She produced her first film on tick in 1973 and straightaway it won her a German Film Prize. Now, in 2008, Regina Ziegler is considered Germany?s most successful film and television producer, and this year marks her production company?s 35th anniversary....
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A game is a game is a game: Ludwig Harig is one of the greatest child-brains of German literature and a master of the football sonnet to boot. "Oh trickled ball! Oh toe-flicked leather!" A visit to juggler of words in Saarland's Sulzbach. By Oliver Ruf
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The Ingeborg Bachmann Competition has just ended in Klagenfurt. One of the participants was writer Clemens Meyer, whose debut novel "Als wir träumten" was highly acclaimed at the Leipzig Book Fair in March. He spoke with Gerrit Bartels just before the competition about Klagenfurt, his writing and tattoos.
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At the end of May, Austrian author Peter Handke was informed he had been selected as winner of this year's Heinrich Heine Prize awarded by the city of Dusseldorf. A controversy then flared up over Handke's support for Slobodan Milosevic, whereupon the prize was revoked. We've compiled the major voices from the ensuing debate in the German-language press.
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2006 is the 150th anniversary of the death of German poet Heinrich Heine and the debate surrounding this year's literary Heinrich-Heine Prize is currently filling out the feuilletons. Here we publish writer Georg Klein's compilation of his top ten favourite Heine quotes on that most controversial of subjects: religion.
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The prestigious Georg Büchner Prize for literature is to be awarded to poet Oscar Pastior. Martin Lüdke welcomes the long overdue decision to honour the work of a mild mannered word wizard.
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The German feuilletons have discovered the other - and with force. The most talked-about literary works deal with 19th century travellers, Turkish girls in Anatolia, youth gangs in Leipzig or coma-stricken narrators. In our nonfiction section, Necla Kelek's study of Turkish men in Germany launched a thousand arguments.
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After her book about imported brides, Necla Kelek turns her attention to Turkish men. Frank Schirrmacher warns of the ills of childless society, and Lars Brand remembers his father, Chancellor Willy. Plus enticing monographs on Berlusconi, Benjamin Franklin, Sigmund Freud, Jean Sibelius, Michelangelo, Botticelli and Bernini.
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Like hero, like author. Ilija Trojanow, world traveller, author of travel books and Mecca pilgrim, has written an astounding biographical novel about Richard Francis Burton, Mecca pilgrim, author of travel books and world traveller. By Karl-Markus Gauß
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Ukranian author Yuri Andrukhovych was recipient of this year's Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. Andrukhovych's acceptance speech, in which he expresses deep gratitude for the distinction and deeper sorrow that European understanding remains an unattained goal, caused a minor furore.
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Russian poet Olga Martynova returns to Moscow after 15 years away and discovers that the city has lost its grey communist pallor. In fact, it's a pleasant, busy, contented metropolis,
whose buildings and memorials, while kitschy at times, actually have a certain charm.
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How the Western Ukrainian provincial nest of Ivano-Frankivsk turned into a thriving literary metropolis and multicultural frontier between East and West. By Holger Gemba
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Germany is the guest of honour at this year's Cairo International Book Fair. With a diversity of cultural themes, the German organisers have honoured the Egyptian side as only a glamorous tango-dancer can do, writes Egyptian author Ahmed Alaidy. But why did they give the cold shoulder to publisher and opposition member Muhammad Hashim?
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Poet Helga M. Novak talks to Uta Beiküfner about the fascination of socialism, travelling to where the action is and the unexpected blessings of the madhouse. (Photo © Renate von Mangoldt)
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Bookseller and editor Bettina Wassmann has been at the heart of the German book trade for almost forty-five years. She talks with Gabriele Goettle about her apprenticeship in Berlin and the heyday of the political bookstore, her philosopher husband Alfred Sohn-Rethel and making literary history.
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On Christmas Eve Joshka, a demolition contractor, takes a stroll round the old theme park in the woods which he has been hired to tear down... A short story by Georg Klein
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