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From the Feuilletons

The Feuilletons this week were preoccupied by two issues: child abuse by the Catholic Church, and (again!) copy-paste abuse by the young German writer Helene Hegemann. The FAZ looks back at the days when castration was considered an acceptable method of producing angelic voices. Die Zeit looks to the narcissistic principle of similarity in a patriarchal society for an explanation. On the eve of the Leipzig Book Fair, a list of German writers, G�nter Grass and Christa Wolf among them, sign a petition against plagiarism - although, as we discover, Christa Wolf might be considered a pioneer in such matters herself.

"Don't let this become a witch hunt"

The Austrian writer Josef Haslinger talks about his sexual encounters with paedophile priests as a boy in a Catholic boarding school. Instead of joining the chorus of moral outrage, he acknowledges the full spectrum of feelings that these episodes provoked, and argues that simple criminalisation is not the way forward.
Photo: Josef Haslinger by Tom Langdon

Magazine Roundup

The New York Times investigates the new hunger for reality. In Salon, Andrzej Stasiuk sees only individual realities. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, the ethnologist Tomasz Rakowski describes the reality of the Polish poor mines. Sometimes you can turn reality on its head, El Pais reads in the Financial Times. Le Monde diplomatique gives the low-down on the ACTA talks. And the New Yorker dreams of less polish and a bit more grit.

Kapuscinki's poetic license

Artur Domoslawksi's biography "Ryszard Kapuscinski non-fiction" sparked controversy even before it was published. Not only does it show the legendary reporter warts and all, it also shows where the reportage ends and fiction begins.� Polityka's Daniel Passent meets the author who, in spite of it all, still regards Kapuscinski as his friend and master.

Call the spade a spade

Since its publication in January, Helene Hegemann's novel "Axolotl Roadkill" has been at the centre of a debate whose vagaries of terminology have allowed the seriousness of the case to be downplayed. Philipp Theisohn wishes the literary establishment would drop all its talk of intertextuality in favour of a more democratic category: plagiarism.

Talking to the lord of pain

The director Werner Herzog is the president of the jury at this, the 60th Berlinale. Katja Nicodemus met him in Los Angeles to discuss burning Lilliputians, how it feels like to be unsuccessfully shot at, and the life of a lone Bavarian wolf in Hollywood.

The attack of the 13th fairy

Filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge is no optimist, but he knows ways out of the present. Freitag magazine engages him in a conversation about the World Wide Web, dragonflies, the belief in better human beings and why he likes "gardener" as a job description.

Herta M�ller recommends Liu Xiaobo for Nobel Peace Prize

In a letter to the Nobel Foundation, Herta M�ller expresses her support for the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize, "because in the face of countless threats from the Chinese regime and great risk to his life, he has fought unerringly for the freedom of the individual."

The apathy and the ecstasy

Riding the retro wave, singers from across the spectrum of popular music have brought back falsetto with a vengeance. While this is mostly in homage to bygone styles and idols, it has also introduced new nuances of meaning. Ueli Bernays traces falsetto's high-pitched passage from expression to gimmick and back.

Citizen journalism in Iran

Thirty years of superficial reporting by the Western press neglected the build up to the current turmoil in Tehran. Iranians are not risking their lives because of an alleged election fraud last June, but because they have endured thirty years of brutality, humiliation and frustration. By Haideh Daragahi

Musicology and mass execution

Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht was one of Germany's most influential musicologists. His magnum opus "Music in the Occident" sits on the shelves of many a music lover. Ten years after his death, historian Boris von Haken has now revealed that Eggebrecht was involved in mass shootings of Jews during the Second World War.

Minaret and swastika

To advocate the Swiss minaret ban with the arguments of Anne Applebaum, Henryk Broder and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is to apply to the sort of fundamentalist logic which the west left behind - historically speaking - an amazingly short time ago. If we don't want to return to a pre-1648 world, Gustav Seibt argues, what we need now is two-way tolerance.
photo:hewy

The element of madness

The history of German terrorism was also the story of the amour fou between Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader. But this affair caused the breakup of Ensslin's relationship with Bernward Vesper, who was also the father of her child. Their letters, dating from 1968/69, while Ensslin was in Stammheim, offer profound insights into the political pathology of the time. By Gerd Koenen.

Not in our name!

The path of gentrification has, more often than not, been paved by artists. But Hamburg's creative community wants to jam the economic development machine instead. Here is their manifesto.

The 'execution' of a young Kurd

On November 11, Ehsan Fattahian, a 28-year old Kurdish freedom fighter, was dealt 'sudden death' in a prison in the Kurdish province of Iran. Nobody was present at the execution and no medical certificate was released. The same fate has befallen any number of demonstrators who took part in the protests after the elections, and lays ahead for 12 other political prisoners in jails throughout Iran. By Ahmad Eskandari

Protected by pictures

Ai Weiwei - the modest megalomaniac, the relaxed rebel. Hanno Rauterberg met China's most interviewed man in the cellar of Munich's Haus der Kunst, where the artist was preparing to turn the place into a battlefield.

Travelling on one leg

"Herta M�ller has eyes like spotlights that drive out the darkness night after night." So begins Verena Auffermann's portrait of this year's literary Nobel laureate, in her book about 99 women writers, "Leidenschaften".

Ode to Herta M�ller

Romanian novelist Mircea Cartarescu celebrates Herta M�ller's Nobel Prize, raising his glass to a writer with an inner sword and a literary style that is pure poetry.

On the wrong side of the coin

Oleg Yuriev takes a black tomcat to the crossroads on Christmas Eve to gain new perspectives on the mysterious nature of money and why it always vanishes.

The future of Iranian feminism

Shadi Sadr, an Iranian feminist and human rights activist working as a lawyer and journalist, was released on bail from Tehran's Evin prison last Tuesday. Haideh Daragahi looks at an article written by Sadr, which may have triggered her arrest. It is a blueprint for the future of the Iranian women's movement and how it should relate to the new movement for change that is rocking Iran.

"I wanted to fly away"

Alham Abrahimnejad is a women's rights activist who fled Iran two years ago and now lives in Berlin. She talks to Waltraud Schwab about her fear of being sent back home, the soul of the Iranian protest and her lack of freedom in Germany.

The radical loser

The social sciences have failed in their analyses of amok killers, frenzied murderers and the terrorist mind. And yet one look is enough to identify the culprit: the radical loser. By Hans Magnus Enzensberger

The "Islam in Europe" debate

Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Are the rights of the group higher than those of the individual? With a fiery polemic against Ian Buruma's "Murder in Amsterdam" and Timothy Garton Ash's review of this book in the New York Review of Books, Pascal Bruckner has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek, Paul Cliteur, Lars Gustafsson, Stuart Sim, Ulrike Ackermann, Adam Krzeminski, Halleh Ghorashi, Bassam Tibi and Margriet de Moor have all stepped into the ring.

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Securitate in all but name

UPDATE: Herta M�ller wins the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009. Twenty years after Ceausescu's execution, his secret service is still active - only its name has changed. Secret files are being manipulated; shadowing and smear campaigns continue. For the first time, Romanian-born German writer Herta M�ller describes her long history of Securitate persecution, uncertain of how much she has yet to endure.

Jolly eschatology

Claus Leggewie and Harald Welzer have written a book about the end of the world as we knew it. Jan Feddersen grills them on climate change and the role of democracy in a political system that has had no new ideas since the fall of the Wall.