Markmaking

Art of Two Germanys

Art of Two Germanys at the L.A. County Museum.

LACMA: exhibition catalog timeline

Previews and Reviews:

Christopher Knight, Culture Monster (LAT)

Eduard Beaucamp, Art Newspaper

Hanno Rauterberg, Die Zeit

Jordan Mejias, FAZ

Jori Finkel, N.Y. Times

Kate Bowen interviews Stephanie Barron, Deutsche Welle

Kerstin Zilm, Deutschlandradio

Marlis Schaum, Deutsche Welle

Suzanne Muchnic, L.A. Times

Ernst Wilhelm Nay at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt

Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968): late work on view at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt: "E. W. Nay: Bilder der 1960er Jahre."

Reviews: 

Volker Breidecker, Sueddeutsche

Sandra Danicke, FR

"Es sind Bilder von souveräner Schlichtheit und überwältigender Leuchtkraft, die es derzeit in der Schirn zu entdecken gilt."

Reference:

Yule Heibel, Reconstructing the Subject

Poe in Germany

What do the Germans have to say about the 200-year-old Edgar Allan Poe?

At Die Zeit: Peter Kuemmel: Mann im Abgrund. * Sherko Fatah, Poes Einfluss: Expedition ins Imaginäre. * Jens Jessen: Umweg zum Ruhm. * Ein Gespräch mit Roger Corman über seine Poe-Filme. * * * At Perlentaucher: Hans-Dieter Gelfert, Edgar Allan Poe: Am Rande des Malstroms. * Wolfgang Martynkewicz, Edgar Allan Poe. * Die Maske des roten Todes: Erzählungen. * * * CDs: Im Wirbel des Malstroms. * Der Bericht des Arthur Gordon Pym. * Umständlicher Bericht des Arthur Gordon Pym aus Nantucket (Rolf Michaelis review). * * * At the NZZ: Ulrike Brunotte, Die Innenschau der Obsessionen: Edgar Allan Poe – ein Pionier in den Abgründen der menschlichen Seele. * * * At the HU: Renate Hof, Edgar Allan Poe.

Green MEP Ilka Schroeder on European Anti-Semitism

Ilka Schroeder of the Green Party and formerly of the European Parliament, on the depths of European anti-Semitism:

When a Jewish person calls something anti-Semitic, she noted, some Europeans discount it because it is coming from a Jew.

This kind of bias is not uncommon among Europeans, said Schroeder, and she has been fighting it ever since she decided that it was essential to speak out about the E.U.'s support of the Palestinian Authority.

Elected to the E.U. Parliament as a member of the German Green Party in 1999 (she later left the party to become an independent, but still allies with the left), Schroeder said she came to the body without a particularly strong view on the Middle East.

The Sept. 11 attacks changed that, she said, making her realize how widespread anti-American and anti-Semitic attitudes were in the E.U. countries.

She saw the attacks not only as directed against the U.S., but against Jews as well, since al-Qaeda was attacking what it sees as the hallmarks of Jewish influence -- Wall Street and the U.S. government. But many Europeans reacted to Sept. 11 not with outrage, but with cries of "These people are poor, we have to understand them."

It was then she realized that she had to become an activist.

In the ensuing months, after published reports revealed that the P.A. was directing E.U. financial aid toward the financing of terrorism, she pushed the E.U. Parliament to open an investigation into the matter. She said the only way she could get fellow legislators interested in the matter was to emphasize the P.A.'s corruption, since not many were particularly concerned about the diversion of the money for violent acts.

Eventually, she said the Parliament did convene a "working group" on the matter -- on which she was not included -- but that no investigation was launched because it could not be proven that the E.U.'s money went directly from their pocket to paying for suicide bombs, which Schroeder found ridiculous.

"They were asking for something impossible" to prove, she said.

Since Hamas took over the Palestinian government, the E.U. has suspended its $600 million in aid to the Palestinians, but Schroeder is not optimistic that the freeze will continue indefinitely. She believes that the eventual E.U. goal is to "challenge the U.S. position [of pre-eminent power] in the Middle East" and across the globe, and funding the Palestinians is one way to do that.

The E.U.'s failure to take Palestinian terrorism seriously is one manifestation of a common theme among many in Europe, particularly on the left: an unwillingness to believe that "Israel may not always be the perpetrator ... [and] Palestinians the victim," she said.

Schroeder estimates that as many as one-third of Europeans might believe that Israel was behind a conspiracy to commit the Sept. 11 attacks. And she says that displaying sympathy for Israel has led to accusations from fellow legislators that she is being "paid by the Mossad."

