Süddeutsche Zeitung, 01.08.2005

The triumph of modern mixed drinks prompt Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych to express his fear of the "total drying out of the Slavs" and to re-emphasise the cultural importance of vodka and its Ukrainian brother Horilka. "All Ukrainians want to do is eat well and sing (the latter being as vital to them as breathing), but Russians want to see the truth, by cutting open their veins or smashing the skull of the person sitting next to them under the unbearable influence of some sudden enlightenment. For every glass of spirits, the Ukrainians eat something nutritional and intense, bacon for example. The Russian don't eat anything, they might sniff at some bread occasionally – but they think it's wasted money to eat while drinking vodka. It's not about taste, but effect."

Referring to Graham Vick's interpretation of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" at the Salzburg Festival, Joachim Kaiser writes, "Conceptually ambitious presentations of the work are almost always, without exception, disasters ... not to mention, tortuously boring." Vick's decision to set the opera in the student movement of the 1980s leaves Kaiser absolutely cold but, "worse than that, it damages Mozart's music."


Berliner Zeitung, 01.08.2005

Writer and East German expert Rita Kuczynski believes the new German Linkspartei (leftist alliance) spearheaded by Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine as the successor to the PDS is historically closer to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) than it currently seems. "In the long term, we can't rule out that the SPD will reunite with the Linkspartei, because there are no real 'ideological differences' between the Social Democrats and the Linkspartei a la Gregor Gysi (former chairman of the PDS, the successor to the Communist Party of East Germany- ed.) and Oscar Lafontaine (former SPD finance minister and rival of Chancellor Schröder - ed). The Linkspartei is not planning a revolution like the KPD (German communist party). Today's dispute between the bickering sister parties is over the level of Arbeitslosengeld II (unemployment benefit stipulated by the Hartz IV reform)."


Saturday 30 July, 2005

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 30.07.2005

Today (August 1, 2005) the supposedly final step in the "Rechtsschreibreform" (a reform of spelling rules) takes effect in all German states with the exception of Bavaria and North Rhine Westphalia, which object. The reform (more here), which is being sold as a simplification of German spelling rules (making the Känguruh of the future, for instance, a Känguru) has raised many hackles. In the NZZ, Paul Jandel reports on a manifesto signed by the writers in the German-speaking world: Friederike Mayröcker, Elfriede Jelinek, Gert Jonke, Julian Schutting and Marlene Streeruwitz. "Stop! Out! End! Finito!," they write and go on to insist on "'measures that will guarantee the linguistic richness of those countries to be effected by this unification."


Berliner Zeitung, 30.07.2005

Egon Bahr, SPD politician and a federal minister in the government of Willy Brandt, is wary of the possibility that the fall elections will result in new version of the Grand Coalition (between the Federal Republic's two largest parties, Christian Democratic Union CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party SPD). "What in 1966 was held to be an economic crisis proved to be nothing more than a minor slump that Karl Schiller and Franz Josef Strauß (economic and finance ministers respectively - ed.) were able to deal with in a jiffy. The Grand Coalition caused an emotionally charged problem with their emergency laws which, thankfully, were never put into practice. It was also a political stalemate. Without the talent of the two party chairmen, Rainer Barzel and Helmut Schmidt, who practically took on the role of the Mediation Committee (which intervenes when the parliament and senate are blocked- ed.) the coalition would have never survived. Every month that passed, slowly and tortuously, leading up to the elections, the interest and will of the two parties heightened; the senior partner wanted to remain first, the junior party wanted to be first."
(You can find another position on this debate here.)


Die Welt, 30.07.2005

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht who teaches comparative literature at Stanford University rages against prevailing German obsession with holding on to the past, which "insists on restoring every bit of furniture, every old car, and is determined not to be deprived of a single factory chimney stack, or old riding school. (...) That nothing is allowed to remain in the past or even disappear completely is an unconditional commandment of our Biedermeier age. One result of the Biedermeier obsession with the past was the increase in 'official' commemoration years (where does their non-commerical aura come from?) which set hordes of cultural tourists in long-term motion. We celebrate Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Dürer, Friedrich and Beckman years; stamps and 'exclusive' editions ('in their own covers') remind of the biographical essentials of (more or less) classical authors, exhorting the public to commemorate them reverentially."