Berlin's new government axes top culture post

It was announced yesterday that Berlin will no longer have a Cultural Senator. The newly re-elected mayor, Klaus Wowereit, has decided to do the job himself alongside his other duties. "Megalomania," declares Birgit Walter in the Berliner Zeitung. "Berlin is sending out an absolutely fatal signal here. This position used to be considered a cart-horse which for want of a decent industry in Berlin worked to prepare the way for the future. Now it's been subordinated to a mayoral sub-duty."

Heinrich Wefing in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung is similarly outraged. Especially in the light of Wowereit's recent appeal to the Federal Court in Karlsruhe that was recently turned down (more here). "All protests in Karlsruhe that Berlin has nothing but culture (and education) to offer, which is why this should receive financial backing from the rest of the country, have been forgotten again. It is not only symbolically that culture has been beheaded."

And Manuel Brug in Die Welt is suspicious of Wowereit's motivations. "Culture is merely a means to political ends for him, and he will stop at nothing. Wowereit has the mind of a strategist, not an aesthete."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 07.11.2006

Jordan Mejias attended a public discussion at Columbia University in New York on "Literature and Citizenship" between Orhan Pamuk and philosopher and critic Arthur Danto. "Again and again and in a myriad of ways, Pamuk demonstrated that an artist doesn't argue in a state of Aristotelian sagacity. Rather he gives free reign to his emotions, letting himself get carried away in a sort of 'disorganised paranoia' of commentary about the state of the world. This is no flight from responsibility, it's the reaction of an artist. And with Pamuk, it's also an indication that we should be interested in him as a writer, and not first and foremost as a Turk or political commentator. If Proust writes about love, says Pamuk, the world recognises the sweeping humanity in what he writes. But when he does it, the world talks about Turkish love. 'It hurts,' he says, 'when people view my books as some kind of introduction to Turkey.' He longs for people to point to his books and say: 'You're in love? Here, read this'."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 07.11.2006

Ijoma Mangold reports from the "Open Mike" competition for young writers which took place last weekend at Berlin's Literaturwerkstatt. This year was marked by an outspoken professionalism among the competitors, Mangold writes. The top prizes went to three "fashion-model" types, Katharina Schwanbeck, Julia Zange and Luise Boege, for Mangold undoubtedly the most talented of the three: "Hearing Luise Boege's story, you can't fail to think of Kafka. Her story is called 'Der Optophonet', and this figure is distinctly reminiscent of Kafka's Odradek, in his 'The Worries of a Householder.' Both are mysterious figures, somewhere between living flesh-and-blood creatures, machines, domestic animals with genetic defects and metaphysical constructs. Boege reads with impressive assurance and an uncanny sense of humour. Her story of this hybrid being is a profoundly refined tale of empathy, dying and being human which never gets stuck in burdensome parables."


Die Welt 07.11.2006

Author Jana Hensel was also at the Open Mike competition, and is less gracious in her comments: "This time the whole field of authors was unsettlingly homogeneous. None of the authors were particularly good. But none were particularly bad, either, which is the really frightening thing. You could say there never has never been such a broad spectrum of 20-year-old Germans who could write so well. But they also have less to say than ever before."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 07.11.2006

At Madrid's Festival de Otono, Renate Klett saw everyone who's anyone in the world of theatre and dance. But she also sat through a tortuous production of Peer Gynt by Calixto Bieito. "After a while it's just about ticking boxes – so we have coke snorting, puking, fucking, pissing and agressive brawling. Nothing is omitted, the list is complete. None of this ruffles the man next to me. Snoring blissfully, he sleeps through the full three hours. He wakes up with the applause, calls out a loud 'Bravo!' and goes home content. Most enviable."