Die Zeit, 04.05.2005

Die Zeit publishes a comment by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass on theme of "liberation". "I experienced May 8 in Marienbad, as a seventeen year old dummkopf who believed in the final victory right up to the end. So mine was not feeling of liberation, but of total defeat." The feeling of liberation only came slowly: "When the anniversary of the end of the war is celebrated in fine speeches as a day of liberation, this can only be retrospectively, especially as we Germans did little or nothing for our freedom." But Grass, taking up the recent "critique of capitalism" launched by Social Democratic Party chairman Franz Müntefering, sees in today's economic context only the illusion of freedom. "What has become of the freedom given to us sixty years ago? Is it only to be calculated in stock market takings? The highest values enshrined in our constitution do not primarily serve our civil rights, but rather the market economy that likes to call itself 'free', with low prices to suit today's neo-liberal mindset. But the fudged, fetishistic term 'free market economy' conceals the anti-social behaviour of banks, industrial associations and stock market profiteers with difficulty."
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Michael Naumann, former German minister for culture and media affairs and now publisher of Die Zeit, writes on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which will be inaugurated May 10. "The field of square columns next to Brandenburger Tor is the culmination of a long debate on the symbolic and artistic handling of German guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust. The monument in its present form was resolutely rejected in the Bundestag with few exceptions." For Naumann, the controversy surrounding the monument centred on "aesthetic considerations ("How beautiful can a monument for the Shoah be?"), problems of political identity ("Who is the monument for? The descendants of the perpetrators, tacit or outright Nazi supporters, or the victims?") and finally cost ("Under no circumstances more than 50 million marks"). Naumann himself also initially opposed the memorial, "because I believed there is no architectural gesture that can represent the abyss of what happened, the suffering and the misery of the millions of murdered Jews. Memorials, as Robert Musil wrote, have the quality of becoming invisible after a certain time. If that also happens with this project, it will one day bring about its opposite: indifference and ultimately forgetting." Now, however, Naumann feels that the four exhibition rooms under the monument, which document the stories of Jewish families, will accompany well the abstract memorial. "In this way, the unsettling monument in central Berlin is complemented by reflection and historical clarification, even if it does not manage to answer the question: How could it happen?"

Peter Kümmel portrays theatre director Claudio Valdes Kuri, who prefers his native Mexico to all other countries when it comes to theatre: "For centuries, we Mexicans have lived in such a way that everything we do, we do for others. This has resulted in us being a bit disorganised, even chaotic, but it has also made us into baroque masters of improvisation."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 04.05.2005

Karol Sauerland writes from Poland about the Eastern European debate on the end of the Second World War that is being received with tired interest in the West, and about the pompous victory celebrations planned in Moscow next week. He reports that in Poland and the Baltic countries, people are considering staging alternative celebrations "because no one believes any critical voices will be heard in Moscow". Sauerland's own opinion is that "in spite of everything, the best answer to Putin's lust for victory madness is to support everything associated with Solidarnosc and the 'orange revolution'. Here Europe's future has been decided."


Die Welt, 04.05.2005

In an interview with Polish journalist Adam Krzeminski, philosopher Jürgen Habermas talks about the spineless policies of the German government towards Russia and China, the healing power of memory and the meaning of religion in Europe. For Habermas, the desired neutral weltanschauung of the EU states does not have to lead to a "secular weltanschauung". He believes "it is in the interest of the liberal state to exercise caution with its use of all resources that feed the moral sensibility of its citizens. These resources threaten to dry up all the more quickly the more the lebenswelt (life-world) is subordinated to economic imperatives. In accordance with neo-liberal dogma, politics are increasingly pulling out of life-essential areas such as education, energy, public transport and culture, also from the provision for the standard risks of working life, leaving the so-called modernisation loser to fend for himself. If this capitalism goes untamed, it fosters a modernisation that drains and erodes. And when all normative sensibilities start to dry out, the political constellation of education and religion changes accordingly. As a secular citizen I say that belief and knowledge must take it upon themselves to ascertain their borders."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 04.05.2005

Egyptian writer Salwa Bakr comments on why Islamic terrorist organisations in Egypt find it so easy to recruit poor women: "They are successful at instrumentalising these women's feelings, because on the one hand the women come from the lowest social echelon, and on the other hand they feel strongest the pressure which society exerts on women, with its values and beliefs."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 04.05.2005

In a long interview, German theatre director Andrea Breth talks about her production of Schiller's "Don Carlos" in Vienna's Burg Theater. "With Carlos, the question for me is what power does to people. Why do people change so abruptly when they gain power? It makes me really nervous. You can feel it in your own body, you have to watch out, you end up with the most absurd problems, the more powerful you become. At the auditions the actors are almost faint with fear when they stand in front of me. The way so much is projected onto a person, the social isolation that power brings with it, that's what interests me. That's why I wanted Carlos and Posa to be so young. I didn't want an old grandpa, but a man in his prime. A man of eighty doesn't become so furious when his young wife gets up to things."
See In Today's Feuilletons from 2 May, 2005, for a selection of reviews of Breth's new production of "The Cherry Orchard".

Tomorrow being a public holiday in Germany, no newspapers are published which means we will not be publishing In Today's Feuilletons either. Business as usual on Friday though.