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Magazine Roundup

The Internet is changing our brains, philosopher Joaquin Rodriguez Lopez explains in the French magazine, Books. David Hockney shows his new iPhone drawings to the Spectator. In the New York Review of Books, historian Timothy Snyder calls for a new understanding of the Holocaust, that begins not in Auschwitz, but deep in the forests of Eastern Europe. In Literaturen, Aleksandar Hemon remembers an empty reading that turned out to be a success. Dawn introduces Michael Jackson as internalised by the Pakistanis. In the Weltwoche, pedagogy professor Georg Feuser calls for a ban on Ritalin for kids. The NYT witnesses the end of the black middle class in Detroit.

From the feuilletons

German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani is keeping a diary in Tehran. Henryk Broder explains why the Germans are particularly qualified to tell the Israelis how to behave. Isabel Fonseca reports on the treatment of the Roma in Kosovo, where they are dying at the hands of the UN. The film industry has discovered that illegal downloaders are not such a threat to them after all. And in a dramatic U-turn, Egypt is actually having Israeli books translated into Arabic.

American-Venetian burnout

Peter Sellars' "Othello" which premiered last week at the Viennese Festwochen is a psychological study with political muscle. Shakespeare's Venetians are an occupying US force of Afro-Americans and Latinos. The motor of the tragedy, a flabby white brain played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Barbara Villiger Heilig was impressed. Photo: Gaius Charles by Armin Bardel

The origin of the world

Mithu M. Sanyal, a self-proclaimed "provocative feminist", has written a cultural history of the vulva. Richly illustrated and packed with knowledgeable synopses, it has directed the media spotlight into a symbolic and semantic void. By Ulrike Baureithel

The starting gun for a student movement

The death of student Benno Ohnesorg saw the birth of the West German '68 movement. Now evidence has emerged that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the West German police officer who shot him during a demonstration against the Shah, was a Stasi spy. Wolfgang Kraushaar, an acclaimed chronicler of '68, asks whether the killing was an unofficial East German act of state.

Open Excess

As the world awaits the decision on the Google Books Settlement, there is much uncertainty and debate about what it will mean for authors' rights. In Germany, literature professor Roland Reu� has added to the confusion by launching an attack on what he believes to be another enemy of the freedom to publish: Open Access. Publishers, journalists, authors and other sympathisers have signed his petition, which is now in the hands of Chancellor Merkel. Their arguments are hair-raising, deluded and dangerous, says Matthias Spielkamp

The disembodied book

We are about to close the chapter on the age of the printed book. It is a time for bullet biting and belt tightening, but not mourning. J�rgen Neffe takes a refreshingly postive look into our post-Gutenbergian future.

The aesthetics of notation

An exhibition in ZKM Karlsruhe explores the enormous range of artistic processes that exist between the moment of conception and finished work. By Kathrin Peters
Image: Dieter Appelt "Partitur" � 2009 ZKM

Gentrification follies

Politicians are turning Istanbul's year as European Cultural Capital 2010 into a programme for promoting real estate and tourism. By Dragan Klaic

What was eating Wagner?

In this, the Mendelssohn bicentennial year, Martin Geck looks at why the wealthy middle-class composer, who was Europe's most successful musician in the final decade of his life, brought out the very worst in Richard Wagner.

We meet in loneliness

Since being diagnosed with lung cancer last year, Christoph Schlingensief has made his illness the subject of a theatre trilogy. In what he describes as a readymade opera, "Mea Culpa", the final part now playing in Vienna's Burgtheater, is a mature, elegiac and exhibitionistic parody of everything the world has ever constructed around the big C. By Peter Michalzik

Haider in their hearts

In local elections at the beginning of the month, the Austrian state of Carinthia effectively granted a governing majority to a dead man. Eva Menasse looks at an idyllically beautiful corner of the world that has been dumbed-down to death. Photo by pixel0809

A victory for architecture

The doors have just opened on the third major rennovation project on Berlin's Museum Island. British architect David Chipperfield has revealed the vestiges of history in the Neues Museum. By Bernhard Schulz

Beyond the war hero

Bernard-Henri Levy looks at some of the problems posed by the film "Valkyrie" which are too complex and delicate to be resolved within Hollywood logic. First on the list: the Scientology question.

The call of the toad

G�nter Grass has just published his diary from 1990, recording the tumultous events after the fall of the Berlin Wall. "From Germany to Germany" is a list of ominous predictions for the future of German unity. The former GDR writer Monika Maron looks at how blinded Grass was by his own preconceptions.

Unmasking the July 20 plot

To deny Stauffenberg and the other conspirators any moral and cultural relevance is blinkered and consitutes intellectual bigotry. Even if their ideas seem politically anachronistic today, these men showed the sort of noblesse and strength of character of which today�s politicians and other bureaucratic elites can only dream. Karl Heinz Bohrer responds to the thesis of British historian Richard J. Evans.

