Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25.08.2006

The Polish writer Stefan Chwin does not hold it against Günter Grass for speaking out so late about his time in the SS. He doesn't even seem all that surprised. "For all his vitality, Grass is a secretive and introspective person, and I've never attempted to understand him. I preferred him to remain like his books: nebulous, unclear, ambivalent. Oskar Materath is certainly not a positive hero and 'The Tin Drum' is not a 'clean' book. I've always sensed something strange about that book, which is precisely what I love about it. Real literature plays with truth and morals as one plays with fire."

Watching a great performance of Handel's "Julius Caesar" at the Glydebourne festival in England's East Sussex got television book show presenter Elke Heidenreich (review of her book with bio here) into a spitting fury over opera in Germany. "German opera is watched by experts who will not abide enjoyment. The point is to be tortured. Woe be to new music with tonality, woe be to old music that's not taken with deadly seriousness. I'd like to see this sort of thing in Germany. Cleopatra dancing erotically to Handel, or Caesar and Ptolemy doing a ballet which shows the delicate balancing act of power, with two heavily-armed counter tenors cooing each other in minuet steps. It's unspeakably funny, deeply threatening and yet breathtakingly elegant and sensuous. And never, never does it destroy the music. The music must always be taken seriously. That's rule number one in opera. They know this at Glyndebourne. Germany could do with learning this lesson again, then the opera houses might be less empty."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 25.08.2006

It was known that Günter Grass penned a letter to the mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, but not that his letter was a reply to an email from Adamowicz. On the political pages, Adamowicz writes: "I asked him to tell the people of Gdansk how he came to be a member of the SS and why he had kept silent about it for so long. I sent off the mail with these questions last Saturday evening. I have to admit that I hardly slept a wink that night. Would he answer or not? And if he did, would he be content with just a few short paragraphs? In the night I sought answers to these questions which were worrying us in the favourite book of my youth, 'The Tin Drum'."

Sonja Margolina reports that Russian intellectuals are turning their backs on the West. She attributes this in part to "those western 'business partners' who see fit to dignify their moral sordidness, small-mindedness and intellectual vacuum with democratic values" and who are now looking elsewhere for role models. "The losers of the new world order are now under the spell of world powers who place no normative demands on other states and at the same time show dizzy-making success, like China for example. The Chinese miracle is showing the world that there is no obligatory connection between success and 'western' values: absent freedoms and corrupt institutions make no dent in the promise of success and happiness."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25.08.2006

Whatever else is true, with its soap operas Syria certainly controls Arab living rooms, writes Mona Sarkis. Censorship is often more tolerant than the viewers. "At least as far as religious sensibilities go, Muslim societies are often less flexible than their governments. The tolerance on the part of the authorities disappears in a flash, however, when real people are referred to, in the context of corruption for example. Or when the legacy of Hafez al-Asad, Syria's longest serving president, is criticised. Terrorism is permitted as a topic, provided the characters are painted black. Sexuality is taboo. Married couples may not be filmed in a room where the door is closed, for instance, because the actors aren't really married."

Günter Seufert takes a closer look at the 49 cases of legal action taken against books and their authors in Turkey in 2005 and the first half of 2006 - an average of one every eleven days. "No less than 20 paragraphs in the Turkish criminal code would have to be altered to give authors and publishers legal protection," Seufert writes. "Until then, trials like the one against Abdullah Yldz, publisher of "The Witches of Smyrna" ("Izmir Büyücüleri"), will continue. The book, the Turkish translation of "Oi Magisses Tis Smirni" by the Greek anthropologist Mara Meimaridi, describes the cosmopolitan life in Smyrna in the 19th century, especially that of the Greek, Jewish, Turkish and Armenian wives. As with Elif Shafak's novel (more here), the case against Yldz concentrates on specific passages. Once again the charge is "insulting Turkishness," this time because Turkish women are portrayed unfavourably."


Die Welt, 25.08.2006

After 30 years, the magazine Theater heute (theatre today) has once again declared Stuttgart's Schauspiel theatre the best in the German-speaking world. The announcement follows just months after Stuttgart's ballet and opera house, the Staatsoper, also took first place. Reinhard Wengierek writes that the theatre's new artistic director Hasko Weber is mainly to thank for the success, saying it's no time for false modesty. "With 1,200 employees, the complex which houses a theatre, ballet and opera is the largest of its kind in the world, and is generously and lovingly maintained by the Swabians. And the quality is first-rate. All in all you can say without blushing, even with distinct pleasure, that performances in Stuttgart are world-class."


Die Tageszeitung, 25.08.2006

Dieter Kammerer asks what makes surveillance camera images so "fascinating". After all, they've never prevented a crime. "Surveillance camera images not only show us our own helplessness in face of the inevitable. They also suggest we can actually do something about it. That's their fantastical side. The images perpetuate the impression that the subsequent events haven't yet happened. You want to halt the scene by calling out 'stop!' To intervene, jump in, knock the knife from the perpetrator's hand, defuse the bomb. In other words, everything the cameras can't do (as all they can really do is provide final images of suicide bombers, a last goodbye to a horrified posterity)."