Frankfurter Rundschau 17.10.2009

Contemporary German literature has finally shed it "doubts about language", Ina Hartwig writes approvingly, and it's thriving. "The Germans suddenly seem to have rediscovered their need to tell stories. About the provinces, illness, the flow of commodities, fetishism, cars and cities and, of course, love. The books are getting thicker and thicker. There seems to be a need to make up for lost time. Even West Germany which, like the GDR, ceased to exist with the fall of the Wall, is the subject of literary probing - and not only by the cool brigade, but also by romantics and critics, who are well positioned to describes the new harshnesses. And to describe it them without provoking ideological paroxysms. We might be in the midst of a book industry crisis us but you could not say the same of literature itself."


Frankfurter Rundschau 19.10.2009

The Frankfurt Book Fair has ended as it began: with scandal. Having been invited to speak at the closing ceremony, which was jointly organised by the Book Fair and the Federal Foreign Office, the Chinese environmental activist and dissident Dai Qing was prevented from doing so, as Natalie Soondrum reports. Peter Ripken, the Book Fair's project manager, announced the cancellation just a quarter of an hour before the event was due to begin. "When Qing asked why she was not allowed to talk, Ripken informed her that it was the wish of the Federal Foreign Office, and that he was in complete agreement with the decision. The translator Shi Ming said, 'His argument changed. At one stage he said that he had never been in favour of Dai Qing speaking. Later he said that the Foreign Office did not want her to talk.'"

The Book Fair closed on Sunday and on Monday, it was promptly announced that the 67-year-old Peter Ripken had been fired (more here).


Die Welt 20.10.2009



Van Gogh's "Shoes" may be of "little importance to the history of art", writes Uta Baier, but they have provoked much philosophical musing over the years. The battered old boots are now the subject of a small exhibition in Cologne's Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Heidegger saw the shoes as a negative cast of a peasant woman's life; the art historian Meyer Shapiro saw a self-portrait, and then came Derrida's "Verite en peinture": "Derrida expressed doubt that this was even a pair of shoes at all. And he was right, because these are two left shoes. The observation opens up entirely new interpretations, including the Freudian one, which Derrida contemplates with relish. In this new light, one shoe could be male and the other female. At any rate, Derrida puts paid to the notion of art as a mirror of reality. 'These shoes are an allegory of painting itself.'"


Die Tageszeitung 20.10.2009

Björn Gottstein sends a glowing report from the Donaueshingen Festival, where Mathias Spahlinger's "etudes for a conductor-less orchestra" left the greatest impression on him. "The individual etudes had names like 'ramification', ' equidistance' or simply 'upstairs, downstairs'. Spahlinger is interested in the self-determining musician, in the music that happens when the musicians all listen to one another and play an equal role in how it develops. This four-hour piece, which the audience can wander in and out of at will, is filled with moments of near magical beauty, a kairos, in which a musical process evolves that is punctuated with moments of searching, faltering and giddy uncertainty."


Other newspapers 21.10.2009

The Prague newspaper Lidove Noviny has laid its hands on a previously unknown document which serves as further evidence that the writer Milan Kundera informed on the anti-communist agent Miroslav Dvoracek in Stalinst Prague of 1950. It is the manuscript of a speech given in 1952 by the former deputy minister for National Security, Jaroslav Jerman. Jerman praises Dvoracek's arrest as a shining example "of how our citizens can expose our enemies".  Then Jerman cites the police document which was published last year in Respekt magazine, and which first cast suspicion on Kundera. Now, says the historian Petr Koura in the Lidove Noviny, "it seems practically impossible that the police document that emerged last year could be a fake." Although the historian does add, that even the new document does not prove Kundera's guilt unequivocally. Another commentator in the paper calls upon Kundera "for the umpteenth time" to speak up.


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 23.10.2009

In an interview, the novelist Robert Menasse talks about missed opportunities in Austria and casts a pessimistic look back at the post-1989 period which, he believes, lead to a Europe of new contradictions: "The Eastern European countries are maintained like colonies inside the EU. Why, for example, does the EU have so little interest in unifying Europe's tax systems? For the simple reason that it is practical for businesses to use the threat of moving to other states where costs are lower. Fiscal 'dumping' leads to social 'dumping' and this, in turn, inevitably means ever greater dissatisfaction, anger and aggression."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 23.10.2009

Willibald Sauerländer was deeply impressed by a huge exhibition in Munich's Alte Pinakothek which shows paintings by Peter Paul Rubens together with the works that inspired him. The "competition" not infrequently works in favour of the great emulator: "The highlight of the exhibition is the juxtaposition of Titian's 'Adam and Eve' with Rubens' variation.  As mighty as Titian's composition undoubtedly is, Rubens is the more sumptuous storyteller. He brings emotional suppleness into the bodies and gestures, depicting the interplay of seduction, desire and anxious reluctance. Not for nothing did old Jakob Burckhardt call him the greatest storyteller since Homer."