For many, their anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views fit into their anti-globalization ideology, which states that the "financial sphere" dictates how the world operates and that Jews are influential in that sphere, Schroeder said.

Ahmadinejad Welcome in Germany

German leaders to Iranian regime: Welcome!

Fifty states too many?

According to Social Democrat Peter Struck, the sixteen federal states of Germany are a luxury, perhaps too many (reported in Die Zeit, press release).

That set me to thinking. If sixteen is too many for Germany, fifty must be too many for the USA. The Senate is nothing more than a tool for the systematic oppression of large-state voters, after all. So, which states are excess? Let's see:

Delaware should at all costs merge with Maryland.

Two Dakotas are definitely not necessary; they'd probably get more respect as a combination anyhow.

The original impetus for two Virginias must truly be out of date, though perhaps not in the minds of its citizens.

Utah and Nevada could merge. Ha ha, that would be fun.

That's down to forty-six -- I would certainly support any party that in the interest of fiscal responsibility adopted this as its platform.

Botswana, Madagascar, Mozambique

German president Horst Köhler, formerly of the IMF, visits Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique: three triumphs of peace, democracy, and capitalism.

Biennale gets Swedish Approval

Eurotopics conveys Jelena Zetterström's appreciation of the present Berlin Biennale:

This time the Berlin-Biennale was neither a big thematic event nor did it have a theoretical superstructure. And it wasn't about the top 100 in contemporary art, either. The Biennale presents itself as a story with many more or less loose plots. It's about Berlin and Europe in the past and present... about personal crises, collective memories and the individual lives of artists. The exhibition stretches along Auguststrasse in what was once East Berlin. It begins at a church and ends at a cemetery. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this street has earned itself a reputation with the city's art scene, but its symbolic value has its roots in the times before the Second World War when a large percentage of the city's Jewish population lived here.

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

From Wikipedia:

The Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (en: the association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services) was a sub organisation in pre-war Vienna, Austria of the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (DDSG), a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

From Wikipedia:

The Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (RkReÜAÜG) (literally, Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law) was a law of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of 2000, dealing with the supervision of the labeling of beef.

Le Point discovers Berlin

Pascal Hugues in Le Point: enthusiastic about Berlin. Jolly good show. Via S&S:

Berlin has dethroned Hamburg and the Rhineland, and now rivals Munich as the centre of the German film industry. The young filmmakers of the new German wave work in Berlin, and the studios in Babelsberg attract major international productions. The new German reality is taking shape here, the location of the East-West shock which seems so abstract to people in Munich or Hamburg. Filmmakers and authors find an unlimited source of inspiration here. In the cafes of Prenzlauer Berg, one in every two people is sitting in front of a notepad. The new German literature is being written in Berlin.

Gabor Steingart

Gabor Steingart, Der Spiegel's national political bureau chief in Berlin, analyzes the reasons for Germany's self-willed and completely avoidable economic decline. "Say it slowly: Zukunftsangst"

A glance at the state's finances shows how dramatic the situation is: Of 190 billion euros in tax revenues, 80 billion is passed on to the cash-strapped state pension system, 30 billion goes to the unemployed, and another 40 billion belongs to the banks, just to service debt. The rest is not even enough to pay the bureaucracy and to build roads. Ever-new credits are constantly needed so that Germany at least has the appearance of a prosperous country. Relief is not in sight because the birth-rate has fallen by half since the early 1960s and so the work force will also soon fall by half. Two retirees will then be financed by one worker, which would be too much for everyone -- the workers and the state. If nothing changes, the government will need 80% of the state budget in 2050 just to prop up pensions. The task of building up the German east is another factor. The region once dominated by the Soviets devours a fortune, and has cost 1.4 trillion euros so far. For 15 years, the western part of Germany has been transferring 4% of its GDP to the East. Because the West has not grown by 4% for decades -- at best by half of that -- the transfer payments are depleting reserves. Former Ford manager and Social Democrat Klaus von Dohnanyi speaks of a "permanent loss of blood from our economy."

Reviews of Steingart's book Deutschland: Der Abstieg eines Superstars: Warnfried Dettling, Die Zeit; Ingolfur Blühdorn, Journal of Contemporary European Studies; Perlentaucher; Amazon.

Profiles in Courage: Saithan and Sainan

Two of Germany's young Turks appear in an ad campaign that says "Honor is... fighting for my sister's freedom!" Scorn from the community must be dealt with.

"A German Farewell"

Jörg Lau, in Die Zeit via signandsight.com, praises the Bonn exhibition concerning the post-1945 German expulsions. It seems once again that the historical self-conception of East Germany was built on a complete falsification of history. Quelle surprise!

