Berliner Zeitung 03.01.2009

In a wonderful interview theatre director Dimiter Gotscheff recalls his first meeting with the East German playwright Heiner Müller, who would have turned 80 this year: "It was 1964, in Dimitroffstraße on the corner of Schönhauser Allee in Berlin Prenzlauerberg. Hartmut Lange, the then dramaturg at the Deutsche Theater, took me along to a meeting with Heiner Müller whom I had never met. The first thing I noticed was this huge head atop a small man, who was sitting at the table – and a very warm hand. We were there to discuss Müller's 'Philoktet', a bloody parable about lies power and politics. Lange and Müller were doing all the talking and I just sat there in silence. Hartmut Lange suddenly piped up enthusiastically: 'This play turns Hegel on his head! 'Hm,' Müller replied. The next day I bought a copy of the play. On my way home from the public baths in the Oderberger Straße – I had no shower at home – I started reading it. After just a few lines it sucked me in, I was gone. On Kastanienallee I walked into a tree - a tree which is still there today."


Spiegel Online 03.01.2009

Credit crisis, climate change, state deficit – did I miss something? Much to the consternation of social psychologist Harald Welzer, it's business as usual for most people. "The fuel that powers endless growth is running dry. And there is no fresh supply from outside. From now on our only option is to raid and plunder the survival chances of future generations, piling up state debts and over-stretching natural resources. This colonisation of the future will come back to haunt us though, because generational injustice is one of the most ferocious forces for radical social change. And it will not necessarily be positive, as the Nazi's generational project showed."


Der Tagesspiegel 05.01.2009

In interview with Julian Hanich, director Christian Petzold talks about his new film "Jerichow" and places of longing in Brandenburg. "When we were driving around Brandenburg and Sachsen-Anhalt preparing for [my last film] 'Yella', I kept thinking about Jerichow, because of its biblical associations. It dawned on me that lots of places in Brandenburg are places of longing: Philadelphia or Neu Boston for example. These villages were inhabited by people who wanted to leave them in the 18th century but were prevented from doing so by the land concessions of Friedrich II who didn't want to lose his subjects. So this is an area of the countryside where the place names do not speak of origins but of desires to move elsewhere – and at the same time of the sense of defeat at having stayed. This is something that became ingrained in the historical structure of Jerichow and which is specific to the region. I don't believe you would have the same story to tell about somewhere like Chiemgau (Bavarian idyll – ed.)."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06.01.2009

Harald Hartung pens an obituary to the great Danish poet Inger Christensen. "Her "Alphabet" has been welcomed as a revelation by growing numbers of readers: blazing life and explosion rolled into one. As bit of nature and filigree artwork at the same time. What is its secret? 'Alphabet' combines mathematics, linguistics, language and biology. It weaves together the sequence of the alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. Christensen combines these two principles ingeniously. The poem is not simply a tree which pushes out leaves, it also proliferates like a cancer, exploding like the universe before returning to nothingness."


Perlentaucher 06.01.2009

It is twenty years since the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie. In an article orginially published in Spiked, British author Kenan Malik takes western liberals to task for their tendency to treat anything Islam-related with kid gloves. As in the case of Sherry Jones' novel "The Jewel of Medina", which Random House America pulled out of circulation although no Muslim had expressed objections to it. "The lesson of the Rushdie Affair that has never been learnt is that liberals have made their own monsters. It is the liberal fear of giving offence that has helped create a culture in which people take offence so easily." And he dispenses with the multicultural myth that the Rushdie Affair was about religion; it was all about politics: "Hardline Islamist groups used Rushdie's book to try to win political concessions. It subsequently became an issue in Britain as it turned into a weapon in the faction fights between various Islamic groups.


Der Tagesspiegel 06.01.2009

Legendary US crime writer Donald Westlake alias Richard Stark died on New Year's Eve. In a final conversation with Dennis Scheck he explains the difference between American and French crime writing. "When an American crime novelist writes about a bank robber, the thief will want the stolen cash to pay for a desperately-needed operation for some little girl in a wheelchair. The French crime writer, on the other hand, will write about a bank robber because he robs banks. Which is why I take it as a compliment when people say I write like a Frenchman."


Der Tagesspiegel 07.01.2009

What can Brahms or Beethoven say about the current conflict in Gaza? Daniel Barenboim talks to Christine Lemke-Matwey about his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. "What should they say? What they always say or never say. It would be fatal to instrumentalise their music. But it is important that the orchestra takes a stand. And this is why we are showing the world that even in war it is possible to communicate with one another. And we will also be releasing a statement saying that the musicians in the orchestra have deep differences in opinion about who is to blame for what is happening in Gaza. We will not attempt to hide these differences which are extremely strong and go back a long way. When it's a matter of life and death, it is wrong to gloss things over."


Frankfurter Rundschau 09.01.2009

"The horror! The horror!" cries French-Tunisian philosopher Abdelwahab Meddeb in an article about the war in Gaza. He blames Israel for its disproportionate use of force, but he also launches an unforgiving attack on Palestinian protagonists. He sums up the situation in one paragraph: "The horror of martyrdom was tragically illustrated in the decision of Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, to remain in his house with his four wives and six children despite knowing that his home was on the IDF list of targets. In spite of the warning, he decided to sit it out with his entire family, so that he and all his loved ones could achieve martyr status together. His house was blown to pieces by one of those terrible rockets which follow a horizontal flight course and drop at right angles, plummeting towards their targets, and then penetrate thirty meters into the earth before destroying everything in the target zone." Read our feature by Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Islam's heritage of violence")


Jungle World 09.01.2009

Bernhard Schmid describes how the French comedian Dieudonne turned from being a poster boy of the left to a notorious antisemite. (Over the Christmas period he appeared on stage with the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson in an act which even the Le Pens were said to have found distasteful -ed.): "One of the motives at work here is so-called 'victim competition' which has been the subject of much discussion in the US. There, certain strands of the black community have accused the Jews of enjoying a 'privileged position' as historical victim group, arguing that because people so frequently talk about the Shoah and antisemitic persecution, they are not talking about other crimes against humanity such as the slave trade. Dieudonne and people like Kemi Seba have taken this to another level of paranoia and are actually accusing the Jews of engineering the slave trade."