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

08/01/2010

From the Feuilletons

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.

The attack on Westergaard

The western media was up in arms about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. But the world is a different place now. In Spiegel Online, Henryk M. Broder tells the story of creeping capitulation: "Had the Muhammed cartoons been reprinted by the whole German press, then newspaper readers could have seen for themselves how excessively harmless the 12 cartoons were and how bizarre and pointless the whole debate had become. Instead, the assessment was left to 'experts' who had in the past defended every criticism of the pope and the Church as well as every blasphemous piece of art in the name of freedom of opinion, but who, in the case of the Muhammad cartoons, suddenly held the view that one must take other people's religious feelings into consideration. But that argument was clearly just an excuse, a way of excusing the fact they had been silenced by fear."

In an article which asks whether the right to freedom of opinion, or the respect of religious feelings is more important, Andrian Kreye, the head of the feuilleton section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, compares Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" with Kurt Westergaard's Mohammed cartoons. "One is an intellectual achievement of the highest ranking which must be defended; the other is a conscious provocation which is about as intelligent as trying to train a tiger by offering him a ham sandwich and then snatching it away from under his nose."

In the Tagesspiegel, Peter von Becker describes Andrian Kreye's argument as: "absurd: because the UN rights of freedom of opinion and expression, and their guarantee in democratic constitutions knows no comparisons or differences. They apply to the stupid and the intelligent, to mega-brains and small minds alike."

There is not just "one" Islam, Muslim functionaries or their criticophobic supporters in the western media will tell you, especially in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or kidnapping. Or, at least, it always depends on the context of the discussion, explains Hamed Abdel-Samad, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who now teaches at an institute for Jewish History in Munich. "If Muslims discuss Islam in connection, say, with the introduction of Islamic studies in European schools, or when applying to get the official status of public body for a mosque, then they will talk about one Islam. When Muslims talk about the 'religion of peace', they do not say which Islam they mean. But when confronted with any criticism of Islam, they will invariably ask: which Islam do you mean?"


Other stories


Die Welt 02.01.2010

Ulla Unseld-Berkewicz, the head of Suhrkamp publishers, wonders where the advantages lie today in being a quality publisher, when face up against digitalisation and the all-powerful conglomerates. It's time, she believes, for authors, publishers and readers to form a "league of non-conformists". "Profit margins are not increasing and values are being destroyed. Yet the endangered authors and publishers are not disappearing from the book world, but they now find themselves in the company of those who have been sidelined as canon-fodder in the corridor-sweeping campaigns: the readers. But the readers, who know that they are about to lose the last bastions of real literature, where books are not written in response to market research, recognise that now more than ever, determination and solidarity belong together wherever people are reading and writing, and that if you go it alone, they'll get you."


Frankfurter Rundschau 04.01.2010

Arno Widmann opens the official remembrance ceremony for Albert Camus, who died 50 years ago and who always gave the individual precedence over society. "The abolition of slavery and women's rights started over cups of tea in London's polite society. We have the word Holocaust thanks to a Polish Jew, who was interested in the Armenians long before his parents fell victim to the Nazis. It is the individuals whom society has to thank. Not the other way round. This is what you learn from Albert Camus, and another thing you learn from him is that anyone who claims that society has precedence, is only defending his friends. Society is the arena in which a mass of individuals fight for their a place. In the course of this fight it is decided not only whether we are individuals, but also – without turning to cynicism or suicide – whether we are allowed to be individuals."


Der Freitag 07.01.2010

Michael Angele talks to Maxim Biller about his latest book "Der gebrauchte Jude" (the useful Jew). When the interviewer comments with a self-satisfied air that Germany is a cosmopolitan country, Biller replies: "Do you think really so? Just look at America. Take the New Yorker for example, the magazine. Look how full it is with stories from immigrants from China, Russia, Ukraine, wherever. Where do you get this in Germany? We have loads of writers here from all over the world. But immigrants here only get a chance if they mutate into oversleeve writers like Feridun Zaimoglu."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung
08.01.2010

On the pop pages, Ueli Bernay pens an excellent and informative history of falsetto in pop music, which is making a huge comeback. But as only as a poor imitation: "Falsetto can be read as a symptom of a dilemma: on the one hand, there is so much pressure in pop culture to produce expressiveness and desire. On the other hand, it's not clear how this desire and strength of expression are meant to motivate people anymore. Sensibility and emotionality seem to be so weak at the moment that they are unable to find expression in new musical styles; and there is also no pioneering music around to trigger artistic zeal. This is why the falsetto is often little more than a gimmick or a fake used over and over to simulate hedonistic intensity.

Get the real thing here from Marvin Gaye, Prince or Curtis Mayfield:





Süddeutsche Zeitung 08.01.2010

The theologian Mohsen Kadivar, one of the five expatriate Iranian intellectuals behind a declaration outling "The demands of the green movement", talks about the document's aims and how it came into being: "The majority of Iranians have no desire for a second revolution, thirty years after the last one. This is why we describe this movement as a reform movement whose aims are revolutionary but absolutely non-violent and peaceful, and which operates within the framework of existing laws. This is why this declaration respects the constitution of the Islamic Republic. We have to address the areas which comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the principles of democracy."

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