It also seems that the German expellees, collectively victims of a war which their side started, only to eventually lose, channeled their implacable irredentism into civil, parliamentary politics even while becoming economically productive citizens of their adoptive homeland (which, bowing to reality, welcomed them in) rather than, for instance, strapping explosives around their waists and blowing up Polish schoolbuses and discos while demanding sanction and, moreover, funding from the international community for these acts.  Quelle surprise!

The Diedrichsen-Poschardt Controversy

1. Ulf Poschardt, "Wir muessen reden," TAZ 30 Sept.
2. Mark Terkessidis, "Ich will nicht reden muessen,"
3. Ronsens.de: Diedrichsen vs. Poschardt
4. Existentielles Besserwissen: Ueberall diese Hegemonie der Linken! Rebellion durch FDP!
5. Matthias Kalle, "Werden wir jetzt alle Spiesser?" zitty
6. Diedrich Diedrichsen, "Ich nenne das immer: CDU-Koksen" zitty

Dossier: Necla Kelek

auf englisch

• Halis Cicek, Qantara.de: Forced marriage is a contemporary form of slavery
• Uta Rasche, Qantara.de: Smear Campaign Against German-Turkish Female Activists
• Sigrid Dethloff, Qantara.de: The struggle against forced marriage
  
• Ülger Polat, Qantara.de: Let's not worry so much about all that, but focus on the much more important problem of German racism
• Kelek-Schneider-Kinzer panel, Boston U. Oct. 6 2005

In German

• Necla Kelek, Die fremde Braut, perlentaucher.de, links to FAZ and SZ reviews
• Necla Kelek, Die Zeit, 27 Jan. 2005: the bride as bargain
• Necla Kelek in Die Welt, 2-26-05: Silly multiculturalists, tolerance to you means oppression and violent death to us
• Media coverage: DeutschlandRadio, 3Sat, NetZeitung, Wikipedia, Welt.de

und franzoesisch

• Le Figaro, L'Express

Berlin surrenders

Uta Baier, "Schwarzblende," Die Welt 7 Dez. 2005: Both Berlin and Vienna shy away from sponsoring a Gregor Schneider project that resembles the Qaaba, no doubt in fear of provoking civil, parliamentary and  reasonable protests from the world's most eminent religion of peace.

The German Welfare State: Jihad for Everyone!

Peter Schneider, author of The Wall Jumper, in the New York Times, on the German welfare state's cheerful subsidy for Islamic indoctrination:

For more than 20 years the Islamic Federation of Berlin, an umbrella organization of Islamic associations and mosque congregations, has struggled in the Berlin courts to secure Islamic religious instruction in local schools. In 2001 the federation finally succeeded. Since then, several thousand Muslim elementary-school students have been taught by teachers hired by the Islamic Federation and paid by the city of Berlin. City officials aren't in a position to control Islamic religious instruction. Often the teaching does not correspond to the lesson plan that was submitted in German. Citing the linguistic deficiencies of the students, instructors frequently hold lessons in Turkish or Arabic, often behind closed doors.

Since the introduction of Islamic religious instruction, the number of girls that come to school in head scarves has grown by leaps and bounds, and school offices are inundated with petitions to excuse girls from swimming and sports as well as class outings.

There are no reliable figures showing how many Muslims living in Germany regularly attend a mosque; the estimates vary between 40 and 50 percent. Councilwoman Stefanie Vogelsang stresses that the majority of the mosques in Neukölln are as open to the world as they ever were, and that they continue to address the needs of integration. But the radical religious communities are gaining ground. She points to the Imam Reza Mosque, for instance, whose home page - until a recent revision - praised the attacks of Sept. 11, designated women as second-class human beings and referred to gays and lesbians as animals. "And that kind of thing," she says, fuming, "is still defended by the left in the name of religious freedom."

This is the least expected provocation of the three author rebels: a frontal assault on the relativism of the majority society. In fact, they are fighting on two fronts - against Islamist oppression of women and its proponents, and against the guilt-ridden tolerance of liberal multiculturalists. "Before I can get to the Islamic patriarchs, I first have to work my way through these mountains of German guilt," Seyran Ates complains.

It is women who suffer most from German sensitivity toward Islam. The three authors explicitly accuse German do-gooders of having left Muslim women in Germany in the lurch and call on them not to forget the women locked behind the closed windows when they rave about the multicultural districts.

