Neue Zürcher Zeitung 26.06.2007

Dirk Pilz visits Frank Castorf in Berlin, where the creative artistic director of the Volksbühne recounts that he became a member of the Santeria community during his most recent trip to Latin America (more). Pilz describes it as a "religion related to Brazilian Candomble" whose rituals include trance-dances, animal sacrifices and drum orgies. "Frank Castorf has now found his own personal protective god: Obatala, the god of creation. Castorf finds 'hope in another way of thinking' in Latin America. 'There, there's at least an attempt to allow thought about the possibility of revolution which opens a perspective well beyond that of Western democracies.' The continent reminds him 'of the old sources of vitality from which we drew energy in Anklam or, on more recent years, at the Volksbühne.' A new vitality. Castorf is thinking of his current Volksbühne. Yes, that's right, he hasn't been paying too much attention to his own theatre."


Die Welt 26.06.2007

Philosopher Rüdiger Safranski ("Martin Heidegger - Between Good and Evil") congratulates his friend and colleague Peter Sloterdijk on his 60th birthday: "Peter Sloterdijk is an eternal beginner, equipped with an existential self-will and an enormous delight in playing with concepts, always ready to be led, even seduced, by language to come to his own insights.... And it takes an exceedingly rich language to be able to sustain and animate the spiritual cosmos that Peter Sloterdijk offers with his opus magnum, the 'Sphären' (spheres) trilogy. Sloterdijk's 'Sphären', so much can be said without exaggeration, is the most significant recent contribution to understanding a basic human experience, one that until now has been neglected to our peril: ... Humans are beings that come from within, and for that reason ineluctably shape their subsequent habitats into interior spaces. Sloterdijk is successful in coming up with a new description of the conditio humana: how growing up means creating spheres, and developing these into larger ones, into families, alliances, relationships, enterprises, subcultures and nations."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 26.06.2007

Poet Jan Wagner writes an essay on the new generation of German poets, to which he also belongs. With them, he writes, the rhyme is attributed the place it deserves. "Not just as an underlying structure, or at best as unobtrusive, perhaps even invisible one, but as a compositional means. Rhyme is seen here not as a duty or a requirement to be fulfilled, but rather as a creative source of irritation which can provoke associations and detours in the writing process. When lips and lobes correspond, and are served on Uppsala fruit salad, the path from mascara to massacre is not far away. And when for example 'nature' rhymes with 'Natter' (viper), it's not a big jump from the bosom of nature to nursing vipers in one's bosom, - and, if you look closely, you can even see rules break playfully at the very moment they're established."

Joachim Kaiser, the doyen of German music critics, writes a short piece on music's reputed healing powers. In contrast to Martin Luther's idea of the "comforter music," however, Kaiser points out that those who have just overcome sorrow or illness are often unable to appreciate music: "To be able to cope with major works of music, with their demanding dimensions of joy and sorrow, you simply must be in full possession of your mental and physical powers. No weak convalescent is really up to the funeral march in Beethoven's 'Eroica', the archaic violence of Stravinsky's 'Symphony of Psalms,' or Mozart's melancholy. 'Comforter music'? You need a substantial amount of health to appreciate the comfort in art. When friends invited the old and ailing Anton Bruckner to a concert, he shouted in desperation: 'Ka Musi!' (no music!)."


Frankfurter Rundschau 26.06.2007

Christian Thomas feels that Unesco is behaving very inflexibly with its ultimatum on the Walsschlösschenbrücke in Dresden (more). "It has something to do with this fixated stare at a tunnel. Why not a grandiose bridge as solution, why not a concession to architectural modernity to which German engineering has contributed fantastic examples (in particular the office of Schlaich Bergermann and Partners)... The question becomes ever more pressing as to whether Unesco, in addition to its obvious historicity, dispenses an anti-modernity effect that almost amounts to a provident siege."


Die Tageszeitung 26.06.2007

Mark Terkessidis sees a tendency within the CDU to equate culture with religion when talking about multiculturalism. "One is 'integrated' primarily as a Muslim and not as a citizen. All other groups and problems are thus swept aside. The focus on 'the Muslims' prevents many problems from even appearing on the agenda: the extremely high percentage of students of Serbian background at special schools, the disastrous educational status of people with Italian backgrounds or the disproportionately high number of well-educated Greeks among the unemployed."