Die Tageszeitung, 10.05.2006

"It's as if one of the steles from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe had run across the street, gone into the woods on the other side and said: look, I'm part of the whole story, but I'm also something else. I'm gay." That's how Michael Elmgreen describes the monument to the homosexual victims of national socialism which he co-designed, and which has now got the go-ahead to be built in Berlin's central Tiergarten park (more here). Jan Feddersen praises the project, but also criticises the fact that it makes no mention of the persecution of homosexuals in post-war Germany. No wonder, he says. "The party is now in power in both federal and state governments whose predecessors neither prevented nor sought to prevent legal discrimination against homosexuals in the early years of the Bundesrepublik. According to their way of thinking it was entirely normal."

Sven von Reden reviews "Schläfer" (sleeper), the film debut of 31-year-old director Benjamin Heisenberg. The film starts when doctoral student Johannes turns down an offer from an employee of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German equivalent of the CIA, to spy on his Algerian fellow student Farid. "From that moment on, every glance the young biologist Johannes (Bastian Trost) takes at Farid (Mehdi Nebbou) is poisoned. Every detail, every action and gesture of the Algerian is filtered through a biased perception. Are Farid's friendliness, his humour, his love for a good drink, all just a facade? Why does he suddenly start speaking Arabic with a stranger when Johannes comes within earshot? Why are the windows of his apartment taped with silver paper? Heisenberg avoids letting the evidence become too clear, playing with the genre expectations created by Hollywood. But 'Schläfer' does not turn into a thriller... the conspiracy remains a theory, the parts cannot be made into a whole – and here Heisenberg shows he is a student of Jacques Rivette."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10.05.2006

Today the controversial "Kurze Geschichte der Demokratie" ("Democracy in Europe") by Italian historian Luciano Canfora, published by the PapyRossa publishing house, will be appearing. As Johan Schloemann explains, the Beck publishing house refused to take the book, considering it absurd. Canfora presents certain theses, for example that the Soviet Union was an example of the "shortest way to social justice," that the liberal Western democracies caused the catastrophes of the 20th century and that the Hitler Stalin Pact was primarily intended to protect hysterically anti-communist Poland. It's not just the book that annoys Schloemann but also the nonsense that Confora has been spouting about censorship. "Anyone in this country can stand up and say such things and get them printed in the most influential publishing houses and magazines. One publisher takes it, another doesn't. And this (and here one can get a little haughty in the face of Canfora's unremitting bombardment of opinions) is the accomplishment of the free liberal constitutional state with democratic elections – the model which Luciano Canfora considers, alone as an idea, capable of doing little more than 'lulling and manipulating the masses.'" (here an essay on the Canfora's book by Adam Krzeminski)


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10.05.2006

Karl-Peter Schwarz potrays the Czech director Miroslav Bambusek, who has re-created the massacre which took place in the city of Postoloprty (Postelberg) during the expulsion of the Germans. at the end of World War II. For Schwarz, the provocation of the Czechs lies less in the subject itself than in Bambusek's position on it. "He doesn't see the expulsion of the Germans as an isolated and inevitable result of the Nazi horror that preceded it, but rather as the first logical step on the way to a totalitarian dictatorship. He doesn't shield his audience in the reconstruction of the events. He brings buses full of spectators from Prague to the mass grave sites in Postoloprty, has eye witnesses speak and reads aloud the protocol of the parliamentary investigation commission, the cynicism of which could not have been topped. In the final discussion, to which historians are also invited, everyone shares their impressions."

A hundred years after the acquittal of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, Jürg Altwegg criticises the engagement of today's French intellectuals – Bernard-Henri Levy in particular – for the former Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti, who is absconding Italian justice in France. "The influential media and public intellectuals support Battisti, who has never publicly renounced his crimes, but rather idealised them in a very egotistical and literary way. The well researched book of a Figaro journalist ("Generation Battisti" by Guillaume Perrault) is being ignored, Italian justice and public opinion are being ridiculed in a way that recalls the most heinous and xenophobic insults of the 'Italian' Emile Zola by the French fascists."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10.05.2006

Franz Haas is horrified at the state of Italian literary criticism, which has nothing but praise for novels about hot-blooded nymphs and old men. For example the work of one 63-year-old author telling the story of "13-year-old Gaida and the almost 63-year-old intellectual Bruno, and their salacious looks and sinful thoughts." According to Haas the author, writing under the pseudonym Paolo Doni, is a famous journalist in the milieu of the Corriere della Sera. Antonio D'Orrico, the critic at the Corriere, dedicates to "the pitiful 'Lolita' emulation and his (presumed) colleague the front page of the literary supplement and seven eulogistic pages with photos of young actresses who would be appropriate for a film version of the novel. Such unabashed favouring of your own clique is shameful, but the lack of courage shown by the other critics is just as embarrassing."