German immigration policies (and liberal multiculturalism) are only one side of the problem. The other side is the active refusal of many in the Muslim community to integrate. It is an illusion to believe that a German - or French or Dutch - passport and full rights of citizenship are enough to make all Muslims loyal citizens. "The attacks in London," Seyran Ates says, "were in the eyes of many Muslims a successful slap in the face to the Western community. The next perpetrators will be children of the third and fourth immigrant generation, who - under the eyes of well-meaning politicians - will be brought up from birth to hate Western society." It's only a question of time, Ates says, before Berlin experiences attacks like those in London and Madrid. When we spoke, the riots in France had not yet happened.

It is encouraging that some Muslim residents of Germany are forcefully calling on Germans to defend our democratic achievements against Muslim traditionalists and fanatics who incite hatred of democracy under the banner of respect for cultural difference. "What I am asking of the Germans," Necla Kelek says, "is nothing more and nothing less than equal treatment. I'm entitled to the same rights as any German woman."

Merely citing "lessons from the German past," as Germans tend to do, does not guarantee that these lessons are correct. It is a perversion when, out of respect for the "otherness" of a different culture, Germans stand aside and accept the fact that Muslim women in Germany are being subjected to an archaic code of honor that flouts the fundamental human rights to dignity and individual freedom. This has nothing to do with Germany or the "guiding German culture" that German conservatives want to put through; it has simply to do with humanity, with the protection of basic human and civil rights for all citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.

Politicians and religious scholars of all faiths are right in pointing out that there are many varieties of Islam, that Islamism and Islam should not be confused, that there is no line in the Koran that would justify murder. But the assertion that radical Islamic fundamentalism and Islam have nothing to do with each other is like asserting that there was no link between Stalinism and Communism. The fact is that disregard for women's rights - especially the right to sexual self-determination - is an integral component of almost all Islamic societies, including those in the West. Unless this issue is solved, with a corresponding reform of Islam as practiced in the West, there will never be a successful acculturation. Islam needs something like an Enlightenment; and only by sticking hard to their own Enlightenment, with its separation of religion and state, can the Western democracies persuade their Muslim residents that human rights are universally valid. Perhaps this would lead to the reforms necessary for integration to succeed. "We Western Muslim women," Seyran Ates says, "will set off the reform of traditional Islam, because we are its victims."

Alice Schwarzer

From Signandsight.com:

...And forty percent of these young people between 16 and 25 are unemployed. Or to be more precise, 25 percent of young men and 50 percent of young women. In social terms, then, the women have twice as much reason to protest.

Except that Muslim women do not shout in the streets. They whisper behind drawn curtains. And when they do dare to demonstrate in public, their protest is aimed not against the state, but against their own husbands and brothers. Like after the death of Sohane, when a movement was founded with the name "Ni putes ni soumises" (neither whores nor submissive - see our feature with the same name) whose demonstrations caused a considerable stir in France. On March 8, 2003, hundreds of young women from the suburbs marched through Paris and declared: "We are being suffocated by the machismo of the men in our neighbourhoods. In the name of 'tradition' they are denying us the most elementary human rights. We will not tolerate it any longer!"

...

But when it gets dark and the rioting begins, there is not a single woman left on the streets. For on fiery nights like these, the "whores" are in just as much danger as the "sons of whores".

What can happen when women raise their voices is shown by the example of Senia Boucherrougui and Cherifa. Last year, the very pregnant Senia was the victim of a robbery in suburban Paris. Together with her friend Cherifa, she then founded the "Union Against Violence in Saint-Denis" and dared to organize a demonstration in her neighbourhood – against the violence of the state and against the violence of the participants' own husbands and brothers. As a result, a pamphlet appeared comparing the two women with Jacques Doriot, the mayor of Saint-Denis in the 1930s who converted from communism to fascism. "They broke a taboo", commented the Nouvel Observateur newspaper dryly. The taboo of political correctness and of "solidarity" with their "own" people at all costs.

...

From representative long-term studies by the Hanover-based criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, we know that in this country, half of all crimes by minors are committed by just six percent of the delinquents. This hard core includes one in ten Turkish youths, but only one in 33 German youths. Fittingly, 25 percent of Turkish boys condone violence (compared with four percent of German boys) – but only five percent of Turkish girls.

...

Levels of violence are three times higher in Turkish families than in German families, the culprits are men, their victims women and children...

But we must also no longer turn a blind eye to the double two-class system: that separating Germans and immigrants on the one hand and, on the other, that separating the men and women within the immigrant communities.

If we really want to get to grips with the problem of burning cars, then we must also tackle the problem of burning girls...

McEwan reviews Schneider

A review of Peter Schneider's The Wall Jumper in The Guardian. Someday, no doubt, the story will finally be told of the thousands of heroic Western progressives who acted upon their deepest convictions and moved themselves and their families to East Germany to help replenish the population after the loss of the three million who fled the workers' republic before the wall was built. When will the truth of these heroic progressives finally be told?

