Süddeutsche Zeitung, 05.05.2006

Holger Liebs has visited the Caspar David Friedrich Exhibition in Essen and refelcts, "We've called the painter of crosses on mountain summits, melancholic shore scenes and the cold staring 'sea of ice' an unrepentant mystic, a patriot and a predecessor to National Socialist populist art, not to mention a common illustrator of the concept of the 'sublime'. The exhibition of his epoch in the Museum Folkwang in Essen, however, wants to present Friedrich as a radical innovator in picture construction who 'built' his landscapes - mysteriously free of decoration and narratives – like an architect."


Berliner Zeitung, 05.05.2006

Psychoanalyst and author Hans-Joachim Maaz sees the history of psychoanalysis in the GDR as a reflection of social circumstances. "At the beginning, methods were supposed to dominate that emphasised people's rationality ('rational psychotherapy' in the tradition of Müller- Hegemann), then methods of conflict avoidance, of relaxation and suggestive influence (such as autogenic training and hypnosis). Later conflict-reducing talk and counselling therapy. At the end of the 60s, as an offshoot of the 68 movement in Western Europe and more significantly the Prague spring, the fight for an emancipatory psychotherapy began. It came primarily from practising psychotherapists. It was clearly a movement from below."


Die Welt, 05.05.2006

China is setting up the first Confucius Institutes in Germany, with which it hopes to improve its image abroad. Kirstin Wenk reports that the Chinese authorities are not investing massively in the project: "The programmes offered are primarily aimed at non-academic China buffs, even if they are created in cooperation with a host university. So for example Beijing University sends a teacher to Berlin, and professors at Berlin's Free University also teach at the Confucius Institute. The Chinese government is putting up startup funding of 80,000 euros. After three years the Institute is to finance itself through course fees." Peter Dittmar explains in a second article just who Confucius was.

Eckhard Fuhr comments on the Goethe Institute's gradual withdrawal from Europe. "In the current year, the Institute is down seven million euros. That's nothing, one might think. But it seems that this reduction of the European presence is actually politically motivated and not only by the Foreign Office. Even Jutta Limbach and her Secretary General Hans-Georg Knopp have been referring to the 'disproportion' of spending more than 40 percent of the Goethe Institute's budget in Western Europe. One should actually take into consideration the new geo-political hotspots, head towards Asia and the Islamic world, with reduced and flexible forms of organisation."


Die Tageszeitung, 05.05.2006

The world's slowest piece of music, "Organ2/ASLSP", by John Cage, is being performed in the German city of Halberstadt. The performance started in 2003 and is scheduled to end more than 630 years from now. Today the two tones E and E' (an octave higher) will fade out. Thomas Gerlach reports: "Really great things often have a humble appearance. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the tones that will last for centuries are resounding far from the concert halls in the church of St. Burchardi. The building has been standing for almost 800 years. For the last two hundred it was a brewery and pigsty. No highly paid maestro is responsible for the concert now being performed here, but the 56-year-old former secretary Margot Dannenberg, from Wegeleben near Halberstadt. Her T-shirt is covered with sequins and her gold tooth shines when she smiles. And it shines a lot." See "In Today's Feuilletons" from July 7, 2005, for a report on the last tone change.


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 05.05.2006

"flü" reports on a scandal surrounding the Catholic radio station Radio Maryja in Poland, whose anti-Semitic broadcasts and financial transactions have made it a thorn in the side of the Vatican. "At the start of April, the influential newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza uncovered that donations of up to 26 million euros collected by the radio for the alleged restoration of the Gdansk dockyards, the cradle of the Solidarnosc trade union, had been partly gambled away on the stock market, and partly invested in the station. The dockyards themselves didn't receive a cent. According to the paper, Radio Maryja's treasurer Father Jan Krol invested millions in a Polish construction firm that later went bankrupt. Poland's liberal opposition is demanding that parliament immediately establish of a commission of inquiry, but the majority in the Sejm will quash the plan."