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

04/05/2005

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, 04.05.2005

Die Zeit publishes a comment by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass on theme of "liberation". "I experienced May 8 in Marienbad, as a seventeen year old dummkopf who believed in the final victory right up to the end. So mine was not feeling of liberation, but of total defeat." The feeling of liberation only came slowly: "When the anniversary of the end of the war is celebrated in fine speeches as a day of liberation, this can only be retrospectively, especially as we Germans did little or nothing for our freedom." But Grass, taking up the recent "critique of capitalism" launched by Social Democratic Party chairman Franz Müntefering, sees in today's economic context only the illusion of freedom. "What has become of the freedom given to us sixty years ago? Is it only to be calculated in stock market takings? The highest values enshrined in our constitution do not primarily serve our civil rights, but rather the market economy that likes to call itself 'free', with low prices to suit today's neo-liberal mindset. But the fudged, fetishistic term 'free market economy' conceals the anti-social behaviour of banks, industrial associations and stock market profiteers with difficulty."
Click here for an audio version of the text.

Michael Naumann, former German minister for culture and media affairs and now publisher of Die Zeit, writes on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which will be inaugurated May 10. "The field of square columns next to Brandenburger Tor is the culmination of a long debate on the symbolic and artistic handling of German guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust. The monument in its present form was resolutely rejected in the Bundestag with few exceptions." For Naumann, the controversy surrounding the monument centred on "aesthetic considerations ("How beautiful can a monument for the Shoah be?"), problems of political identity ("Who is the monument for? The descendants of the perpetrators, tacit or outright Nazi supporters, or the victims?") and finally cost ("Under no circumstances more than 50 million marks"). Naumann himself also initially opposed the memorial, "because I believed there is no architectural gesture that can represent the abyss of what happened, the suffering and the misery of the millions of murdered Jews. Memorials, as Robert Musil wrote, have the quality of becoming invisible after a certain time. If that also happens with this project, it will one day bring about its opposite: indifference and ultimately forgetting." Now, however, Naumann feels that the four exhibition rooms under the monument, which document the stories of Jewish families, will accompany well the abstract memorial. "In this way, the unsettling monument in central Berlin is complemented by reflection and historical clarification, even if it does not manage to answer the question: How could it happen?"

Peter Kümmel portrays theatre director Claudio Valdes Kuri, who prefers his native Mexico to all other countries when it comes to theatre: "For centuries, we Mexicans have lived in such a way that everything we do, we do for others. This has resulted in us being a bit disorganised, even chaotic, but it has also made us into baroque masters of improvisation."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 04.05.2005

Karol Sauerland writes from Poland about the Eastern European debate on the end of the Second World War that is being received with tired interest in the West, and about the pompous victory celebrations planned in Moscow next week. He reports that in Poland and the Baltic countries, people are considering staging alternative celebrations "because no one believes any critical voices will be heard in Moscow". Sauerland's own opinion is that "in spite of everything, the best answer to Putin's lust for victory madness is to support everything associated with Solidarnosc and the 'orange revolution'. Here Europe's future has been decided."


Die Welt, 04.05.2005

In an interview with Polish journalist Adam Krzeminski, philosopher Jürgen Habermas talks about the spineless policies of the German government towards Russia and China, the healing power of memory and the meaning of religion in Europe. For Habermas, the desired neutral weltanschauung of the EU states does not have to lead to a "secular weltanschauung". He believes "it is in the interest of the liberal state to exercise caution with its use of all resources that feed the moral sensibility of its citizens. These resources threaten to dry up all the more quickly the more the lebenswelt (life-world) is subordinated to economic imperatives. In accordance with neo-liberal dogma, politics are increasingly pulling out of life-essential areas such as education, energy, public transport and culture, also from the provision for the standard risks of working life, leaving the so-called modernisation loser to fend for himself. If this capitalism goes untamed, it fosters a modernisation that drains and erodes. And when all normative sensibilities start to dry out, the political constellation of education and religion changes accordingly. As a secular citizen I say that belief and knowledge must take it upon themselves to ascertain their borders."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 04.05.2005

Egyptian writer Salwa Bakr comments on why Islamic terrorist organisations in Egypt find it so easy to recruit poor women: "They are successful at instrumentalising these women's feelings, because on the one hand the women come from the lowest social echelon, and on the other hand they feel strongest the pressure which society exerts on women, with its values and beliefs."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 04.05.2005

In a long interview, German theatre director Andrea Breth talks about her production of Schiller's "Don Carlos" in Vienna's Burg Theater. "With Carlos, the question for me is what power does to people. Why do people change so abruptly when they gain power? It makes me really nervous. You can feel it in your own body, you have to watch out, you end up with the most absurd problems, the more powerful you become. At the auditions the actors are almost faint with fear when they stand in front of me. The way so much is projected onto a person, the social isolation that power brings with it, that's what interests me. That's why I wanted Carlos and Posa to be so young. I didn't want an old grandpa, but a man in his prime. A man of eighty doesn't become so furious when his young wife gets up to things."
See In Today's Feuilletons from 2 May, 2005, for a selection of reviews of Breth's new production of "The Cherry Orchard".

Tomorrow being a public holiday in Germany, no newspapers are published which means we will not be publishing In Today's Feuilletons either. Business as usual on Friday though.

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