Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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Fiction and Poetry / World War II / Politics / Nonfiction
Biographies
Anyone wanting to know more about the widow of German newspaper magnate Axel Springer should read this book. Springer turned the Bild Zeitung into Europe's biggest tabloid newspaper but at the end of his life lost control of his own publishing group. In her biography "Friede Springer", FAZ editor Inge Kloepfer tells with much sympathy and plenty of factual information the uncanny story of Friede Riewerts' fairytale metamorphosis
from nursemaid to newspaper mogul's wife, and finally to one of
Germany's most influential women today as head of the Springer group,
writes the NZZ. After her husband's death, Friede Springer
managed to buy back the majority of shares in the Springer group and
prevent the fall of the empire. Kloepfer's biography received positive
reviews throughout the German press: The NZZ was not bored, even though, or perhaps because, some passages border on homey storytelling. Die Zeit was not put out by the apparent closeness of author and subject. Only when Bernhard Servatius, the executor of Springer's will, is criticised on the basis of bare allegations, does it voice its concern.
Oliver Gehr's "Der Spiegel Komplex" (The Mirror complex) appeared on March 18. It tells the story of Stefan Aust, editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, Germany's major political magazine. To this day the book has been reviewed by none of the major newspapers. Only the Berliner Zeitung
has dared review it, praising the book but asking whether Aust "would
have enough influence to prevent anything being said about the book?
Kuno Haberbusch, head of the NDR media programme Zapp, says he does not believe in a conspiracy. But when Zapp wanted to do an report on the book last week and 25 people were asked for statements, no one said a thing. Haberbusch, who once shared a flat with Aust, says he can't remember anything like it." (Here is an interview with Aust from 1998, here a brief history of the Spiegel)
Jörg Magenau's extensive biography of Martin Walser, the first of its kind, was nodded through by the critics. Walser
is a central figure in post-war German literary history, as a writer of
very entertaining novels, and because of his infallible nose for the
most painful historical debates. These ranged from the
Auschwitz debates in the early 1970s to the Walser-Bubis debate at the
turn of the century, when Walser was at loggerheads with Ignatz Bubis,
President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, on the question of
German guilt. While people familiar with the author will discover
little new in this work, the SZ attributes this less to a lack of thoroughness that to Martin Walser's high public profile. But it is interested to note that Walser is so clearly recognisable as Suhrkamp author. The FR finds "mood-avantgardist" a fitting label but resents Magenau's partisanship which overly narrows the scope of the book. (Until 1 May there will be an exhibition about Walser at the Münchner Literaturhaus in Munich)
Philosophy
Is Peter Sloterdijk's latest book, "Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals" (inside the internal space of world capital), "Sectarian mutterings" as the taz would have it, or "a dizzying plethora of ideas" as the SZ gushes? One thing at least is clear: the philosopher is not economical with words. His last three-volume work, "Sphären" (Spheres),
filled 2,500 pages. The new book deals with what he calls the "internal
space" of globalisation. But some reviewers follow him there
reluctantly. Die Zeit calls the work "instructive and important", while the FAZ has no patience for Sloterdijk's loquaciousness, which, it writes, reflects one sole principle, "I need room to expand".
Fiction and Poetry / World War II / Politics / Nonfiction
RSS
The six finalists for the German Book Prize 2008, an annual award for the best German language novel, have now been announced. Signandsight.com presents English excerpts of the shortlisted titles for the first time.
The legendary German poets, Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, met and fell in love in Vienna 1948. Their electric and torturous correspondence, which continued until 1961, has now been collected in book form for the first time. Ina Hartwig on what was probably the most complicated love story in post-war Germany.
The headlines were stolen by Charlotte Roche's moist little sex shocker and Jonathan Littell's sprawling SS fantasies but only two books united the critics: one is good and the other, utterly objectionable. There was a flurry of interest in some fabulous comics and a resurgence of the political and the historical novel. A dip into the books published in Germany this spring.
The nonfiction books this spring look into life as a budding president, a kitchen slave, a prophet, a string quartet. They pick apart the world of the elites, of lust and taste and '68.
Travels through the dreams and nightmares of Europe, in a small land of great poets, torn between Balkan catastrophe and Brussels. A reportage on Croatia, this year's partner country at the Leipzig Book Fair. By Gregor Dotzauer 
An SS man reflects on mass murder - and there's a pigeon hole for every vile deed. Novelist Georg Klein on the Holocaust and the enlightened harmony of trivial realism in Jonathan Littell's novel "Les Bienveillantes" which has just been translated into German.
The 400-page German translation of Jonathan Littell's corpse-littered SS novel,"Les Bienveillantes," has put the German-language feuilletons into a critical frenzy, despite the general consensus that the book is bad. We have compiled a selection of the accusations hurled. 
Kurt von Hammerstein was head of the Reichswehr, a grand seigneur, and an implacable opponent of National Socialism. In his new book "Hammerstein oder Der Eigensinn" (Hammerstein or idiosycrasy), Hans Magnus Enzensberger engages in dialogues with the dead to deliver a literary and lunatic precipitate of German history.
This literary autumn belongs to two Russian writers: Vassily Grossmann and Varlam Shalamov, whose epic works have been published in German at long last. But older Germans and German Romantics, Polish queens, Romanian Mannerists, combative atheists, Neopolitan Camorristi, Catalonian knights and a glutton of glorious abandon have also come up trumps.
The literary event of the season is the inexplicably delayed publication of two Russian masterpieces: Vassily Grossmann's historic drama of the 20th century "Life and Fate" and Varlam Shalamov's collection of tales from Kolyma "Durch den Schnee". On the German side, we have seen older novelists flexing their muscles and reaching for the skies, biographers looking up to bygone giants, and the feuilletons rallying to defend religion against the air strikes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. 
The novel is blooming in the Urals, where the children of the former technology elite are letting their imaginations run riot. By Sonja Margolina
Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk's book "Dojczland" is a sophisticated portrait of German-Polish relations with flights of sarcasm and a fine sense of grotesque. Doused heavily in bourbon, it's a controversial bestseller in Poland. By Thomas Urban
Romanian literature is still a tiny niche in the German book
market. Mircea Cartarescu's latest novel to be published here,
"Die Wissenden," shows readers what they are missing. A visit to
Bucharest to meet the man who is probably Romania's most famous author. By Jörg Plath
Come cruising in the park they say is dead. In his
biography of Stefan George, Thomas Karlauf reveals the charismatic German poet's authoritarian practices and the homoerotic core of his work. By Alexander Cammann