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

23/11/2005

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.

Germany's new Minister of State for Culture

Prior to Gerhard Schröder, cultural policy in the Federal Republic had been in the hands of the federal states, or Bundesländer. Schröder's government changed that by introducing the post of Minister of State for Culture and the Media, effectively a minister without a ministry. In the run-up to the recent elections, many advocated the creation of a true federal Ministry of Culture. However Germany's new Chancellor Angela Merkel has maintained post of Minister of State, and appointed Bernd Neumann. Jens Bisky, writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, sees the choice of the pragmatic professional politician Neumann as a step towards the normalisation of culture in Germany. "Culture will now be treated as other issues are. Some people working in culture may be bothered by that; they're used to dealing with their own, to presupposing a kind of untouchable consent, to looking down at the bureaucrats and politicians in other ministries. Neumann enters his office as a lawyer of politics, not a mouthpiece of all that's true, good and beautiful."

Dirk Knipphals, on the other hand, considers Neumann to be the "ideal Minister of State for Culture for people who consider his office to be basically superfluous." Writing in the die tageszeitung, Knipphals comments: "One thing is worth noting: that the conservatives in this country have very little interest in creating a cultural profile. One annual visit to Bayreuth is the extent of it. But otherwise, they want to be bothered as little as possible in this respect. There has always been in our citizenry a desire to belong to the cultural avant garde. Interesting that the CDU is so uninterested in maintaining this tradition."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23.11.2005

After laying out the advantages of the female brain over the male (linguistic ability, emotionality) and the male brain over the female (mathematics, orientation), Reinhard Wandtner comes to the following political conclusion: "And now a woman, of all people, is head of government. That is truly exotic. We've become used to men in this position. But a woman? People are at a loss. Of course, you have to bear one thing in mind: as far as behaviour goes, gender differences are by and large steam-rolled on the way to high political offices. What remains is just one universal political sex, and that has male features. We have a new chancellor, and he happens to be a woman."


Die Welt, 23.11.2005

The "European Network for Remembrance and Solidarity" was founded in February of this year, a joint initiative of the governments of Poland, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. The network is intended as a counter model to the planned "Centre against Expulsion", which represents the interests of Germans expelled from countries formerly included in the German Reich. Gerhard Gnauck talks with Polish historian Andrzej Przewoznik, who has been elected as chairman of the new network. Przewoznik does not want to rule out future cooperation with the "Centre Against Expulsion", although he is critical of its approach: "As a historian, I have the impression that focussing on the theme of expulsion and forced migration will take it out of its context in the history of Europe. Unlike the 'Centre' advocated by Erika Steinbach, head of the German 'Association of Expellees', we want to put the phenomenon back in the context of the two totalitarian systems, and the disaster they wrought on humanity."


Der Tagesspiegel, 23.11.2005

French actress Isabelle Huppert is in Berlin, performing in Sarah Kane's play "4.48 Psychosis", which starts tonight at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. In the play directed by Claude Regy, Huppert stands practically motionless for almost almost two hours in front of a gauze curtain. She explains in an interview with Eberhard Spreng what fascinates her about the role: "It's not a character, and therefore I can be entirely myself. I'm not limited by having to play this or that feeling. It's more than that, more mysterious, more interesting." The play is for Huppert primarily a text about writing. "The author stages herself in her own pain – until she can no longer bear it. We know Sarah Kane committed suicide shortly after writing the play. But at the same time it's also about someone looking for a precise language. Kane's theatre revolves around form. None of the words make any sense when they're removed from the formal context. That's why I use a special diction in the performance. Realism or naturalism would be completely wrong here. Surprisingly, a lot of emotion also emanates from Kane's clear consciousness of writing. The form functions like armour."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23.11.2005

In an interview, rapper Fefe of the French group Saian Supa Crew explains what role rap can play in the suburbs: "Chuck D once demanded that HipHop be the CNN of the ghettos. Many rappers distort the image of the cities, convey a caricature based on the gangsta rap models coming out of America. But who wants to rap about poverty, discrimination and bad education? On our new album, we sing about a black single mother who is trying to get by in Paris. That's a story that's familiar to everyone."

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