Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 13.12.2006

Chilean poet Ariel Dorfman's hopes are up after Pinochet's death, but he can't refrain from commenting bitterly on the official honours with which the dictator has been laid to rest. Dorfman is outraged that "the defence minister of Chile's democratic government attended the tyrant's funeral. And as incredible as it may sound, he did this at the request of the president, Michelle Bachelet, who was thrown in prison and tortured by the secret police of the man she is now honouring. Moreover her father, Alberto Bachelet, was murdered by Pinochet's henchmen. Military honour – parading cadets and five-gun salutes – all for a man who has been brand-marked an international terrorist.... Only a country still full of fear could stoop so low and publicly honour such a despot."


Frankfurter Rundschau 13.12.2006

Chilean writer Antonio Skarmeta, who fled to Germany in 1973 and served as Chilean ambassador to Germany after his return in 1989, writes that Pinochet has inflicted a final defeat on his enemies with his death: "Pinochet is dead. He destroyed the lives of many Chileans when, with his brutal putsch, he attempted to solve real problems with disproportional means. For that reason his legacy is more powerful, but also more subtle than the small sign carried by one of his last followers in front of his hospital calling on the Right to remember all he had done for them. It is true that at the end, Pinochet was alone and had lost his struggle. In this regard, the group of 'siñores políticos' who he constantly feared of conspiring against him really did leave him in the lurch, whether they had read Lenin or not. Yet his last flight from justice confronts us with an ultimate defeat: we are left with a sense of melancholy."

Petra Kohse portrays Canadian director and actor Robert Lepage, who is currently presenting the "The Andersen Project" in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The one-man play, Lepage's commissioned contribution to the Hans Christian Andersen year 2005, tells the story of an aging Canadian rock writer who comes to Paris to write the libretto for a production of Andersen's little- known fairytale The Dryads. "With sets and projected landscapes and a partly accessible backwards screen with a variable row of cabins (porno cinemas, telephone cells), cafe tables that fly by and even a living dog leash, he reaches deep into the treasure chest of poetic fantasy, while at the same time using contemporary technology and a constantly moving public on a rolling little stage. Women are played by hat stands that he touches tenderly, the fairytale is played by puppets, the man without a shadow is a shadow-play, Lepage is both subject and object of his action, story teller and play-maker at once. Technically, it's bravura, the story is bizarre, imaginative and funny and yet, it's as though the whole thing has no core."


Die Tageszeitung 13.12.2006

Ivaylo Ditchev, professor of cultural anthropology in Sofia, describes the growing nationalism in Bulgaria, which he sees as a further blight in the anti-European face of Eastern Europe: "What we see now is right-wing nationalism directed against Russia, which is portrayed somehow as still being communist. And we have left-wing nationalism, which sees the USA as the real enemy. Add to that a xenophobic racism against the Roma. And in cultural circles, meanwhile, people keep spinning out stories based on the glorious sagas of the Thracians or proto-Bulgarian Khans. All these strands run together into a general lifestyle-nationalism, just a year before Bulgaria is to become an EU member."


Die Welt 13.12.2006

Richard Herzinger witnesses a growing fear of Russia in Europe. "The fear stems from the uncertainty of where the country is headed under Putin's rule, and what will become of it after he leaves office in 2008. The great myth that Russia is approaching Europe slowly and in its own fashion has been shattered. The West is mainly afraid that it has no formula how to control the country's rapid regression to a despotism controlled by the secret service, ruled by corruption and intimidation."

Sociologist Wolf Lepenies sees the USA falling into a consensus trap. "The disaster of the American strategy in Iraq is a scandal for the opposition as well. The Democratic Party has not succeeded in offering an alternative to the President's politics. The neo-cons and most republicans are mainly to blame for the international loss of respect for the American republic. But are the Democrats not responsible for the fact that America looks like a democracy without an opposition?"