Die Zeit, 26.01.2006

Thomas Groß has been to Nigeria to check out the Afrorap scene, whose icons include Ruggedman, Mode Nine and Eedris Abdulkareem ("bull's neck, face like a prizefighter"). The latter dares to issue a challenge to autocrat Olusegun Obasanjo: "Eefris, the rhyme magician, the king of Afrorap. 'Jaga Jaga' is the name of his hit – Yoruba for 'jumble' , 'ev'rything is scattaaad, scattaaad' goes the rhyme in the local pidgin English: everything's kaputt, everything's completely trashed, nobody knows what's going on. The bass drum bangs, the rhythm grooves, the piece is full of black humour in which stressed Lagosians recognise their daily reality. Everyone here has experienced bureaucracy, corruption, the infamous go-slows in Lagos which stop traffic every morning and evening for hours on end, the black-outs and the flooded ditches on the roadsides where malaria breeds. 'Jaga Jaga' is everywhere, it's the overdue answer to the thoroughly rotten conditions. It's no wonder the president doesn't look too amused."

The paper devotes an entire section to journalists and journalism, featuring among other things a "guess whose desk" quiz with photos of twelve chief editors' desks from above. In an interview, Berlin correspondent for the London Times Roger Boyes says he wishes German papers were funnier, more flexible and more ballsy, and that editorial meetings were more lively: "Denis MacShane, a journalist and former English Europe Minister, once told me how he'd been invited to sit in on an editorial meeting at a German magazine. It was more like North Korea, he said. The editor in chief sat there, and 40 people listened to him talk." See our feature "Not heaven, but not hell either" by Roger Boyes.


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26.01.2006

As of Tuesday, Denmark has a canon of 108 definitive works of art and culture, writes Christoph Bartmann, commenting that even if it places churches next to cartoons, the values it entrenches are thoroughly middle-class. "The canon will be taught in school, and, as Danish Minister for Culture Brian Mikkelsen has announced, Danish cultural institutes will be expected to respect the canon as well. The result will be that Danish cultural life will have to take the form of one big retrospective if it wants to benefit from subsidies. In anticipation of this event, hundreds of Danish artists have already left Denmark and settled in Berlin. The minister denies it, but what could be more middle-class than wanting to enshrine the established and the conventional as the major achievements of Danish national culture?"


Frankfurter Rundschau, 26.01.2006

Martina Meister is thrilled with Karl Lagerfeld's most recent haute couture show in Paris. "As if the freshly renovated Grand Palais, a shining example of glass and industrial architecture, weren't enough of a wink to the Belle Epoque, Lagerfeld created a brilliantly white amphitheatre within building's glass hall. The brazen Paris sky shines through the glass roof, and the white stage dazzles like snow on Mont Blanc. It's as if everything were carved in ice. White fleece blankets lie on the seats, beside them are small Chanel Thermoses with warm tea. And the icy weather outside plays along, as if Karl had ordered it. The models are all dolls. Lolitas one and all. Ice princesses." See for yourselves.


Die Welt, 26.01.2006

Gerhard Gnauck portrays Polish Auschwitz photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who turned 89 today. Brasse took many of the best-known photos of the death camp, after which he renounced photography. "When the SS ordered that the pictures be destroyed in January 1945, Brasse started to carry out their command. But the prints and negatives burned poorly. Once his supervisor had left, Brasse poured water on the material and dried it out. 'We thought the images could one day serve to document this crime.' And so it was: the file photos of Auschwitz were all taken by Brasse." Brasse's story is told in the recent documentary film "Portrecista" by Irek Dobrowolski.


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26.01.2006

Andreas Kilb calls Michel Haneke's most recent film "Cache", the story of the shady side of a successful television host, a masterpiece. "Juliette Binoche schleps through 'Cache' in her sandals and wool sweaters like a farmer's wife and Daniel Auteuil boasts a stomach like a kangaroo pouch. With Austrian stage actors, he would never have been able to achieve this effect. But that's Haneke's key to success: he does anti-film with film stars. He is the guerilla in the salon."

German literature has a new star: Daniel Kehlmann, whose novel "Die Vermessung der Welt" (The Surveying of the World) about the meeting between Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauß has been on the best-seller list for months. Felicitas von Lovenberg celebrates his success: "Rohwolt has sold almost four hundred thousand copies of the book; the international rights have been sold to almost twenty countries, among them not only our most important European neighbours but also the – from a literary standpoint – notoriously impregnable America, where Pantheon Books will be publishing the book this summer."