Die Welt 29.03.2007

The curator of Berlin's museum of contemporary art, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Heiner Bastian, recently announced his resignation on the basis that the higher-ups in the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the body which administers Berlin's major museums, is not paying attention to the most contemporary of contemporary art. The collection housed by the Hamburger Bahnhof is largely the private one of Berlin collector Erich Marx. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and Peter-Klaus Schuster from the Stiftung have been quick and direct in their response. Uta Baier thinks we are witnessing a change in the relationship between museums and collectors. "The new self-confidence of museums has to do with the number of collectors that are crowding into museums. It would be hard to find a replacement for the collection of Erich Marx, but the most important pieces are under contract and perhaps the Hamburger Bahnhof would use its new-found freedom to find new collectors and to make the contemporary museum truly a museum of contemporary art."


Spiegel Online 29.03.2007

Claus-Christian Malzahn shakes his head at a poll revealing that 48 percent of Germans believe the USA is more dangerous than Iran: "The American historian Daniel Goldhagen... is currently researching the history of genocides in the 20th century. He writes that those politicians or military men who planned and carried out genocides seldom made a secret of their intentions. Whether the victims were Hereros, Armenians, Kulaks, Jews or later Bosnians, the perpetrators thought for the most part that they were doing the right thing, and saw no reason to conceal their murderous designs. When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dreams today of a world without Israel and of a nuclear arsenal, we could - especially as Germans - put one and one together. Why shouldn't he mean what he says?"


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 29.03.2007

Christoph Egger writes on Lars von Trier's new comedy "The Boss of it All," in which the camera perspective is determined by a random generator: "Strange camera angles often show 'nothing', actors appear oddly cut-off, the speakers aren't in the takes, and there are abrupt jumps in the middle of sequences. That's all fine with von Trier: 'The good thing is that this results in a style that's not human. It's been freed of human intent.'"

Ilma Rakusa has read "Die Reise nach Alaska" (journey to Alaska) by Berlin-based Serbian author Bora Cosic, on his first trip back to his divided homeland after leaving there at the beginning of the 90s. "Cosic deals with the ominous role of the intelligentsia in the chapter on Belgrade, 'his' city, whose once familiar streets and artistic circles he hardly recognises now. Alienation is too weak a word for his feelings wandering through the absurd, Beckett-like surroundings. Nevertheless Cosic is extremely precise in his descriptions of individual friends and meetings (for example with the widow of the murdered Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic). These are extracts from a tableau that cannot be grasped in its entirety, as elusive as one's own past." See our feature "Journey to the Alaska of my Past" by Bora Cosic, the first stage on his journey.


Die Zeit 29.03.2007

"It's high time that we got a little blunt," says the Canadian author Margaret Atwood in an interview with Evelyn Finger, at least when it comes to climate protection. She has a suggestion: "Consumers should do their homework and find out which companies are making their products in a particularly irresponsible way. I just discovered a magazine called Corporate Knights. It presents companies that have a social conscience. There's one thing that we can definitely do: praise those who are doing things right, and charge those who are doing things wrong. As soon as public opinion starts influencing the profit margin of environmental sinners, they'll change their strategy."

Thomas Assheuer is shocked by the report that claims that the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was not simply a member of the communist party, but a political officer in the military branch of the Polish secret security forces. "Is it fair to assume that Bauman based his career on a theory which served at the same time to exonerate its author? With a post-modern sociology in which the individual is not responsible for his behaviour but rather for history itself, for the larger picture."