Never before have there been so many private collectors making extensive acquisitions of contemporary art. Are they the real key figures of a global art business?...
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The Feuilletons this week were preoccupied by two issues: child abuse by the Catholic Church, and (again!) copy-paste abuse by the young German writer Helene Hegemann. The FAZ looks back at the days when castration was considered an acceptable method of producing angelic voices. Die Zeit looks to the narcissistic principle of similarity in a patriarchal society for an explanation. On the eve of the Leipzig Book Fair, a list of German writers, Günter Grass and Christa Wolf among them, sign a petition against plagiarism - although, as we discover, Christa Wolf might be considered a pioneer in such matters herself.
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The Dutch author Hans Maarten van der Brink lists a number of contradictory reasons why his compatriots might give Geert Wilders their vote in June. Ai Weiwei defends his heavy surfing habit. Die Welt prints a reportage on the first ever critical edition of the Koran, coming to you from Potsdam. Mircea Cartarescu explains why he's too old to write poetry. And the taz and the NZZ report on reprisals against writers in Iran.
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Having been apprehended on his way to the lit.cologne, Liao Yiwu sends his German readers a song for the dongxiao. Die Welt describes Ryszard Kapuscinski as a partisan writer who was prone to self-censorship. In the NZZ, Martin Pollack explains why he won't be translating the Kapuscinski biography into German - not becuase of its truths but because of its tone. The pianist Krystian Zimerman explains the difference between volume and dynamism. The FAZ bemoans the influence of the collector in today's art market. And Gunter Grass has opened his Stasi file.
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