Die Zeit, 17.08.2006

Hazem Saghieh, the London-based editor of the Lebanese newspaper Al Hayat, gives an interview on the war in Lebanon and the radicalization of British Muslims. "Everything is inserted into this ready-made world view: 'Us against them.' Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon present a common panorama of Muslim suffering." But Saghieh is also troubled by tendencies toward self-stigmatization. "Increasingly, the idea is to portray yourself according to the stereotypes held by Islamophobes: more headscarves, more external signs of being different. We are shutting ourselves out. I have to say, self-critically, that the Arabic media is not very helpful when it comes to the integration of migrants in Europe. Al Jazeera does not tell people how to adjust to life here, but rather how best to differentiate themselves from the majority."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17.08.2006

"That is the real Methusaleh conspiracy," reveal writers Eva Menasse and Michael Kumpfmüller with reference to the hordes of the over-70 set that are filling the feuilletons with their commentaries on Grass. Are there no other topics? The war in Lebanon, for example? "Where were the German intellectuals who would have said: we don't need Auschwitz to out ourselves here? We are on Israel's side not because Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews but because Israel is a democratic state with enemies that want to destroy not only it but all democratic societies of the West? ... Let's talk about the terrorist attacks that were prevented in London, let's talk about our relationship to Islam, let's talk about the limits of liberality. It's about us and our future."

Sociologist Heinz Bude demands that the "younger generation" accept the "uniqueness" of the "flak helper generation." They had more to talk about than their sexual preferences. The "awareness of what humans are capable of sharpened their perspective on phenomena that appear to us younger folk as unbelievably regressive in civilisational terms. They are internally calibrated to matters of fact that we try in vain to capture with terms like terrorism, fundamentalist and ethnicism."

"The Lebanon war has radicalized Arab intellectuals, and this radicalization will not be diminished by a ceasefire," writes the Hamburg-based Iraqi writer Najem Wali. "Hardly any intellectuals admit that the Hizbullah is working according to Iranian plans. No word about the fact that the Hizbullah 'cleansed' southern Beirut of Christians, no word about the aim of Hizbullah to establish a theocracy in Lebanon, a country with 19 different religious groups. Not a word about the fact that it is first and foremost Hizbullah that is responsible for the destruction... Only a few intellectuals are calling for peace, and even they cannot say everything they wish, because the official Arab media does not want the truth to come to light. It is controlled by Saudi-Arabian money and by a chorus that evokes paranoia."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17.08.2006

Peter Stein's staging of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" at the Edinburgh International Festival presents a "beautiful, empty picture of masculinity," observes Patricia Benecke. "His heroes parade around in gold-coloured armoured underwear and helmets that practically block their view (costumes by Anna Maria Heinreich), and strike poses. Here, the fight is not about high moral principles but rather about vanity. But the figures are not made caricatures. Stein finds a balnce between satire and tragedy, and although he observes the 'Idiots from Mars' from a distance, he takes their pain completely seriously, thereby acknowledging their humanity. Thus even the displeasingly plump Achilles - who wafts through the Greek camp in his long, effeminate vestments and hairband, the very picture of decadence - suffers such despair upon the death of his catamite lover Patroklus that we can almost understand his assassination of Hektor. Violence breeds violance."


Der Tagesspiegel, 17.08.2006

From artist to artist: Volker Schlöndorff expresses compassion for Günter Grass. "Someone as experienced with the media as you are, dear Günter, doesn't do such a thing by mistake, and certainly not because you underestimated the consequences or in an attempt to strategise: providing the rope as well... Once you had started to write beyond fiction, it was only a matter of time, and a question of style, until you would remove the skin, and not just of the onion. As an author you subject your own story, like your fictive heroes, to the only law that is sacred to you, that of art. And if this means that the public monument that is your lifework crumbles, it's not your fault. The monument is the victim of the same demons that have always being preying on you."


Spiegel Online, 17.08.2006

Jens Todt dug up a veteran of the Waffen-SS who served in the same division as Grass. "'I researched a bit after I heard about him,' said the former Waffen SS man Edmund Zalewski, 'but nobody could remember Günter Grass.'" After the war, Zalewski worked in the Dürener metal works, "but he never lost touch with his former colleagues from the SS. Zalewski is still the secretary of the 'Frundsberg Comradeship,' a veteran's group whose members meet annually at war sites. 'At this point, we are down to 60 comrades, that used to be different, of course,' says Zalewski, 'but now we are all at least 80 years old.'"


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17.08.2006

Kerstin Holm lifts the veil on Russia's "erotic film idol," Renata Litvinova. "Litvinova is the Hitchcock woman of Russia, who fascinates through her crystalline coolness and her distinctly neurotic aura." To Holm, she appears "as a being from another star. She is the prime example of the female talent who wraps herself in the cocoon of her own world. Among her characteristics are her erratic laugh, a mannered, over-accentuated way of speaking, and mysteriously gesticulating hands - as if always tracing hidden sensations. Particularly in the context of the aggressive Russian environment, she is both unattainable woman and the child who needs protection, a bewitching combination that sparks men's instincts as protector and seducer. The off-putting glare of her cold eyes adds a portion of autism to the mix."