Monday 6 June, 2006

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 06.06.2006

Twenty years ago the "Historikerstreit", or "historians' dispute", flared up, a decisive conflict on the historical interpretation of the Holocaust and the Germans' understanding of themselves. The FAZ prints a letter by historian Golo Mann to Joachim Fest, then editor of the paper's culture section. "For me 'Hitler' remains a singular phenomenon. Certainly, it may be compared with others, but it is unique. (...) The Germans have long tended to exaggerate the judicial element in world history. That Hitler represented the exactly opposing position shows once more that he was by no means a typical German. At heart he had no fatherland, he hailed from no-man's-land. And certainly he was no Austrian."

Dutch-Morrocan author Abdelkader Benali writes about contemporary intellectual life in Lebanon, and the remarkable omnipresence of Austrian author Robert Musil. "Part of the attraction Musil's book 'The Man without Qualities' exerts on Lebanese intellectuals comes from it's large span, and how it ingeniously reflects the hopeless situation in which the political elite found itself (on the eve of World War I – ed): a giant with feet of clay, who has lost all bearing. When I talked with him about literature, the director Nazeem brought up Musil: 'He's what gives me a foothold at the moment. Of course I read him quite a while ago, but he put in words what I've always felt here: the feeling of sitting through a very painful theatrical performance'."


Die Tageszeitung, 06.06.2006

The Frankfurt Städel Art School has started a "Dictionary of War" which will be continued online, Klaus Walter reports. In it are stories like that by the documentary filmmaker Azza El-Hassan about the Feather Man of the war in the Lebanon. "He was a legendary figure in Beirut between 1975 and 1982. He wore a Che Guevara uniform and was covered head to toe in feathers. The fun that the Lebanese children hat with the crazy Feather Man came to an abrupt end when, after Israel's victory, he posed atop an Israeli tank on the victory procession through Beirut – in uniform, without his feathers. As an Israeli spy, the Feather Man was involved in the deaths of many Palestinians. The striking visibility of his fantasy costume had made the spy invisible."


Saturday 3 June, 2006

Der Tagesspiegel, 03.06.2006

The poet Peter Handke is not entitled to the Heinrich Heine Prize, writes Serbian writer Bora Cosic. "Anyone who demands justice for Handke should first demand justice for Serbia, to protect it from false advocates. Because the way he represents this country is insulting. Serbia is not some needy country, full of poor, dull, backward people; it is a region which over the last hundred years has made a gift to the rest of the world of its poets, its avant-garde art and its brilliant personalities. There are plenty of people who are openly opposed to the regime there. The country is precisely the way that the young writer Biljana Srbljanovic describes it. This other Serbia will bear witness in the court of honour before which Peter Handke is standing today."


Die Welt, 03.06.2006

"Doesn't our team have a single rumblefoot any more, someone who upholds the German virtues and can show the world what a German player's got up his sleeve?" asks author Thomas Brussig in the literary supplement, dribbling the answer forward: "Yes: Gerald Asamoah! When he plays right from the start, he's always the first one with a sweaty shirt. There's always a drop of sweat hanging from his chin. And above all: He doesn't play, he muck-rakes, he runs and fights and kicks. And he's the one who can get the ball back from the other side – by lunging at them tooth and nail, by giving it an extra sprint and thwacking, swiping and straddling the place the ball has just been."


Berliner Zeitung, 03.06.2006

Ernestine von der Osten-Sacken interviews the Canadian anti-advertising activist Kalle Lasn (more here) and proponent of "Mental Environmentalism". "We are standing at the start of a mental environmental movement. Increasing numbers of people are recognising that the incessant rain which comes at us through the computer, the television and other media causes stress and can lead to mental illness. They are beginning to analyse their 'mental diet' more closely. Thousands of marketing messages penetrate our minds everyday, whether we want it or not. This makes us sick. The world health organisation has predicted that in 15 years psychic illnesses will be more widespread than heart disease."