Schneider provides an immediately recognisable portrait of a "progressive" western visitor to East Berlin, determined to demonstrate to her hosts that things are far worse in the West. The idea that she enjoys certain relative freedoms - "if only freedom of movement" - is an anathema to her idea of herself as a heroic victim of a pernicious system. There is no negative story about the GDR she cannot cap with one about the West - thus she attempts to reconcile her eastern friend to his straitened situation. "It's remarkable," one East Berliner says, "how some people who come to visit us talk about nothing but abuses in the West - when we'd be so happy to go over and take a look at their abuses!"

In 1987, I was in Berlin researching the background for a novel I intended to set in the city. I asked friends who among West German writers had written good novels about the Wall. It seemed a perfect subject - a near-comic monstrosity, a global political schism that had turned into cement and wire and sliced right through back yards, sitting rooms even, dividing families, lovers, and defining two nations held in a perpetual embrace of love and hate. Only Schneider's name came up. There was, it seemed, no thriving West German Wall literature - (in the East, it was another matter). Perhaps it was because writers, whose politics were generally well to the left of centre, found the Wall an embarrassment as a subject, an intractable problem posed by socialism. Merely to describe the Wall was to attack it, and thus appear to be a stooge of the CIA.

Keywords

Among the most-discussed English-to-German queries at Leo.org, the online dictionary of the Munich Technischen Universität are:

• grammar Nazi
• gimp
• wonkishness
• work the rubber-chicken circuit
• when the going gets tough
• wither on the vine
• to get KO'ed
• it's a dewzy!
• rug
• to hang around the bikeshed
• lurker
• twice-once
• truncation error
• war pigs
• out-of-the-box solution

I wonder what kind of traffic my queries ("deskilling" and "desublimate") will get.

Victims?

Is it at all possible that Germans were in any way victims during World War II? Reviews of the recent literature:

• Mark M. Anderson in The Nation, 29-09-05
• Noah Isenberg in Bookforum, summer 05

Germany: A Self-Willed, Reversible Decline

Olaf Gersemann: Europe's Not Working

The U.K.’s unemployment rate is half the continent’s, its growth has been almost twice the level of the Euro Zone, poverty is declining in Britain, and business creativity is rising.

In a June speech to the European Parliament, before Britain took over the E.U. presidency for six months, Blair argued against French and German insistence that to trim Europe’s welfare state and unravel some of its socialist policies would be to ape an American economy that “tramples on the poor and disadvantaged.” He asked bitingly: “What type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe? Productivity rates falling behind those of the USA? That, on any relative index of a modern economy—skills, R&D, patents, information technology, is going down, not up?”

“The issue,” Blair warned his fellow Europeans, is not ideology, but “modernization.” It is absurd, he suggested, for the European Union to spend 46 percent of its money on subsidies to farmers. He called on Europe’s political leaders to show enough nerve to “send back some of the unnecessary regulation, peel back some of the bureaucracy, and become a champion of a global, outward-looking, competitive Europe.”

For making these points, Blair was attacked by French president Jacques Chirac and other Europeans, and a June E.U. summit and budget meeting degenerated into a debacle.

If labor productivity in Germany and in the U.S. continues on the same path as from 1996 to 2003, per capita income in Germany will grow by only 44 percent by the time American incomes double in 2026. Put differently, within a generation, Americans will enjoy twice the economic status that Germans do.

In the U.S., the employment rates for citizens and immigrants are virtually the same. In Germany, the working-age immigrant population doubled over the last 25 years, yet the number of immigrants with jobs didn’t rise at all. That failure to provide economic opportunity is one of the factors that has let Germany and other European nations become fertile soil for militant Islam.

The German market-research company GfK asked people what they considered the most important challenge facing their respective home country. In each of the Big Three countries, the largest share of respondents spontaneously named unemployment as the most pressing problem: 38 percent in Italy, 58 percent in France, and a staggering 81 percent in Germany. (In the U.K., which is much closer to the laissez-faire economic model, the share choosing unemployment as the major national problem was a minuscule four percent.)

The attitude still most widely held in Europe is that it is the job of politicians to distribute and redistribute society’s goods—be it jobs, income, or wealth. There is a deep zero-sum mentality in Europe which starts from the idea that politics, not competition, should govern economics. Asked in April 2005 whether competition is good for economic growth and employment, only 45 percent of Germans strongly agreed. In both France and Italy, the share was only 29 percent.

