Monday 6 November, 2006

Süddeutsche Zeitung 06.11.2006

Christine Dössel has seen the production "Karl Marx' Capital, First Volume," a piece of documentary theatre put on by the Rimini Protokoll theatre group in Dusseldorf. "The group has gathered eight people who know the work inside and out, or at least whose lives have been changed by it. Experts like economic historian and statistician Thomas Kuczynski, who has busied himself with 'Capital' for 40 years. During the performance he lectures knowledgeably - and nit-pickingly - on the various editions. Kuczynski was the last director of the Institute for Economic History at the Academy of Sciences in the GDR. In 1995 he put out a new edition of 'The Communist Manifesto,' with a commentary on previous versions. Or business consultant and China expert Jochen Noth, who had been a member of the SDS, or Socialist German Student Federation, and who co-founded the Central Committee of the Communist Federation of West Germany. Of course as an engaged ex-communist - even Maoist at times - he has a profound knowledge of the book. The production shows a film from 1968 with the young Marxist burning money on the street and shitting on an expensive carpet."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 06.11.2006

Journalist Lidija Klasic remembers the inconspicuous first signs of the collapse of Yugoslavia: "At the time I didn't understand how dangerous it was that no one in Yugoslavia had seriously faced up to the legacy of the Second World War. Not even when my actor husband told me about how he'd been shooting a television series in Zagreb dressed in a Ustasha uniform. An old woman came up to him and said: 'I'm so glad you're back'."


Die Tageszeitung 06.11.2006

With a crisis meeting on the cards between museum directors and legal experts concerning restitution claims of Jewish heirs to artworks in German museums, Brigitte Werneburg demands that the state intervene. "The art market and the legal profession profit from the Jewish heirs in Germany on a regular basis. Because after lawyers and auction houses have been paid, the heirs often end up with less that the museums offered them. Why do the museums not turn this situation to their advantage? Why do they not spring to side of those embroiled in the restitution claims and offer them some first aid? It is just the same as forced labour compensation and politics should take responsibility and organise a budget. They'd rather play dead. And if the museums don't get away with this, they will lose their art works. Political personnel seems to think it is acceptable to pay next to nothing for valuable art works in out of court settlements. So why do they wonder when Kirchner's 'Berliner Straßenszene' disappears as soon as a Putin-tame oligarch turns up?"


Saturday 4 November, 2006

Die Tageszeitung 04.11.2006

The paper reprints an essay from the November issue of Merkur in which the magazine's publisher indulges in some sweeping conclusions concerning the Günter Grass affair (more here), retrospectively highlighting how the leaders of the 68er generation would have made proper little Nazis under other circumstances: "One is taken by the suspicion – not at all sarcastically - that people with an urge for public life will bring this to bear under any regime. For example many leaders of the media and the committee-based universities would certainly have demonstrated back then the same blend of overattentive fussiness, obedience and reform they so obtrusively and intimidatingly displayed in their day. The idealism of the former leaders of the League of German Girls can still be seen in all those fed on greener grasses later on."


Die Welt 04.11.2006

Mario Vargas Llosa read with bated breath Ian Buruma's book "Murder in Amsterdam", about the killing of Theo van Gogh and its consequences. Yet, as he writes in the literature section, he has little sympathy for Buruma's criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Afshin Ellian as "Enlightenment fundamentalists". "The people in the west have it good, they live in safety. And although newspapers and television tell them how terrible things are out there, they have forgotten that it is freedom, human rights and democracy – concepts that now sound like hollow phrases in their ears – that they have to thank for their standard of living and legal security. Which is why they are wallowing in self-pity and apathy, and why they get annoyed as soon as someone interferes with their comfortable life. If the culture of freedom survives the challenge of religious fundamentalism, it would not be going too far to say that it will mainly be thanks to new citizens like Afshin Ellian and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They have first-hand experience of the horrors of religious obscurantism and political barbarity and they know the difference. Now they are rallying to the defence of the culture that they have made their own. They are convinced that threats and danger have a strengthening not a weakening influence."


Frankfurter Rundschau 04.11.2006

Writer György Dalos remembers the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and laments that commemorations in Hungary are being overshadowed by the current political wrangling. "Now Hungary is commemorating that black Sunday fifty years ago and is feeling distinctly unwell. Not because of the sad events of the past, but because of vulgar domestic political tensions. The conservative opposition has being trying for a month and a half to put pressure on the social-liberal government. The right is campaigning against the election lies of the left, and will seemingly stoop to any means. For this Saturday they were planning a torch procession through the city centre; the recent strife does not bode well for the future. The brutal storming of the television station by the right-wing radicals on September 18 and the justified but inappropriately drastic reaction of the police have created a climate in the country that is relegating the commemorations to second place."