Why did Stauffenberg plant the bomb?

Was it because Hitler was losing the war? Was it to put an end to the mass murder of the Jews. Or was it to save Germany's honour? Whatever his motives, he was no role model for future generations, says British historian Richard Evans. (Photo: Deutsches Historisches Museum)

Marx: the quest, the way, the destination

Taking off where Sergei Eisenstein left off, Alexander Kluge has made a nine-and-a-half hour film about Karl Marx and the fairytale of "Kapital". And it's not a minute too long. By Helmut Merker

The pornography of horror

Tunisian-born writer Abdelwahab Meddeb depicts the pain and sadness afflicting Gaza, where the horror of the human race appears in all its nakedness.

Magic and guilt

The legendary German poets, Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, met and fell in love in Vienna 1948. Their electric and torturous correspondence, which continued until 1961, has now been collected in book form for the first time. Ina Hartwig on what was probably the most complicated love story in post-war Germany.

Good readers are cannibals

Kurt Flasch's book "Kampfpl�tze der Philosophie" strides across the battlefields of philosophy from Augustine to Voltaire. After a weekend spent scribbling furiously in its margins, Arno Widmann was enlightened, exhilarated and hungry for more.

Life after bankruptcy

The age of privatisation is over. Politics not the market is responsible for promoting the common good. Philosopher J�rgen Habermas talks to Thomas Assheuer about the necessity of an international world order. (Photo: Wolfram Huke)

"I am the eternal altar boy"

This year's prestigious B�chner Prize went to Austrian writer Josef Winkler. He talks to Paul Jandl about dung heaps, patriarchs, the fear of speechlessness and the elegance of John Paul II's coffin. Photo � Jerry Bauer / SV

In Moscow traffic with Walter Benjamin

Dragan Klaic was in Moscow to run a theatre workshop. He was overwhelmed by the sense of impending financial disaster and nearly missed his plane home.

It's time Kundera talked

A dementi is not enough. Milan Kundera should come out with his version of the story, because Iva Militka and Miroslav Dvoracek deserve the truth. By Anja Seeliger

"Inflation will pay!"

Iceland was determined to be a globalisation winner at any price. German-Icelandic writer Kristof Magnusson looks into the culture and history of this mini-state to find out how it became buried in debt.

Between the hammer and the anvil

Why Austria's far-right under Heinz-Christian Strache and the late J�rg Haider are celebrating their election triumph. By Doron Rabinovici

Turkey's poisoned pens

Does participation at the Frankfurt Book Fair mean making propaganda for the AKP? In Turkey, this year's guest country at the Book Fair, writers have been feuding over this issue for months. Some of them have even called for a boycott. This time, however, it's more than just a Kemalist-Islamist divide. By Constanze Letsch

Who are the citizens of Europe?

Philosopher J�rgen Habermas called for a pan-European referendum in the wake of the Irish 'No'. He overestimates the wisdom of the masses and underestimates what has been achieved up to now, counters Alfred Grosser.

Dostoevsky's dowager

Svetlana Geier's magnificent translation of Dostoevsky's "The Adolescent" brings to an end her monumental project of translating all five of the author's "elephants", or major novels, into German. Although many disparage the book as muddled, in her eyes it is Dostoevsky at his most modern. Martin Ebel has paid a visit to the Grande Dame of Russian-German translation. (Image � Niklaus Stauss)

Thomas Bernhard for life

In a major interview given a few years before his death, the irascible Austrian author Thomas Bernhard talks about the musicality of language, the eroticism of old men, the corruption of German writers, the twistedness of mankind, the similarities between Christianity and Nazism, the incurability of stupidity and what it means to be branded "Thomas Bernhard" for life. By Werner W�gerbauer (Photo � Andrej Reiser / Suhrkamp Verlag)

Radovan Karadzic and his grandchildren

Radovan Karadzic might be on trial in The Hague, but he can sit back in his Hugo Boss suit, confident that his work is done. His heirs are young, healthy and full of hate. And as far as they are concerned, the war is far from over. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic dreams of a procession of collective shame and a ritual of repentance.

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The black marketeers of Bahnhof Zoo

The idea that 1989 came out of thin air speaks volumes about historical insensitivities and limited horizons. The fall of the Berlin Wall was preceded by years of erosion and attrition. Historian Karl Schl�gel looks at the molecular movements on the margins of history that are much more powerful than any deeds of "great men".

Submission in advance

The fatwa against British Indian author Salman Rushdie was issued 20 years ago. Today, says Thierry Chervel, Islamism has the West more firmly in its grip than ever before � thanks to our left-wing intellectuals.