James Brown died on Christmas day

Martin Horat in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes "It was a matter of respect. Even in James Brown's closest circles it was customary to refer to one another using family names. This was symptomatic for someone who over a lifetime through sheer will demanded respect according to his own set of rules – for himself, his skin colour and the underprivileged throughout the world."

Tobias Rapp in the Tageszeitung praises the many cries of James Brown from his "triumphal 'Aaaaooooowww' to the dozens of variations of Ha! and Huah! that would need a lexicon to document in full. From the strings of musical punctuation dance commands like Hit me! to the moans and groans which emanated from his deepest viscera, to the begging Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaase! - no one else could shout like this man."

Klaus Walter in the Frankfurter Rundschau has nothing against Brown's most famous song "Sex Machine" even if was the ultimal ratio of every last DJ for settin the stiffest hipped stock brokers in motion at their after work parties. "I have nothing against 'Sex Machine': a great song even if well into old age its creator still mistook women for sex machines and treated them as men treat cigarette machines when they keep the money and fail to spit out the goods."


Die Tageszeitung 27.12.2006

Gabriele Goettle portrays a kiosk saleswoman from Berlin Lichterfelde West. "The kiosk is a magic place. (…) All there is to see of the kiosk woman are face and hands, a smile perhaps, a greeting, a fitting remark. Then the customer goes contentedly on his way. This is the kiosk for us. For Frau Reinke on the other hand, who has spent her entire life inside it, the kiosk is her rescue capsule, a bastion of protection and security which keeps the world outside at an arm's length, and the metronome for her life's rhythm."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 27.12.2006

Igal Avidan reports on the hotly debated decision by the minister for education Yuli Tamir to reintroduce into all new school books the so-called "Green Line" which separates the main territory of Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and which was removed from official Israeli maps shortly after the Six Day War. This removal which took place without governmental intervention was "one of the most significant decisions in the history of Israel, and paved the way for the Jewish settlement of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Maps play an vital role in the educational system. Generations of Israelis grew up without knowing state boundaries. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, the Golan Heights in 1981 and last year it cleared the Gaza Strip. The current boundaries however appear in no school books, neither do the Autonomous Palestinian Territories as set out in the Oslo Peace Accord. In some school books, the Gaza Strip is shown as still a part of Israel."


Marcus Jauer visited an exhibition at Berlin's Akademie der Künste of 150 photographs by the former GDR fashion photographer Sibylle Bergemann who between 1975 and 1986 was commissioned to document the construction of the monument to Marx and Engels designed by her friend the sculptor Ludwig Engelhardt which still stands in the centre of Berlin. "One of the pictures shows the heads of Marx and Engels on two tables and behind them photos of their faces. Some of which show them smiling. This is disturbing because there were no photos in the GDR of them smiling. It was as if they never smiled, but they did and Sibylle Bergemann's picture show this. That is her art. She gives an idea of how things might have been had they been compelled to turn out the way they did."


And some Christmas leftovers:

Die Tageszeitung 23.12.2006

Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk had black seasonal thoughts to share in an interview with Jan Feddersen und Susanne Lang. "The religions continue to belong to the problem rather than the solution. Were such a thing as a world spirit to exist, it would now come out and say: the only way still open is the way of civilisation. For on the world's stage two complexes are facing one another: one is the unbalanced over-eroticised greed of the ravaged West, the other, equally unbalanced is the over-thymoticised Middle East. If the balance is not redressed all round, global self-destruction is unavoidable." Sloterdijk remains optimistic nonetheless.