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

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

Israel has no choice

Thursday 24 August, 2006

Israel is not only defending its territorial security, it is fighting an Islamic anti-Semitism which European politics are determined to ignore. When it comes to the crunch, the Europeans' "critical dialogue" and culturally-obsessed interpretations, not to mention their playing down of anti-Semitism, have contributed to keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict alive. By Tjark Kunstreich
read more

An ungainly treasure chest

Wednesday 23 August, 2006

The new permanent exhibition at the German Historical Museum has reopened in Berlin's Zeughaus. Historian Christoph Jahr says the show is too soft on the GDR, makes unreflective use of both communist and Nazi lingo and is overly rooted in the idea of the nation-state. Lots to say, but little substance. (Image: Bernhard Stigel: Kaiser Maximilian I, 1496)
read more

A St. Moritz pilgrimage

Monday 21 August, 2006

What is it that people find in St. Moritz, 1,856 metres above sea level? Is it the proximity of the sky? The snow, the cold, the peace, the pure air? Or is it a sense of their own impermanence? German novelist Thomas Hettche travels in the footsteps of Nietzsche and the jet set to Switzerland's exclusive resort.
read more

This endless moral flutter

Thursday, 17 August, 2006

The Grass confession has spawned no end of consternation, reprobation and contemplation among Germany's intellectual elders. The writers Eva Menasse (born 1970) and Michael Kumpfmüller (born 1961) wonder when their generation will have a chance to set the tone of German debate - on issues that really matter, and without the deadening bass tone of German history in the background.
read more

The staged confession

Tuesday, 15 August, 2006

Having claimed for sixty years that he was no more than a conscripted flak helper in World War Two, Günter Grass now admits that he actually served with the Waffen SS. He also explains that his first exposure to "real racism" came after the war, in an American prisoner of war camp, where the black soldiers were treated as second class citizens. Roman Bucheli finds the Nobel Prize laureate's recent revelations a little hard to swallow.
read more

Günter Grass was in the Waffen SS

Wednesday, August 14, 2006

Reactions by authors and critics to Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass' confession that at 17 he served in the Waffen SS, the most brutal Nazi combat unit. An international press review. Updated Thursday September 14, 2006
read more

"The monumental is my sickness"

Thursday 3 August, 2006

For years, Andre Müller has been widely recognised as one of Germany's most intrepid, and most dreaded, interviewers. In 1979 he met and interviewed Arno Breker, who became infamous in the Nazi era as Hitler's favourite sculptor. We have translated the text in full. (Image: Arno Breker: Bereitschaft (Readiness), 1939. Courtesy Breker Archiv Düsseldorf)
read more

"You are gonna love me"

Wednesday 26 July, 2006

Sylvia Staude reports from Vienna's ImPulsTanz festival, a month-long contemporary dance platform with something for everyone, from the biggest names to the most passionate non-dancers.
read more

Hitler's favourite sculptor

Tuesday 25 July, 2006

Until today, all attempts to show the works of Arno Breker, Hitler's favourite sculptor, have failed miserably. The potential for failure is again great at the first major solo exhibition of Breker's works since World War II. The show relies on loans from Breker's apologists, and access to the archives was limited. By Stefan Koldehoff
See also Andre Müller's interview with Arno Breker from 1979.
read more

"Everyone will think you're insane"

Monday 17 July, 2006

This summer, Christian Thielemann will conduct Richard Wagner's four-part "Ring of the Nibelung" opera cycle at the Bayreuth Festspiele. He talks to Christine Lemke-Matwey about the festival, Wagner's music, and the dark German sound: tyaaa-tyaaa-tyaaa-tyaa-tyaa-tyaa-tyaaa
read more

You are here

Thursday 13 July, 2006

With this story, journalist Kathrin Passig won one of the most prestigious literary awards in German letters, the Ingeborg Bachman Prize. (Photo © Johannes Jander)
read more

Robert Gernhardt's last call

Monday 10 July, 2006

The well-loved German poet and artist Robert Gernhardt died on June 30, 2006. We publish a selection of his poems in English with the kind permission of his translator Ursula Runde, and several drawings from Gernhardt's "German Readers" series.
read more

What's super?

Wednesday 5 July, 2006

Super is a young, smart, seven-headed band from Berlin called Super700 which, with its first and eponymously titled album is well on its way to becoming the German Garbage. By Rene Hamann
read more

"Cutting off my tongue"

Monday 3 July, 2006

German star comic artist Ralf König on burqas in Germany, the Pope in Cologne and his gay Islamist satire "Jinn Jinn". An interview with Wieland Freund.
read more