Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.01.2006

"Rather than cultivate Utopias, Europeans should learn to live with their Union as something unfinished, provisional," suggest the Swedish authors Richard Swartz and Rolf Gustavsson. "Europe has no soul, no heart, no fixed form. It can't be defined by geography, nor by religion or language - not even by culture. Europe is made up of several minorities, some bigger, some smaller, and Europe can't offer much more than a very refined form of supra-national cooperation. No more and no less. Anything beyond that would be presumptuous and dangerous. Presumptuous because Europe should learn to practice a little modesty after all the self-instigated catastrophes of the 20th century and try to commemorate this misery properly. Dangerous because the notion of a single Europe – a sort of United States of Europe - is based on the idea of a perfect Utopia and such Utopias tend towards totalitarianism."


Die Zeit, 12.01.2006

Hanno Rauterberg interviews the artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose junk collages are among the original icons of Pop Art. Rauschenberg normally doesn't give interviews, and here he talks about the open-endedness of art and his long-time companion. "In fact the only eternal thing I own, my turtle Rocky, is a desert turtle. But he doesn't like it here in Florida. Once I brought him down here and he didn't eat a thing for two weeks, so I took him back up to New York. He likes it there with all the art. He likes art, really, it's no joke. Each time we rehang the paintings he crawls around, stretches out his neck and sooner or later finds his favourite work. Then he just sits around it like some art critic. In fact, he's the best one I know."

Gerhard Jörder calls the recent staging of Marivaux's comedy "The Dispute" by director David Bösch at the Schauspielhaus in Zürich a flop. But that doesn't stop Bösch, born in 1978, from being foremost among the young directors who have put the old trench wars of the preceding generation behind them. "Anyone who talks with David Bösch about theatre is in for no end of surprises. Almost everything that raised the hackles of most of his young colleagues just a short while ago he sees positively. Identification, empathy, catharsis: all important! Pathos, an elevated tone: no holds barred! His strongest impulse when directing? 'Curiosity about people'."


Die Welt, 12.01.2006

Dutch author Leon de Winter comments on the legal battle between columnist Henryk M. Broder (website) and concentration camp survivor Hajo Meyer. Broder attacked Meyer, whose book "Das Ende des Judentums" (the end of Jewry) puts the blame for anti-Semitism on Jews themselves. "Henryk Broder called Meyer a 'kosher anti-Semite'. I can understand that. If it looks like an anti-Semite, waggles like an anti-Semite, yaps like an anti-Semite – what on earth else can it be? The sad thing about all this is that Meyer is a sick old man who's fallen prey to Jews and non-Jews who all have their own reasons for demonising Jews, and Israel in particular. In my view, the one Jew can accuse the other of being the cause of anti-Semitism, and the other Jew has the right to call the first a 'kosher anti-Semite'."


Die Tageszeitung, 12.01.2006

Andreas Busche finds Fernando Meirelles' film adaptation of John Le Carre's "The Constant Gardener" illustrative of the paradigm change that has taken place in mainstream cinema in the last 15 years. "In the 80s, war reporter films and political thrillers were the standard form for expressing criticism of Western governments – mainly the American – in 'politically unstable' regions... Today one sees an intuitive guilt complex in Western film productions. Sympathetic white characters such as Angelina Jolie or Nick Nolte as a contrite commander of the Blue Helmets in 'Hotel Rwanda' embody this guilty conscience. Our guilty conscience is likewise embedded in 'The Constant Gardener' (the German press kit, a small tome of over 50 pages, reads like a UN report on the situation in Africa)."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 12.01.2006

Daniel Kothenschulte goes to bat for film piracy and argues for its significance in film history, referring to the preservation of silent films and the nitrate copies of old sound films. Even Henri Langlois' Cinematheque Francaise was initially attacked by the film industry for piracy, "but its founder saw his responsibility as not just the maintenance of film copies, which their legal owners would prefer to see destroyed, but also in the permanent presentation of the saved material. Pirates like him have saved films from being forgotten."