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From the Feuilletons

SPD politician and Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin has published a book about the state of the nation that has had the media and politicians hopping mad for an entire week. "Deutschland schafft sich ab" firmly locates the blame for the decline of Germany with the country's fast-growing Muslim population. We present a selection of the voices from the booming chorus of disapproval and the few who have dared to say that much of this criticism is missing the point.

The nanosecond of happiness

UPDATE: Christoph Schlingensief has died. Regarded by many as a genius, for others he was a provocateur or merely a con artist. While still undergoing chemotherapy he travelled to Burkino Faso to oversee work on the opera village which is being built there on his instigation. His memoirs are due to be published in September. He talked to Thomas David about his obsession with Africa, the importance of disturbing the peace and why he didn't become the man he wanted to be.

What, yet another neglected genius?

This year's theatre festival in Bregrenz hosted the world premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Auschwitz opera "The Passenger" from 1968. His biographer David Fanning introduces the life and music of this incredibly prolific composer, whose work somehow failed to emerge from the shadows of the Iron Curtain.

Magazine Roundup

The Hungarian magazines are thrilled to be able to read Herta M�ller's "Everything I Own I Carry With Me". In the Bl�tter, J�rgen Habermas calls for an extension of human rights into the social sphere. In La regle du jeu, big name European intellectuals defend their Croatian colleague Predrag Matvejevitch, who faces imprisonment for describing an ultra-nationalist Croatian poet as the "Catholic Taliban". Slate wants to know whether Nabokov's poem "Pale Fire" was meant seriously or not. The TLS meets radical feminists with fabulous names - like the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre. Przekroj looks at the two types of Turkish cinema. And in the NYT, Jay Rosen explains why the Internet is eroding America's most beautiful ideal.

Blindly working through the past

Former East-German novelist Christa Wolf has spent a lifetime writing against forgetting and the repression of guilt. But the will to remember, it seems, has not been enough to prevent her from doing exactly that. Her biographer J�rg Magenau reviews her new autobiographical novel "Stadt der Engel", which ends in Death Valley. Perhaps 'dead end' would have been more to the point. Photo:�Susanne Schleyer

Composed in delirious time

Robert Schumann was born 200 years ago on June 8. The conductor and composer Heinz Holliger, who has devoted his life to the study of Romantic master, talks to Claus Spahn about the his labyrinthine imagination, erudition and incredible modernity. He also dispels a string of clichees that have consigned so much of the Schumann's work to musical oblivion.

Right life in the wrong life

Joachim Gauck was a leading oppositional figure in the GDR. After the fall of the Wall he became the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Files. He is now director of the "Against Forgetting � For Democracy" association in Berlin and has just been nominated as a candidate for the next German president. He talks to Joachim G�nther about Ossis and Wessis, opposition, conformism, and the long-term psychological effects of a dictatorial regime.

Thailand has woken up

Apitchatpong Weeresathakul, the Thai film maker who has just won the Palme d'Or in Cannes, talks to Cristina Nord about the political situation in his country and his films.

When religion and culture part ways

Olivier Roy is one of Europe's leading experts on Islam. His new book "Holy Ignorance" is due to be published this autumn. Eren G�vercin talks to him about issues central to the debate about Islam in Europe, from revolutionary milleniarism to Muslim Luthenarianism.

The Russians must reflect on the evildoings

The historically strained relations between Russia and Poland seem to be improving at long last, thanks to the considerable show of Russian sympathy at the funeral of the Polish president Lech Kaczynski. It remains to be seen whether these positive developments will continue beyond a short-lived expression of mourning. An interview with Arseni Roginski, the president of the Russian human rights organisation "Memorial", by Ulrich M. Schmid.

"Don't turn your backs now"

Hungary swung sharply to the right in its recent elections, in what the new premier Victor Orban called "the great transition". Peter Nadas talks to J�rg Lau about the lack of stability in his country on the eve of its EU presidency, and about the responsibility of the west.

The scramble for Timbuktu

In Timbuktu, Islamic Africa is rediscovering its written culture. Charlotte Wiedemann travelled to the site of the oldest library south of the Sahara to report on the race for influence over this ancient heritage, played out on a small stage of sand and parchment.

"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

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.

Compromise, consensus and knee-capping

The Dutch polder model is under threat. The PVV party of Dutch Islam critic Geert Wilders stands a good chance of victory in the next elections, which have been been brought forward to June. In the election campaign the Dutch elite will be hard pushed to steer political debate or discuss key issues in any nuanced way. By Hans Maarten van den Brink

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.

Herta M�ller's novel "Everything I Own I Carry With Me"

The new novel by Nobel laureate Herta M�ller tells of a harrowing experience which will leave an indelible stamp on its survivor for the rest of his life. Her book stems from interviews with the poet Oskar Pastior and other Gulag survivors. An excerpt in English.

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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Chalk and the abyss

As rector of the Albert Ludwig University in the winter of 1933/34, Martin Heidegger gave a seminar which was said to contain decisive evidence of the total identification of his teachings with the principles of Hitlerism. Now, thanks to his son Hermann Heidegger, the secret transcripts of this seminar "On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History and the State" have been published for the first time. By Alexander Kissler

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.