Welt 12.06.2007

Stefanie Bolzen wonders whether the Frankfurt Book Fair is beginning to regret inviting Catalonia as this year's guest region. In Barcelona there are heated arguments over which language should be used for the event. "And the authors are getting hot under the collar too. The Frankfurt book fair is 'a waste of time' anyway, says Carlos Ruiz-Zafon, a Catalan who writes in Spanish and won international acclaim for his novel 'The Shadow of the Wind'. Sergi Pamies, another Catalan who writes in Catalan is one of the few authors to already have an official invitation to Frankfurt – which he turned down. In a radio interview he said he was unable to explain why, 'or I might land in jail.' He let it be understood that he wasn't about to strap himself to the nationalist bandwagon, and that Frankfurt wasn't particularly important anyway. Eduardo Mendoza, a Spanish bestselling author, says he's 'much more interested in the Frankfurt School than the Frankfurt book fair.'


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 12.06.2007

Islamic Studies professor Tilman Nagel has read Tariq Ramadan's Muhammad biography "In the Footsteps of the Prophet," and leaves no part unscathed. The book is "entirely indebted to outdated Muslim literature about Muhammad," drawing primarily on "Ibn Hisham's (died 828 or 833/34) reworking of the life of the prophet by Ibn Ishaq (died 767)." For Nagel, Ramadan sought to "defiantly paper over Muslim scholarship's loss of competence in interpreting the world, which came about with the advance of modernity. The brunt of Ramadan's message is that Islam is the solution, which ensures we may enjoy the fruits of modernity while fending off its unpleasant side-effects. He seeks to instil confidence in Muslims while presenting atheists and those of different faiths, inasmuch as they are afflicted by lassitude or guilt about belonging to the 'West', with a means of liberation from their torment."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 12.06.2007

Sonja Zekri feels the pulse of Algiers, a city traumatised by Islamic terrorism and now spending huge sums of money in a bid to become the cultural capital of the Arab world. "Algeria's intellectuals aren't hounding visitors with their nightmares. They'll only refer in passing to death lists, failed attacks, devastated institutes, exile and murder. There's no debate in the media, the security forces aren't being taken to court, although human rights activists accuse them of committing crimes and there's no truth commission like the one in neighbouring Morocco."