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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Probably never before has there been so much hype around a premiere at the Bayreuth Festival. Because the director of this "Mastersingers of Nuremberg" is Katharina Wagner, great granddaughter of Richard Wagner, who could one day take over as festival director. By Marianne Zelger-Vogt (Image: Katharina Wagner. © Enrico Nawrath, courtesy Bayreuther Festspiele)
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Fighting the system of informers in the GDR was his life's task. It made him ill - and famous. On the death of Ulrich Mühe. By Matthias Heine
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Now, as the last eye witnesses are dying out, totalitarianism is tempting a new generation to warm their hands in its fire. From Bernd Eichinger, Jonathan Meese and now Tom Cruise, is there no letting go of the Führer? By Georg Diez
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Thomas Mann was enchanted by German classical music but was also wary of its seductive powers. In his novels, he anticipates its instrumentalisation by the Nazis, who used it as the gateway to bourgeois German hearts and minds. By Wolfgang Schneider
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Is German academic language dying in the face of the dominant Anglo-Saxon? Well, revive it! Biophysicist and author Stefan Klein doesn't think German scholars should try to impress the world with mediocre English. He makes a case for the mother tongue, proposing incentives such as prizes for the best scientific texts. After all, everyone craves rewards.
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Both the Venice Biennale and the Documenta in Kassel have taken the dark side of modernity as their theme. Looking at how the two mega-exhibitons do battle, Hanno Rauterberg prefers Kassel's investigation of evil to Venice's concession to it. (Untitled, from the series Spring-Sow-Plum-Scene, 1996, mask 6, 2003. © Aoki Ryoko)
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In a disused dockyard in Rostock, the "Art goes Heiligendamm" initiative has put the final touches to its G8 intervention. The preferred topic among the artworks is borders and overcoming them. Aside from that they deal anything that's good: information, documentation, irony, utopia, anti-consumerism. By Irene Grüter
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Of mothers and children: Sasha Waltz has staged Pascal Dusapin's "Medea" opera in Luxembourg. Yet while the spirit races, the dancing is in slow motion. By Christiane Peitz
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder died 25 years ago. His ex-wife, the actress and chanteuse Ingrid Caven, is outraged at the way the Fassbinder legacy is being misrepresented. She talks to Katja Nicodemus about the cult of genius, lies and the Utopian days of great cinema.
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Why did no one think of it before? A film festival showing only the best films around. Cannes director Thierry Fremaux has done just that - much to the approval of Daniel Kothenschulte, who singles out the new films by Fatih Akin and Quentin Tarantino as his favourites.
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When gas, electricity or water are at stake, the state must guarantee the energy supply for the population. Shouldn't it do likewise when the other type of 'energy' is at risk, the quality press? All over the world, financial investors are increasingly replacing patriarchal publishers and imposing their idea of profitability. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues for state support for the quality newspapers.
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Germans are said to be a bit obsessed with their cars - sleek, robust, fast. But the cutest thing to ever grace the autobahn had other virtues. In view of the green future where Germany is a small car nation, Georg Klein sings praise of the Goggomobil.
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Brilliantly narrated, justly arbitrated: historian Christopher Clark has written a masterpiece on the Hohenzollern state of Prussia. By Volker Ullrich
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Germany's top theatre festival is taking place in Berlin, the Theatertreffen. But does the theatre still have anything to celebrate? Absolutely! A defence of the stage in the age of cable TV and computer games. By Peter Kümmel.
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Probable, silent, public, inofficial - there are many categories of participant in this year's documenta. What's lacking are the official ones. Because the exhibition organisers are keeping tight-lipped about what artists have been invited, we are left to guess, speculate, hope and dismay. By Ludwig Seyfarth
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