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

Kicking the headscarf habit

Monday 13 November, 2006

I decided about a year ago to live without a headscarf. It makes a difference if you're obeying duties outlined by others or those based on your own conclusions. But calling for Muslim women to remove their headscarves is as futile as calling on Germans to stop drinking beer, because it must be the result of genuine consideration. By Emel Abidin-Algan
read more

Berlin: capital of the underclass

Thursday 2 November, 2006

West Germany casts a mistrustful glance at Berlin, the city of lazy pleasure-seekers. And it comes down to this: the exhausted are envious of the detached. A polemic by Jens Jessen
read more

Germany betrays Israel

Monday 30 October, 2006

In a recent speech in Israel, singer, song-writer and polemicist Wolf Biermann castigated Germany for misjudging the tragedy in the Middle East conflict and sympathising with radical Muslims out of patronising contempt. (Photo: Hans Weingartz)
read more

Nobody is safe anymore

Friday 13 October, 2006

The murder of Anna Politovskaya shocked not only the world, but critical voices in Russia as well. Philosopher Michail Ryklin talks with Caroline Fetscher about the new degree of fear in Russia.
read more

The man who gave second chances

Thursday October 12, 2006

In one of the last articles she wrote for the Novaya Gazeta before being murdered on October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya paid tribute to the recently fallen Buvadi Dakhiev. A warlord with humanity, he was a rare find in Chechnya.
read more

Two faces of Arab intellectuals

Wednesday 11 October, 2006

The Arab intellectual behaves like a despotic father. No internal family matter may be exposed to the outside world. Regardless of what the reality may be, a facade of unbroken unity must be maintained. In private talks you hear opinions that are radically different from what is published in the newspapers the next day. By Khalid al-Maaly (Image © Brigitte Friedrich, Cologne)
read more

Islam's heritage of violence

Thursday 5 October, 2006

In response to the uproar caused by Benedict XVI's speech in Regensburg, Abdelwahab Meddeb, one of France's most respected Arab writers, considers why peaceful disputes between Christians and Muslims were possible in the Middle Ages but not today. An interview with Michael Mönninger.
read more

Self-censorship in major and minor

Wednesday 27 September, 2006

The cancellation of the Mozart opera "Idomeneo" in Berlin's Deutsche Oper for fear of reprisals from the Muslim community has unleashed a storm of protest. Harald Jähner, feuilleton editor of the Berliner Zeitung, finds the opera house's decision not only cowardly but dangerous.
read more

Whipping boy Bush

Monday 25 September, 2006

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, George Bush has become the perfect scapegoat. When attacks and threats increase, he is to blame. But the rise of international terrorism is not Bush's doing. We are not seeing a new Vietnam, but a new Chicago, an ethnic-theological Mafia and gang war. To accept, or not to accept, the law of the human bomb? That is the question facing our fledgling century. By Andre Glucksmann
read more

Benedict and the value gap

Tuesday 19 September, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg speech gives no rational ground for the commotion now being stirred up from Pakistan to Europe. In our globalised, individualised and thoroughly economicised world, the purely technical use of reason threatens to bring about a value gap. That the Pope should try to close this gap with religious means may not have proved effective, yet this is exactly where all believers should find common ground. By Stephan Hebel
read more

The mighty hausfrau

Wednesday 13 September, 2006

The German housewife is the pillar of the nation - she cleans, organises, supports, nourishes and forgets that at one time, she had professional aspirations. Susanne Mayer takes a look at the employment situation of German women and concludes that the state is investing far too much in folded underwear.
read more

Stepping out of the fire

Wednesday 6 September, 2006

Having been violently attacked by the husband of one of her clients, the Berlin lawyer and Islam critic Seyran Ates has closed her legal practice. A fighter for human rights resigns. By Mariam Lau
read more

Vocation battlefield

Thursday 31 August, 2006

Lebanon used to be a blessed harbour in a brutal region - with beautiful women, fat wallets and parliamentary democracy. But appearances were deceiving. The country has become a battlefield where all conflicts are carried out in microcosm. Lebanese author Selim Nassib writes an instructive history of the Lebanese inferno, fired by other peoples' wars as well as its own.
read more

Lebanon Conflict Special

Thursday 31 August, 2006

Since the conflict flared up in Lebanon, many voices in Europe and the Middle East have been seeking to make head or tail of the goings on. We give a press review from the German feuilletons as well as several interesting articles in their entirety. Selim Nassib tells the history of Lebanon as battlefield. Imre Kertesz, Navid Kermani and Tjark Kunstreich ask whether it's possible to discuss Israel and the Lebanon conflict without referring to the Holocaust.
read more

Israel's clenched fist

Thursday 24 August, 2006

Post-Holocaust morality and the violence of today: Navid Kermani says Israel weakens itself if it builds on military might, and forgets its past as victim.
read more