Twenty-five years after his cult TV series, Kir Royal, director Helmut Dietl has now come released a sort of ?sequel? for the big screen. Zettl focuses on the high-flying career of a ruthless media man in Berlin. As satire, however, the frigid figures in Zettl fail to warm up to viewers. ...
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For over twenty years, Klaus Beyer has dedicated himself to converting
the Beatles into German. He has just released his eighth album, "Helft!", a brilliantly squeaky psychedelic version of "Help!", and a DVD of his home-made videos.
By Detlef Kuhlbrodt
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On Christmas Eve, the most exciting exhibition Berlin has seen in years will open to the public in the Palast der Republik, the former East German people's palace. This ad-hoc show will last exactly nine days and then the building will be torn down. But the Palast is just the art museum the city needs, says Christina Tilmann.
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Berlin's KaDeWe: The shop was called Kaufhaus des Westens (department store of the West) long before the "west" became an ideological category. It was a civilizational measuring stick. How much spending, how much luxury can a society tolerate? A search for the true German Christmas in Europe's most luxurious department store. By Roger Boyes
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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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Christa Wolf died on 1 Dec, aged 82. Fifteen years after reunification, Christa Wolf, a prominent German writer who chose to remain in East Germany and who was later branded a "state poet", talks with Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns and Stephan Lebert about private chats with Honecker, a German society in check mate, the influence of Goethe, the shortcomings of Brecht, and the lasting effects of Utopia.
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Gingerbread hearts, 4711, the lovely Petra and appalling paintings. Author Feridun Zaimoglu describes how growing up on a German diet eventually bore literary fruit.
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On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Hannah Arendt's death, Daniel Cohn-Bendit recalls his relationship with the great philosopher and reflects on her and on his generation.
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The debate over a memorial for the expelled persons from World War Two continues to rage in Berlin. Meanwhile, an exhibition in Bonn takes a refreshingly balanced look at this difficult chapter in German history. By Jörg Lau
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Euripides' play "The Bacchae" is making a comeback on stages across Europe. But can we recapture the brutality of the bard of ancient times? In Munich Jossi Wieler tries hard but fails to portray the play's profound weirdness and horror. By
Peter Michalzik (Image © Arno Declair)
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Germany's new grand coalition government has announced its objectives in the form of a contract: 143 pages of well-intentioned, naval-gazing blindness. The challenge facing Germany, says Arno Widmann, is not the aftermath of reunification, but a united Europe and globalisation.
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The social sciences have failed in their analyses of amok killers, frenzied murderers and the terrorist mind. And yet one look is enough to identify the culprit: the radical loser. By Hans Magnus Enzensberger
(Photo © Mariusz Kubik)
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We present the books that shaped Germany's literary world this autumn, with futuristic novels about clones and time standing still, two major tomes on the fall of the Wall, and a sampling of bookish delights from around the globe.
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Essays by Karl Schlögel and Andrzej Stasiuk, memoirs by Martin Walser and Luc Bondy, histories of German fascination for Russia and a friendship with Hitler, a Weber biography and a book on painter Gerhard Richter.
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A monumental Mao biography, an essay on hate, a book about a 1969 failed bomb attack in Berlin's Jewish Community Centre, and a study of "mental capitalism" on the pervasiveness of advertising.
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Eberhard Havekost is being hyped as one of the hot "Young German Artists". His subjects are banal, he copies copies, he's interested in surfaces. Art critic Elke Buhr ventures to ask if there's any depth.
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