Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

15/02/2007

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Die Zeit 15.02.2007

Thomas Assheuer picks up on the "thrilling debate" kicked off by Pascal Bruckner in signandsight.com and Perlentaucher.de on freedom, multiculturalism and Ian Buruma's book "Murder in Amsterdam" (more here). Bruckner's "breathless invective" against multiculturalism is off target, he writes: "In fact, in the field of theory, multiculturalism was the attempt to undo the Gordian knot of how a society must be constituted which respects the rights of cultural minorities and at the same time protects its own civil liberties. Put another way: how does society treat people who interpret these liberties as an attack on their religion? That is the question of questions. Perhaps, two hundred years after Voltaire, a second major dispute will arise in Europe on the relationship between reason, democracy and religion under the heading: multiculturalism."


Süddeutsche Zeitung
15.02.2007

For the last two years, German translators have been battling with publishing houses for more euros per page. Having listened to a string of arguments outlined recently in various newspapers, for example that being in the culture industry she should be happy to work for less, and that if she wants to earn more, she should work more, translator Barbara Kleiner hits back with some number crunching. "The new translation of Ippolito Nievo's novel "Confessions of an Italian" (Manesse, 2005) is 1,400 standard pages long. With a fee per page of 18,50 euro this comes to a total of 26,000 euros. The work took me 24 months to complete, including the extensive notes section for which I was paid another 1,500 euros. This historical book is written in a very particular style which was the whole raison d'etre for the new translation. And this demanded a vast amount of historical research, which was sometimes necessary just understand what was being written. Under these conditions I was not able to complete more than three pages per day. My monthly income during this time therefore worked out at 570 euros. ... That this level of reimbursement for labour creating cultural value deserves neither to be called fair nor fitting is, I believe, a statement of the obvious."


Berliner Zeitung
15.02.2007

Bernhard Bartsch has paid a visit to nine year old piano wunderkind Niu Niu (more here) from Shanghai. Roughly half a billion people will watch the boy play Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' on the state television's Chinese New Year gala this Sunday. "Niu Niu inspects his visitor's arm hair, and measures his nose. 'Bigger than Leslie's,' he concludes, and flips to a photo showing Australian star pianist Leslie Howard, one of Niu Niu's international patrons, with whom he performed at London's Wigmore Hall last August. He's also played in Hamburg, and Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall are the programme for the next two years. 'And hopefully Olympia 2008 in Beijing,' he says, 'that would be the biggest thing of all.' Only an appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker or the Wiener Philharmoniker could top that, not that he doubts that will happen one day. 'I'm patient,' he says."


Der Tagesspiegel
15.02.2007

A book by the Israeli historian Ariel Toaff has sparked a furore in Italy, writes Giulio Busi. "The title alone "Pasque di Sangue" (Easter of blood) is a kick in the face to political correctness. (...) Toaff paints a picture of a Jewish society which was violent, bigoted and riddled with superstition, whose members, traumatised by the Christian persecutions wreaked a most bloody revenge. At the end of almost 400 pages of this self-contained documentation, the reader is made to believe that a group (albeit marginal) of Jews of German descent may very well have bloodied their hands by murdering Christians to give expression to their feelings of religious hatred." And Toaff is being accused of having treated "the confessions listed in files from the court hearings as evidence" without problematicising them in the least.


Die Tageszeitung
15.02.2007

"The media and trend scouts are tripping over themselves to compare interactive Web 2.0 with the market places of ancient Greece as a form of communication," writes IT expert Arno Rolf, and proceeds immediately to put a dampener on all the euphoria, by pointing out that the Internet and Web 2.0 also represent a threat to a large chunk of the job market. "Web 2.0 communities are only being set up by companies to better probe the acceptance of their products without resorting to expensive and extensive market research. This puts them in the position, and Lego is a good example of this, to rationalise their development, by including the consumer in product development. Why employ designers, creatives, idea makers or programmers when there are freaks the world over who will volunteer their services for a song!"


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 15.02.2007

Erna Lackner fills us in on plans for tonight's Vienna Opera Ball, where ball director Ioan Holender hopes to steal the limelight from construction magnate Richard Lugner. Lugner's partners in past years have included Pamela Anderson, Andie MacDowell, Geri Halliwell, Grace Jones and Carmen Elektra (photos here). And tonight he will be accompanied by Paris Hilton. "The host, the eternal director of the State Opera Ioan Holender, has been in his post for fifteen years already, and will remain there for another five. But this time, with Paris Hilton flying in, he wants to steal the show from Richard Lugner. He's bringing 'a guest that not even Lugner would have thought of inviting: a horse!' Holender will ride around the room in a carriage, from which opera star Anna Netrebko will then descend and sing three arias as 'Manon'. And in contrast to Paris Hilton, she won't be appearing for a fee. The horse dung danger is the talk of the town. The gelding could take fright, warns the 'Four Paws' animal protection society. No, we are told, he's got stage experience (in 'Wiener Blut') he's fifteen years old and will retire soon."

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.
read more

From the feuilletons

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talks   about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west. Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatified Pope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.
read more

From the feuilletons

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not sure that Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin's incendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class.
read more