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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Searching for new sounds to take the party to new highs, club music is turning to classical and new music. Prominent techno DJs such as Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer are working with the recordings of Deutsche Grammophon and ECM. Alexis Waltz samples some bewitchingly beautiful and psychedelically absurd results. Photo Ricardo Villalobos © Stefan Stern
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An exhibition in Naumburg celebrates the greatest sculptor and master builder of Medieval Germany, famed for the creation of Uta, the ideal German woman. But patriots be warned! By Sven Behrisch
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Berlin is rich in authentic places where history can be experienced in a tangible and personal manner. We don't need simulation, we should just listen more closely to the genius loci. The planned Memorial to Freedom and Unity is a case in point. By Karl Schlögel
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Designed to appeal to everyone over the age of six, Lady Gaga's new album "Born this Way" is basically funfair techno – with a dash of hilarious mock German. Diedrich Diederichsen explains why this is not how good pop music happens.
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Josef H. Reichholf's large-scale study on the origin of beauty that has just been published in German describes evolution as a kaleidoscope of possibilities and productive wastefulness that relativises all mechanics of necessity. The more complex organisms become, the more they liberate themselves from external living conditions and allow the attraction of beauty to play out its anarchic game. By Horst Bredekamp. Image courtesy Jörg Hempel.
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The feminist theatre collective She She Pop has been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen for the first time, but with "Testament" a piece about their fathers, of all things. Appearing on stage with their fathers and using recordings of off-stage dialogues, the collective employs its signature confrontational style to examine the poignant and implosive issues inherent to the unspoken contract between generations. By Katrin Bettina Müller
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On what would have been Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran's 100th birthday, Suhrkamp has published a volume of his essays from the 1930s, "Über Deutschland". Effervescing with enthusiasm for Hitler and fascist ideas, they cast a dark shadow over his later writing. Fritz Raddatz wishes he'd never had to read such abominations and bids a former companion a bitter farewell. Photo: E.M. Cioran © Surhrkamp Verlag
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The trial of SS officer Adolf Eichmann began fifty years ago. Research continues to show that many of the perpetrators were not just bureaucrats and cretins but educated men who acted out of intellectual conviction - Eichmann, contrary to what Hannah Arendt said, included. An interview with Holocaust historian Ulrich Herbert by Stefan Reinecke and Christian Semler. (Photo: Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem)
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Andre Müller Germany's most insightful and most feared interviewer is dead. Elfriede Jelinek said of him in her obituary: "Andre Müller goes all the way into people and then he makes them into language, and only then do they become themselves." Read his interviews with Ingmar Bergman and Hitler's sculptor Arno Breker in English. Photo courtesy Bibliothek der Provinz
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German museum director Martin Roth, who has just organised the exhibition "The Art of Enlightenment" in Beijing, belittles the attention focused on Ai Weiwei. His response to the arrest of the Chinese artist is alarming and clearly shows how marketing takes precedence over ethics in the world of culture. A commentary by Rüdiger Schaper.
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The French writer Pascal Bruckner wants to forbid a word. Which
sounds more like a typically German obsession. But for Bruckner,
"Islamophobia" is one of "those expressions which we dearly need to
banish from our vocabulary". One asks oneself with some trepidation
which other words we "dearly need" to get rid of: Right-wing populism?
Racism? Relativism? By Alan Posener
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In September Thilo Sarrazin's bestseller "Germany is Abolishing Itself" blamed the decline of the Federal Republic on immigrants and the "underclass". Now, as Alan Posener points out, the first shots have been fired in the counter-offensive: "The Ministry and the Past" exposes the active role played by the Foreign Ministry in the Holocaust and shows that the last place Germany should seek salvation is in its elites.
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German contemporary literature has emerged from the post-ideological vacuum to deliver punch-packing and exacting miniatures that go straight to the heart of the unknown society in which we live. Ina Hartwig highlights a group of writers who all have their fingers firmly on the pulse.
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Walter Benjamin took his life seventy years ago. Today the cult of Benjamin has turned him into kitsch and his almost entirely false theories into intellectual blancmange. Author Stephan Wackwitz picks apart the legend of a saint whose work should be read as Romantic literature.
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UPDATE:Melinda Nadj Abonji has won the German Book Prize for her novel "Tauben Fliegen auf" (Falcons without Falconers). The award ceremony will take place during the Frankfurt Book Fair which opens today. Find out more about the six shortlisted titles and read English excepts from each.
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