Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.09.2006

The film version of Patrick Süskind's "Perfume" comes out in Germany today. The paper publishes an interview with director Tom Tykwer, as well as author Franz Josef Görtz' recollections of reading the preprint of the book in the paper's Feuilleton in 1984. Michael Althen, for his part, enthuses over the film's "breathtaking images" and defends it against its critics: "In an unprecedented skirmish for top critical spot, the film was reproached for weeks before its release of continually showing the protagonist's nose. That's like accusing a porn film of constantly showing sexual organs. That's what it's all about. Of course Frank Griebe's nimble, lyrical camera is going to keep coming back to Ben Whishaw's nose. Moreover, it is downright sucked in by it, before being wafted away just like fragrances in the wind. And of course it's a feast for the eyes to see how odours are set in shining, colourful images, like lavender blooming in the fields and the golden brilliance of mirabelles."


Die Tageszeitung, 14.09.2006

"To be honest, I find it pretty unimaginative and boring to say that because 'Perfume' is about odours, the film should smell in some way," says director Tom Tykwer in an interview with Dietmar Kammerer. "The book doesn't smell either."


Berliner Zeitung, 14.09.2006

The Cologne-based Iraqi writer Khalid Al-Maaly is highly critical of the opportunism and duplicity of Arab intellectuals. "Many of them are distinguished for their well-packaged double morality: in their homelands, they act as watch dogs of antiquated values. In foreign languages and for a foreign audience, they represent very different, cosmopolitan ideas... Arab intellectuals behave like despotic fathers. No internal family affair is allowed out. To the outside world, they have to present the image of a solid unit, no matter how things are in reality. This becomes very clear in their attitudes towards Israel, the scandal of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the attack of 9/11, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Danish Mohammed cartoon affair, or the last Lebanon war. In private conversations, one hears a completely different opinion from what appears the next day in the newspaper. It seems that the positioning in the media is less a function of independent thinking and more of opportunistic speech bubbles."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14.09.2006

For Jerusalem-based historian Moshe Zimmermann, Israel's willingness to position German soldiers on its borders is a kind of final stroke in Israel's post-war picture of Germany. "According to a survey, only a sixth of Jewish Israelis consider Germany to be hostile towards Israel. Roughly three quarters of all Israelis who are looking for a way out of the Lebanese mess welcome the stationing of a UN troop in and around Lebanon. More than 80 percent of this majority support the participation of the German army in an international contingent. While the shadow of the Nazi past still influences the debate in Germany, surveys have demonstrated that there is no trace of this in the discussion in Israel – and not only because in Israel the myth of the 'clean army' has not yet been challenged."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14.09.2006

Mona Nagger reports on an embarrassing letter of solidarity that Günter Grass received from 46 Arab intellectuals. "The signatories see in Grass' confession to having been a member of the Waffen SS (more here) a sign of courage that deserves respect and recognition. The critique of Grass is being interpreted as a campaign 'aimed at diverting attention from the Israeli crimes against Palestine and Lebanon.' The Israelis are depicted as 'Neonazis': 'They kill Palestinians and Israelis, destroy their countries, build a dividing wall around them and put them in camps.' The tone recalls quite clearly the language of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad." Nagger's conclusion: "The document says a lot about the sensitivities of many Arab intellectuals. They live in a world of conspiracy theories, far removed form reality; they mistake populist slogans and rhetoric for intellectual discourse and they see no need to take a serious look at the Holocaust and Nazi crimes."


Die Zeit, 14.09.2006

In a lengthy article on how the Internet is being conquered by laypeople, Thomas Groß puts forward "seven theses on the digital future." One is that the meaning of information is unavoidably dissipated through networking on the Web. "The semantic Web which programmers dream of will remain an illusion for the time being. As long as no artificial thinking is able to comprehend the real networking of information, attempts to hierarchise the non-hierarchable will shipwreck one after the next. The actual movement in the Net follows an epidemic logic described by bloggers, future researchers and media enterprises as 'swarm intelligence.' But this image is askew, because it puts the medial extension of the body on a par with natural events. In fact all we are seeing is a network effect. The swarm simply swims in one direction, the one in which all the others are also swimming, or in this case clicking. Nevertheless the image does aptly represent one thing: the spread of content on the Internet does not follow a leader. The process is purely dynamic, circling around an empty centre."