When economic performance got bad enough in a number of European countries in the recent past, majorities decided they were ready to change course. A good example is Great Britain and its “Winter of Discontent” in 1979, which swept Margaret Thatcher into Downing Street. Another is Ireland, not too long ago one of the poorest countries in Europe. After decades of struggling under socialist-influenced economic nostrums, it made a sweeping move toward the American model— cutting taxes and regulations, and inviting many U.S. corporations to set up bases under business-friendly conditions. Ireland exploded in prosperity, and today enjoys a per capita income about 20 percent higher than in France or Germany.

Joel Kotkin: America Still Beckons

America’s economic appeal has been broadened by Europe’s long-term competitive decline; its portion of world GDP dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent between 1913 and 1998, while the United States held its own at about 22 percent of global GDP (even amidst the Third World boom of the last generation).

Most recently, Europe’s position has weakened considerably. Since the 1970s, America has created some 57 million new jobs, compared to just 4 million in Europe (with most of those in government).

Some 400,000 E.U. science and technology graduates currently reside in the United States, and barely one in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intend to return. “The U.S. is a sponge that’s happy to soak up talent from across the globe,” observes one Irish scientist.

Since much of the immigration to Europe comes from poorly educated (for the most part) workers from Africa and the Middle East, it has not appreciably increased the continent’s supply of skilled workers. There is also deep-seated hostility to the newcomers among natives; nearly a third of E.U. citizens describe themselves as decidedly “prejudiced” against the continent’s current immigrants. In addition, the powerful welfare state mechanisms in Europe tend to keep both newcomers and displaced native workers out of the workforce and on the dole, further exacerbating the pressures on the economy and the social resentments.

To a large extent, Europe has also turned its back on new industries and younger people, choosing security for the current population over future opportunity. So despite large numbers of retiring workers in France, for instance, unemployment among the young has been rising—with joblessness among workers in their twenties now well exceeding 20 percent. The European welfare state also forces younger workers to pay heavily for a radically escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. Since 1970, Germany’s ranks of unemployed and retired have soared by some 80 percent, while the working population grew by a mere 4 percent.

Karl Zinsmeister: Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons

Unemployment in Germany has reached the potentially destabilizing level of 12 percent. More shockingly, about a third of those unemployed have been jobless for more than a year. This is not some recessionary blip; over the last decade and a half, economic growth in Germany has averaged only a little over 1 percent. This miserable performance has allowed the people of other nations to pass the Germans in standard of living.

Europe has created just 4 million net new jobs since the 1970s. And most of those were in government, not the private sector. During that same period, the U.S. created 57 million new jobs—which is why it has become the magnet for the globe’s most economically ambitious people.

The irony is that for all their insistence on portraying the U.S. as a land of fired workers, poverty, and economic insecurity, it is now Europe where unemployment is twice as high and four times as deep, where immigrants and the young have far fewer openings, where the ladder of upward mobility has fallen to pieces.

Gerhard Richter, Cultural Conservative?

Gerhard Richter is not boosting his radical cred one bit -- Susanne Beyer and Ulrike Knoefel interview Richter for Der Spiegel.

Richter: Warum sollten die per se klüger sein als andere Kunstinteressierte? Sie haben nur das schwierige Los, sofort formulieren zu müssen, was die Bilder meinen. Da kommt es dann zu Behauptungen wie der, dass es sich bei meinen Gemälden um Malerei Über Malerei handelt, dass das also gemalte Konzeptkunst sei, distanziertes Virtuosentum, Verweigerung, Verschleierung und was weiß ich.
Why should [the critics] be cleverer, per se, than others interested in art? They only have the difficult lot of needing to immediately formulate what the pictures mean. Then you get assertions such as, for instance, that my work is painting about painting, i.e. painted Conceptual Art, distanced virtuosity, denial, blur/deception/veiling [Verschleierung] and whatnot.

SPIEGEL: Das sind Begriffe, mit denen Ihre Kunst seit 30, 40 Jahren beschrieben wird. Alles falsch?
Those are concepts with which your art has been described for 30 or 40 years. All false?

Richter: Ja. Denn die Sache ist viel einfacher, meine Bilder sind viel mitteilsamer als die der meisten meiner Kollegen. Ich verschleiere doch kaum etwas. Im Gegenteil: Mir ist das fast peinlich, dass ich mich, mein Leben in den Bildern so ablesbar zeige.
Yes. The thing is much simpler; my pictures are much more communicative/expansive than those of most of my colleagues. I obscure/disguise/blur scarcely anything. On the contrary: for me it's almost painful, that my life is so legibly displayed in my paintings.

