The New Hebrews

Friday 20 May, 2005

The exhibition "The New Hebrews: A Century of Art in Israel" opens today in Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau. By Peter von Becker (Image: Reuven Rubin, Self Portrait with Flowers, 1922. © Reuven Rubin)
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A genocide denied

Wednesday 11 May, 2005

Turkish society flatly refuses to recognise the atrocities committed against the Armenians. This has catastrophic implications for Turks in Germany. By Zafer Senocak
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Say it loud – it's Schiller and it's proud

Monday 9 May, 2005

Germany's national poet and dramatist, Friedrich Schiller, died 200 years ago today. Since then he has been adulated by generations of Germans. Both the Nazis and the East German communist regime celebrated him as one of their own. But what relevance does Schiller have today? By George Steiner
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News from Teenyland

Tuesday 3 May, 2005

What happens when young people are trained in globalised consumption from babyhood on? Is there room for the self between commercialism and mass commodities? The "Coolhunters" exhibition in Karlsruhe looks at youth culture, from cheerleaders to cool rappers, from computer games to teenage suicide. By Elke Buhr
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"Ladies and gentlemen, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann"

Friday 22 April, 2005

Thirty years after his premature death, new CDs document readings and recitals by the poet Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. They demonstrate even more clearly than the collected texts and letters that Brinkmann's form of production was avantgarde. Listeners now accustomed to pop sounds will feel at home. Wasn't that an interesting noise? Doesn't a lot of this remind you of later low-fi albums and bootlegs? Brinkmann's breathless speaking takes up the "howl" of the beat generation, his lust for the loud is like concrete poetry. By Thomas Groß
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"I can dance again"

Thursday 21 April, 2005

Frankfurt's long-serving ballet director William Forsythe on his new start with a smaller company: new ideas, new stages and an unusual Japanese master. The new Forsythe Company debuts today in Frankfurt.
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Books this Season: Fiction and Poetry

Spring 2005

Experience beats youth hands down this season! Second novels are sprouting up everywhere. Poet Thomas Kling, who died far too young, has left us a final masterpiece. Non-fiction can't escape the dark shadow of World War Two but there's plenty of talk of a life without work as well.
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Books this Season: World War Two

Spring 2005

It won't leave us alone. Sixty years after the end of the war, a new wave of memorial literature is sweeping Germany. We list important studies such as Götz Aly's "Hitler's Volkstaat", as well as novels, biographies and memoires.
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A sea of possibilities

Thursday 14 April, 2005

Slightly polemical observations on life after 40 prompted by new books by Claudius Seidl and Desiree Nick. By Thea Dorn
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Books this Season: Nonfiction

Spring 2005

Biographies of Friede Springer, Stefan Aust and Martin Walser and the latest book by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.
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Books this Season: Politics

Spring 2005

Work can no longer form the foundation of our self-image. With this simple statement, Wolfgang Engler seems to have struck a nerve among Feuilletonists.
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Doing the unspeakable

Tuesday 12 April, 2005

On the 25th anniversary of the legendary German band Einstürzende Neubauten, Max Dax interviewed its co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Alexander Hacke on Berlin in the eighties and the End Time aesthetics of Berlin's Kreuzberg district.
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The only thing I can really paint well is anger

Friday 8 April, 2005

Bernhard Heisig is a controversial figure in the German art world, having served in the SS and painted state portraits of both East and West German leaders. As a professor at the Leipzig Art School he taught the younger generation of painters now enjoying the international limelight such as Neo Rauch, Tim Eitel and Tilo Baumgärtel. The Leipzig Musem of Fine Art is currently showing a large retrospective of Heisig's work "Die Wut der Bilder".
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The Mongol devastations

Tuesday 5 April, 2005

The Americans and British practised the systematic annihilation of entire cities and their populations in the Second World War. Their main goal was to impress Stalin. The burning of Dresden was the first act of the Cold War. By Jörg Friedrich
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The human flaw

Wednesday 23 March, 2005

Could it be that other cultures find our top models ugly? The way we – conversely – are unable to grasp that the Chinese word for beauty means "fat sheep". A festival in Berlin examines the concept of beauty. By Arnd Wesemann
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