Monday 15 August, 2005

die tageszeitung, 15.08.2005

Despite the opening of the 20th World Youth Day in Cologne tomorrow, there is a huge abyss between today's liberal youth and the conservative church, writes Philipp Gessler. "Ratzinger, like Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, is anything but equanimous when it comes to contraception. When the youth left behind a lawn full of used condoms at the World Youth Day in Rome in 2000, behind closed doors Ratzinger apparently said: 'We don't need these young people.' Regardless, like his predecessor and idol Karol Wojtyla, he will travel to Cologne this week to be celebrated by just such youth. The people wave to a Pope they seldom heed. The World Youth Day is also a dishonest, slightly cynical event with a hint of tragicomedy. The whole thing seems like a big misunderstanding."


Der Tagesspiegel, 15.08.2005

In an interview, the ever terrible enfant of German theatre Christoph Schlingensief delivers his razor-sharp analysis of the tense state of the nation. A fratricidal war between East and West is unlikely to break out, he reassures us. "During a fratricidal war at least a relationship still exists between the brothers. Now one half of Germany (the former East) wants Mummy and Daddy back to take care of everything. But when Daddy says the housekeeping funds have run out so we'll have to cut pocket money and raise VAT by 2 percent, the child throws a tantrum. It screams and shouts but then it's told to stay in the children's corner and at least play at grown-ups. But when it's nappy needs changing no one wants to take responsibility. And the other part of Germany says we don't take you seriously anyway, however much you shout around in your playpen."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 15.08.2005

"It borders on a miracle that this story can still be told in an interesting way at all." Peter Michalzik congratulates Martin Kusej on his staging of Franz Grillparzer's "King Ottocar's Rise and Fall" at the Salzburg Festival. The play is bursting with references to important historical events, at least for Austria, which make it almost unstageable. Almost. "We see the happy, almost naked masses, sunning themselves motionlessly on the beach. We see slaughtered people, lying smeared with blood and completely naked, where not so long ago they lay eating schnitzel and sunbathing. These are silent, stark, strong images, and this production has more of them than almost any other." See In Today's Feuilletons of August 10 for Joachim Kaiser's take.


Saturday 13 August, 2005

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13.08.2005

Polish writer and poet Andrzej Stasiuk describes how he grew to admire John Paul II. He just doesn't think he should be canonised. "Memorials and saintliness destroy his memory. Behind them his human dimension disappears, his suffering, his simpleness, his white socks and brown slippers and his Slavic face which over the years came to look more and more like the faces of the people who put photos of him on their window ledges. Cast in bronze, all that will disappear in a fog of incense candles. No one should make a saint of him. We should leave him in peace. He should live on in the vernacular – as a legendary, illegal saint, as an unorthodox saint, whom you can pray to for things that are unacceptable to the official saints. That even Our Lord might frown upon. Amen."


Berliner Zeitung, 13.08.2005

On his sixtieth birthday, Wim Wenders talks to Anke Westphal on his new film "Don't Come Knocking", the privileges of his job and the future of cinema: "The blockbuster format has exhausted itself, with its continual need for more spectacular productions. It's no longer enough just to keep dishing up bigger and bigger helpings. They've got to taste like something. Why should I go see "Hurly-Burla 5" when I know 1 through 4 by heart? Too many Hollywood films are shot according to all too familiar formulas. But if people really knew how to make a great big-budget film, they'd make a lot more of them. I mean no one makes a flop on purpose. But still I'm glad these mega-films exist. They bring a lot of good in their wake. I go to see them. Perhaps, as Godard says, the day will come in Hollywood when all the studios will have to merge, to make the one superlative mega-film."


Die Welt, 13.08.2005

After his lengthy diatribe on the occasion of the Milosevic trial in the Hague (more here), Austrian author Peter Handke has now published his newest book. Ulrich Weinzierl is delighted that "Gestern unterwegs" (en route yesterday) is pure prose with very little politics. "This journal is very reminiscent of that of the very elderly Julien Green, and I mean that as a compliment. Handke reads the Bible almost as much as Green, and is also a passionate churchgoer. And he too has his own literary travel companions: Hölderlin, Wittgenstein ('the best of things Austrian'), Nicolas Born and Chekhov. He even quotes Chekhov: 'Great writers should only become engaged in politics to protect themselves from politics.' And reading Hölderlin's early poems in Macedonia he looks up to heaven with the words: 'God protect us from a nationalist outbreak!' Taken together, these phrases now seems to admonish Handke himself."