* * *

Richter: Diese Art der Berichterstattung führt von den Bildern weg, da wird ein ganz anderer Bedarf gedeckt, der nach Klatsch. Ich kann das auch verstehen. Wenn ich beim Zahnarzt in der "Bunten" blättere, unterhält mich Klatsch ja auch. Zum Werkverständnis können biografische Details nur bedingt beitragen, und natürlich muss man erst einmal das Bild kennen. Man glaubt halt gern, dass man Francis Bacons Bilder deshalb so viel besser versteht, weil man erfahren hat, dass er schwul ist.
This type of reportage leads away from the pictures; it supplies another need, that for gossip. I can understand that too. If I'm at the dentist leafing through the tabloids, gossip entertains me too. For understanding the work, biographical details can only conditionally help, and naturally must one first be familiar with the picture. One would gladly hold to the belief [?] that one understands Francis Bacon's paintings so much better, because one has found out that he is gay.*

* * *

SPIEGEL: War das schwierige Verhältnis zu Ihren Eltern ein Grund dafür, 1961 in Ost-Berlin in die S-Bahn zu steigen und in den Westen zu fliehen?
Was that difficult relationship with your parents a reason for getting on the S-Bahn in East Berlin in 1961 and fleeing to the West?

Richter: Nein, mit den Eltern hatte das nichts zu tun, dann schon eher mit den Schwiegereltern, die bereits im Westen wohnten und so den Ãœbergang etwas erleichterten. Aber das Abbrechen von allen vertrauten Bindungen, freundschaftlichen, beruflichen, das war für mich ausgesprochen hart. Und es gab nur einen Grund dafür: diesen alles erstickenden Staat.
No, that had nothing to do with the parents, rather with the parents-in-law, who already lived in the West and so eased the transition somewhat. But the breaking off of all intimate relationships -- friendship, professional -- that was a pronounced hardship. And there was only one reason for that: this all-asphyxiating State.

* * *

SPIEGEL: Im Westen wurden Sie dann 1966 zum ersten Mal selbst Vater. Bringt einen diese Erfahrung den eigenen Eltern näher?
In the West in 1966 you became a father for the first time yourself. Did this bring you closer to the experience of your own parents[??]?

Richter: Das kann ich gar nicht sagen. In den späten sechziger Jahren hatte doch die ganze Gesellschaft wenig Sinn für Familie und für Väter schon gar keinen. Zurückblickend empfinde ich das Gehabe der Progressiven in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren nur als lächerlich; trunken von haltlosen Illusionen über Wohlstand und Gesellschafts-veränderung war man doch mit der Betonung des Antiautoritären nur fahrlässig. Man hat die Kinder sich selbst überlassen. Ich war nicht viel besser, hatte nur mehr Skrupel. In meinem viel später gemalten Bild meiner Tochter Betty, die ihr Gesicht abwendet, mag etwas von der Trauer darüber anklingen.
That I can't say at all. In the late '60s the whole society had little sense for family and for fathers, none at all. Looking back, I feel the affectations of the progressives in the '60s and '70s to be only laughable;  drunk on untenable illusions about affluence and social change, the emphasis of the anti-authoritarians was just negligent. One left the kids to themselves. I wasn't much better, I only had more scruples. I wanted something of this grief to resonate in my picture, painted much later, of my daughter Betty in which her face is averted.

* * *

SPIEGEL: Sie hatten Probleme mit dem Vater - und deshalb auch Probleme mit dem eigenen Vaterdasein?
You had problems with the father - and for that reason also problems with being a father yourself?

Richter: So erging es einer ganzen Generation. Ich hatte, wie viele in meinem Alter, die Erfahrung eines vorbildhaften Vaters nie gehabt. Die meisten unserer Väter waren lange im Krieg und kamen entweder gar nicht zurück oder als Beschädigte und Gebrochene und als Schuldige. Diese Problematik einer vatergeschädigten Generation setzt sich bis heute fort. Der Terrorismus hatte vielleicht deshalb in diesem Land eine andere Form als andernorts. Er war hier in den siebziger Jahren auch mehr ein Ausdruck der Ablehnung der Väter, die eben in jeder Hinsicht versagt hatten.
So fared a whole generation. I, like many in my age, didn't have the experience of an exemplary/paradigmatic father. Most of our fathers were at war for a long time and either didn't come back at all, or as damaged/injured and broken, and as guilty. This problematic, of a father-impaired generation, I pursue to this day. Perhaps this is why terrorism had a different form in this country as in others. It was here in the 1970s more an expression of refusal/denial/rejection of the fathers, who had failed in every respect.

