Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20.09.2005

Six FAZ editors went to election parties held by the various political parties on Sunday night, and have little positive to report. "Six pm: in Willy Brandt Haus, headquarters of the SPD, the party supporters are grouped before television monitors on the fifth floor, taking no end of delight in laughing uproariously at CDU chancellor candidate Angela Merkel, and in toasting Gerhard Schröder's self-confidence to the point of dizziness. It seems to be the dream of everyone here to have this type of self-confidence at least once in their lives – for example when it comes to salary negotiations with the boss." In the CDU headquarters Konrad Adenauer Haus the ambience was no more congenial. "For one moment the point of departure of bourgeois politics was recreated: disappointment in the public sovereign. It was the 19th century confessional predecessors of the CDU that led the liberals to doubt the masses' capacity to understand. 'On an evening like this, all kinds of things cross your mind', people say. Even ideas on what was once the taxpayers' safeguard: limiting the right to vote. 'There has to be a reanalysis of who should be able to exercise the vote.'"

FAZ editor Frank Schirrmacher seeks an explanation for Gerhard Schröder's television appearance Sunday night, during the post-election show "Berlin Round": "To comprehend the raving, brutal megalomania with which Schröder unabashedly assaulted both the moderators and the German public, you need to appreciate the feeling of all-powerfulness released in him by the confidence vote which allowed the dissolution of the Bundestag and the introduction of fresh elections." See our feature article "What was Schröder on?" by Arno Widmann, for more.


Die Tageszeitung, 20.09.2005

Considering the election results, historian Paul Nolte observes that the parties still think in terms of camps while the voters have moved on. "Society is no longer structured according to the labels 'conservative' and 'left', as the parties would like to have it. It's more of a struggle between cultural optimists and cultural pessimists. It's not about whether I'll have 300 euros more in the pocket with Kirchhof's model (explained here). It's about feeling, about an optimistic view of the world. Schröder said with his Agenda 2010: I can't do anything else. He and Merkel should have said: this is how I see a just society, and therefore these measures are necessary. That's the difference."
See our feature article "Merkel's new middle" by Paul Nolte.


Die Welt, 20.09.2005

On Thursday, a major Jörg Immendorff exhibition will open in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie. In an interview with Gabriele Walde, the controversial artist talks about the audacity of the Linkspartei, his coping with Lou Gehrig's disease, and how his famous "Cafe Deutschland" (here and here) would look if he were to paint it today. "'Café Deutschland' would be more provocative. I have to emphasise: the division of Germany was never for me a German phenomenon; both countries were the frontiers of the two super powers. It was the world that was divided. And as such, the art has something universal. Today there would be a cultural revolution in 'Cafe Deutschland'. Reforms in its overall development are no longer to be avoided. Take, for example, our high school diplomas - not even standardised within Germany – in the context of a globalised, expanded Europe. Or the spelling reform, a Moloch in the days of empty coffers, which will cost everyone a huge amount. We have four million illiterate. I say polemically: these people should not be allowed to vote. Someone who is not able to read programs and develop arguments, can't judge. Our future demands better, more qualified education."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20.09.2005

At the start of the new theatre season, Alfred Schlienger comments on the premiere fireworks at the Theater Basel, wondering whether it is possible for a theatre season to start with fewer compromises. This season is the last for theatrical director Lars Ole Walburg's "three new productions that clearly attempt to broaden the traditional concept of theatre. The repertoire spans the range from a bloody, demoniacal antiquity to the logic and logistics of shopping paradises to the civil bunker of modernity that should protect us from future dangers."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20.09.2005

Holger Liebs wanders through the Ninth International Istanbul Biennal. This year the event is not being held in the touristic centre of town, but "where it hurts": "The Persembe Pazari Park does not even show up on the newest edition of the Falk Plan city map. There it simply appears as a nameless green space. Artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have constructed a walk-in white cube on this dreary location, with seats, a functioning fireplace and panorama windows looking out over the water. The house is built around one of those bushes under which just a few metres away homeless people sleep on strips of cardboard