Die Tageszeitung, 20.12.2005

Eberhard Seidel looks back at a date in German history that seemed unspectacular at the time but which is still changing the face of Germany today. On December 20 1955, Anton Storch, the Christian Democrat minister for employment, signed an agreement with the Italian foreign minister Gaetano Martino which paved the way for Italian gastarbeiter to enter Germany as a cheap labour force. "Germany was never more German than in 1955. At no time since 1871 had fewer foreigners and members of ethnic minorities lived or worked in Germany than in the mid-fifties. Less than 500,000 foreigners lived in the Bundesrepublik. Today there are 7.5 million, and another 1.5 million who have been nationalised over the past ten years. The fifties were the realisation of an old German dream. The politics of extermination and expulsion of 1933 to 1945 meant that the ethnic, religious and cultural homogeneity which had been talked about and longed for since the early Romantic period was almost in place."
See our feature "Project Migration" for more on the topic.

Detlef Kuhlbrodt portrays the self-appointed fifth Beatle Klaus Beyer, who has spent twenty years singing and recording songs by the Fab Four in German. Beyer has just released a new CD, "Helft!", a German version of the Beatles' "Help" album as well as a new DVD pot-pourri of his home-spun music videos. "The DVD shows a good cross-section of the former candle-maker's work. Beyer fell in love with the Beatles' music in the early 1970s, after hearing them on the radio. Because he didn't understand the texts, he bought an English dictionary so he could translate them into his own language. While the revolutionary contemporaries of the now 53 year-old artist liked to listen to English pop music because their parents couldn't understand it, one of Beyer's key motivations for translating the songs of John, Paul, George and Ringo was so his mother could understand what they were singing." Soon Beyer started recording the songs against the background of their instrumental parts. "Then in the early 80s he started filming the songs using super-8, still photo tricks and wonderful home-made decorations. The most famous of these was the two metre long and one metre wide U-boot he assembled for his film 'Yellow Submarine'."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20.12.2005

Marcela Knapp reports from Zimbabwe where he visited the Zimbabwe Women Writers organisation, which has been giving support to women authors and all women in the country who are seeking a public voice. "One of the organisation's projects involves interviewing former women freedom fighters who struggled for Zimbabwe's independence, which puts a special focus on their current situation. And the book 'A Tragedy of Lives – Women in Prison in Zimbabwe' deserves particular attention. It tells the stories of female prisoners, and shows that most female prison inmates turned to crime in need, in order to feed their families."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 20.12.2005

The Hasidic reggae artist Matisyahu explains in an interview how he combines stage life with the Torah. "I seek advice whenever I have a question. For example: Is is okay to stage dive, to jump into the audience? I did it spontaneously once or twice until my wife pointed out that it might result in my coming into physical contact with women. There is a law that men and women should not make physical contact if they are not married. So I asked a Rabbi and he told me to avoid it."