* * *

SPIEGEL: Gerade von Beuys unterscheiden Sie sich diametral. Beuys stand für eine provokante Anti-Ästhetik. Ihre Bilder aber, ob abstrakt oder gegenständlich, feiern trotz der oft heiklen Motive die Schönheit.
You differentiate yourself diametrically from Beuys. He stood for a provocative anti-aesthetic. However, your pictures, whether abstract or representational, revel, in spite of their often subtle motifs, in beauty.

Richter: Es ist schwierig mit der Schönheit, wir sind uns nicht mehr einig, was darunter zu verstehen sein sollte. Sicher liegt es auch daran, dass der Begriff Schönheit so abgedroschen ist oder klingt. So wie "das Gute" und "das Wahre". Aber das ändert nichts am Wert solcher idealen Eigenschaften und daran, dass die Menschen Schönheit brauchen. Für mich war Schönheit immer ein Kriterium für die Qualität von Kunstwerken, gleich welcher Art und aus welcher Zeit.
It's difficult with beauty; we are no longer in agreement what should be understood by the term. Surely it's also owing to the fact that the concept of beauty is or appears so often ranted/canted[??]. Also with Goodness and Truth. But that doesn't change the value of such ideal properties, and that people need beauty. For me beauty was always a criterion for the value of artworks, of whatever sort and from whatever period.

* Cf. Lee Siegel's statement that "You cannot fully understand Cy Twombly's art unless you know that he is gay," in Slate, vigorously denounced by Tyler Green.

Links: Lee Siegel on Twombly, Tyler Green response.

Marvelous German Expressions

• den inneren Schweinehund überlisten/überwinden (lit. "to outwit/overcome the inner pig-dog") to master one's weaker nature/cowardice/sloth
• die Sau rauslassen (lit. "to let the sow out") to let your hair down and have a good time
• Reißen Sie sich zusammen! (lit. "Rip/tear yourself together!") Pull yourself together!
  

Vocabulary

Assignment: find as many German words as possible deriving from schreiben (to write). My favorites:

• Schriftverkehr      (exchange of letters)
• Schriftlichkeit      (writing; lit. write-ly-ness)
• Grabinschrift      (epitaph)
• Geheimschrift      (cryptography)
• Arbeitsschutzvorschrift      (health and safety regulations)
• Fachzeitschrift      (trade journal)

• Schreibtischtäter   (pale theoretician; woolly academic; bureaucratic enabler of totalitarianism)
• Schreiberling   (hack writer; scribbler; would-be poet)

• krankschreiben   (to give [someone]  a doctor's sick-note)
• Beileidschreiben   (letter of condolence/sympathy)
• Beglaubigungschreiben     (letter of accreditation)
• Bekennerschreiben      (claim of responsibility)
• Eröffnungsschreiben    (confirmation of credit)

Berlin Lets Everyone Breathe

Link: How to empty the room in one minute - signandsight.

No label exists without musicians, and Berlin is certainly spoilt for choice. Berlin is in. More and more musicians from all over the world are moving to the city, such a concentration of creative musical talent exists nowhere else. In electronic music, this is a great asset: no hierarchy and lots of cooperative projects. The most recent prominent newcomer is the producer and DJ Richie Hawtin, who came over with some musicians from the USA and has founded an offshoot of his label m-nus in Berlin. Like jazz in the old days, the electronic genre in the USA is strictly marginal. Europe's sales markets, concerts and recognition draw the musicians here. And then there are the "soft" factors. The lack of a curfew, and breakfast at any time of the day or night. "It's really tolerant here," says English singer Jamie Lidell. "You can go to a stylish restaurant looking like a fucked-up hippy, and normally nobody cares." Ellen Allien, DJ and label boss, describes the atmosphere in her home town: "Berlin lets everyone breathe." Berlin's trump card is the cheap cost of living. Out of London, Paris or San Francisco with their unaffordable rents and into a huge apartment in Neukoelln, Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg. Most established musicians hang onto a place in Berlin and spend most of their time on tour. For newcomers, more interested in making music than profit, Berlin is a chance to live cheap. There's even space for a studio within your own flat. It wins time to develop, to work up to a major release.

Berlinerisch

• EconomicExpert.com: Low German Language
• Humboldt Universitet (Berlin) (auf deutsch)
  
• Berlin-and-more.de (auf deutsch)
• Sassisch.net: Low Saxon
• WebGerman.com: Germanic Dialects
• Wikipedia: East Low German

Berlin City Maps

Interactive digital maps are among the wonders of the internet. No wonder we always feel so disoriented! Such maps of Berlin are available from:

• Map24.com
• Berlin.de
• BVG (the city transit authority)
• Berliner-stadtplan.com
• YellowMap.de

I haven't decided which one is best, though. In the USA, Google Maps are in general the best.