Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20.06.2006

The paper prints author Daniel Kehlmann's acceptance speech on receiving the literature prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Kehlmann speaks out against the old guard in German letters: "Group 47 also stands for the development of literature as a business, the circus of literary readings, the 'go-and-get 'em' attitude as the principle behind the system. (...) Literary experiments had to be different here, they were recognisable in their formula-like idiosyncratic typography and their familiar, almost grim seriousness, which viewed cosmopolitanism and elegance with a suspicious eye." Selling well at home and abroad is not a disgrace, says Kehlmann, whose books do both. "These days you often hear talk of a coming internationalisation in German literature. Sometimes this talk is positive, but not infrequently there's a threatening undertone, as if this meant giving up something fragile and valuable – and not just the morose special path that came about primarily among people who insisted on remaining among themselves, near the coast, protected from the currents of the open sea."

Olaf Sundermeyer reports that Poland's right-wing conservative government has named Bronislaw Wildstein director of the Polish state-owned television station "TV Polska", to give it a new political direction. Wildstein made a name for himself when he published a list of Poles who the secret service had tried to rope into service under the communist regime. (more here) "The broadcaster with six thousand employees has a liberal ideology, but it also bears the legacy of the old system, from which the post-communist elites of the Kwasniewski era garnered support. All that is now supposed to be a thing of the past."


Die Tageszeitung, 20.06.2006

Bettina Gaus presents her position on the much discussed proposal of a smoking ban in public spaces. "What we're talking about here is not abolition, but exclusion. If cigarettes were to be prohibited, all discussions about where we can smoke would be superfluous. But cigarettes are not prohibited and therefore serve as a rigid moral standard. The non-smoking majority just wants to create a comforting sense of community."

Christian Kortmann has studied the summer travel plans of 30-40 year old educated Germans – members of the "1,000 euro Generation" or "Intern Generation" - and observed a "social-economic split." "Some travel throughout the world several times a year just like the generation of their parents, with a preference for Tuscany and long flights. On the other hand there are those who haven't taken a trip in years, who have no concept of 'holiday' because their existence is a single fight for survival and they're happy if they can pay the rent." In the end he concludes, "it's pretty damn hard to maintain friendships through income differences."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20.06.2006

Angela Köckritz talks with Mahi Binebine, author of the book "Welcome to Paradise" about boat refugees in Tangier. "Many Africans see Europe as an Eldorado whose door has to be crashed through. Every year, 1.5 million Maghrebians return to their countries, often in shiny cars, packed full of treasures. They are feted in their cities and villages. They make up so many stories from the other world that those who have stayed behind get dizzy. They manage not to mention the refugee shelters in suburbs, next to highways, where they live like animal stock. They don't talk about the racism and exclusion. But it's not only the emigrants who give rise to dreams. Satellite television has changed Africans' perception; every day they are flooded with seductive images, in particular the pornographic ones. We used to live in a kind of autonomy. National radio and television provided patriotic excitement beyond the European model of consumption."


Die Welt, 20.06.2006

Ulrich Weinzierl comments on the sale of Gustav Klimt's painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the "Golden Adele," for 135 million dollars. "Art connoisseurs make a clear distinction between the cult around the 'Golden Adele' and its aesthetic status. The glittering painting is very near to kitsch. Critics used to scoff that it was 'more sheet metal than Adele Bloch' (mehr Blech als Bloch), and in fact there is a cogent argument to the gibe; Gustav Klimt painted better, more thrilling works. But on the other hand, nowhere else in Klimt's oeuvre are the zeitgeist of the epoch, the old Europe and the days of the Habsburg monarchy represented with such clarity."