Play at the National Maritime Museum's The Adventures of Tintin at Sea exhibit! I like the "Sort It Out" game best because it allows me to practice my poor French.
Or you might want to explore the vast image collections the museum offers. They've got more seascapes - scroll down to #13 - than you ever imagined possible (or necessary). I'm being snide but the museum's website is really pretty impressive, it's worth a look around.
[via The Big Smoker]
Wow. Takahisa Matsuura has posted a fantastic catalogue of images of the Berlin Wall from 1986-88. This is a really amazing record.
[via Plasticthinking >> Ostblog]
Ostblog notes two more reviews of Rellin's book, Klar, bin ich eine Ostfrau!. Almut Schröter at Neues Deutschland is ambivalent; Barbara Bollwahn at the taz more critical:
Because you don't interrupt the women [you interview], their narratives often become excessive, tiresome, or simply flat. For example, when Jutta, who lost a lot of weight after the Wende, says, "It was great that my body showed me the border [in myself?*]." Or Greta: "What Lenin said was true: neo-liberalism will fail." You're not doing these women any favors by seeing everything about them in a positive light, giving us a 1 to 1 representation of them. And: please tell me what exactly is so surpising about the fact that east German women show their children the same Russian fairytale cartoons that they watched as children? Or that it was easier in the East to be happy because there was 'less' all around?
*not so sure about this one, Grenze meaning the wall or Grenze meaning boundary in general?
Over at Fistful of Euros a secondary discussion has sprung up in Edward's post about German outsourcing: where does "fair use" fit into blogging? I wonder about this often when I paraphrase or translate from other sources. I'm sure there are other, more fully-developed discussions of this somewhere online, any pointers?
Caspar David Friedrich's Der Watzmann is back in the collection of the Berlin National Gallery, although it never really left. The painting was recently established (or let's say the Berlin museums recently recognized this fact) as having been a "Notverkauf," a bail-out of sorts. The original owners, the Brunn family, sold the work to the National Gallery in 1937 and then used the proceeds to pay the "Reichsfluchtsteuer," the fee extracted by the Nazi bureaucracy for leaving Germany. In compliance with a 1999 declaration of the foundation in charge of Berlin's museums, the museum returned the work to the heirs of the original owners (this is the second case in which they've done so) and the work was then promptly purchased by the Deka-Bank, who turned the painting back over to the National Gallery in the form of a permanent loan. Here's the government's coverage of the presentation of the painting to the Gallery, complete with smiling politicians. The implication in some of the coverage of this process is that in the future, it's going to be up to sources other than the state to preserve Germany's "cultural history;" in this particular case, the SMPK, the organization of Berlin museums, could never have afforded the multiple millions of Euros needed to buy the painting from its new/old owners.
[Coverage at the Tagesspiegel and the Morgenpost.]
Remember the Berlin bank scandal? Here's the BBC's 2001 coverage, in case you don't. Basically the Bankgesellschaft Berlin, in which the city has a 57% share, went bust on loans it had given to finance rebuilding Berlin. The city projected an additional $2.6 billion would have to be spent to fix this problem, adding to an already monumental debt and basically securing Berlin's bankruptcy. That's how I understood it, anyway.
Last weekend was the premier of Bankenstück, Lutz Hübner's drama about the bank affair, directed by Volker Hesse. I haven't seen the show but love the fact that Berlin's theatre scene tolerates a rendition of recent/current politics (see the Neuköllner Oper's production of Angela, about CDU head Angela Merkel, in 2002).
The reviews of Hesse's production are divided, as one might expect, between those who just enjoy the parody of Berlin politics and those who were looking for a more in-depth, perhaps journalistic angle on the story. Hübner's story is a futuristic fantasy, a nod to Brecht, with perhaps a heavier hand: the people of Berlin get to take The Banks to task for their crimes against the citizenry (I think I've got this right; anyone seen it?). A short-lived revolution follows:
"We learn nothing about the so-called bank scandal, the collapse of the Bankgesellschaft Berlin and the (to this day) barely foreseeable consequences of that billion-dollar bankruptcy...Oh, what drama. You can't help but become a reactionary [watching it]. It sways in populist tones back and forth between the fall of 1989 ('We are the People'), the Argentine and Haitian uprisings against poverty, and the Attac demonstrations against globalization. As if the conditions [in Berlin] were comparable in the slightest . Marauding amazons throw tires around the necks of bankers, pour gasoline over them, thrust cigarette lighters into the air with a lusty, threatening gesture. The director doesn't spare the action scenes and the stilted theatrical violence. Ah, harmless revelry." [Rüdiger Schaper at the Tagesspiegel]
See also Ulrich Seidler's review at the Berliner Zeitung, and this interview with Hübner at Spiegel Online.
Invisible Adjunct is stopping production. I'll miss IA terribly. And only today I was thinking about how blogging and blog-reading makes me smarter (than I otherwise would be), and what a huge role IA and all the participants there play in my learning. What a selfish way to look at it, no? On the other hand, I'm glad that someone who's decided to leave academia can do so, and I'm confident that IA's alter ego will find succes in other venues.
This is the first time I've been part of a web community breaking up. It's weird.
I've just started participating in Living in Europe, where I guess I'll be a remote observer. Thanks to A Fistful of Euros for the pointer.
Mel's film has started in German cinemas. In preparation, the German Bishop's Conference, the Jewish Council, and the Protestant Church have issued a warning about the film's potential for use as antisemitic propaganda. I'll translate the main points of the statement presently. Meantime, here's a link to the Bischofskonferenz with the text of the declaration.
Here's an excerpt:
As the preceding discussion has shown, a further problem lies in the film's depiction of the Jews who participated...Independent of whether or not the [filmaker's] intent was antisemitic, there is a danger that the film might be used for the purpose of antisemitic propaganda. While the film does contain suggestions of differentiated depictions of jewish figures, it conjures an overall impression of a negative image, for example, that of the High Council and larger segments of the Jewish people. The film's depictions run the risk of reinvigorating antisemitic prejudices. This is especially explosive given the current situation in Europe, in which there is a recognizable growth of antisemitic tendencies.
We warn collectively and expressly against any use of this film or of the sufferings of Jesus in the service of antisemitic propaganda. The Christian churches have expressly declared that anti-Judaicism is a part of Christian historic guilt. [The churches] reject the thesis of the collective guilt of the Jewish people and every form of antisemitism and racism. The relationship between Christians and Jews today is characterized by a common respect and recognition. We call for all responsible parties to ensure that these good relationships are not damaged by any instrumentalization of the sufferings of Jesus that might be traced to this film.
Ostblog has noted recently (here, here, and here) reactions to Martina Rellin's book Klar bin ich eine Ost-Frau!. The publisher says:
In the tradition of Maxie Wander, Martina Rellin writes a remarkable and authentic book that sheds light on the differences and commonalities between East and West...In the process she makes the surprising discovery that eastern women are less oriented towards consumption, less anti-desire [lusfeindlich], more life-affirming, self-assured, and more willing to take risks than their counterparts in the West. And the experience of the Wende has left them even stronger than they already were.
Sounds like a good read, right? To be tied to Wander is a real honor; Wander's Guten Morgen, du Schöne is widely considered the most important description of women's lives in the GDR. Like Wander, Rellin conducted interviews with East German women (14 of them). But the response to Rellin's book (which I haven't read yet) is tepid at best. It seems that Rellin, a West German who's lived in the East for ten years still has something of the "Besserwisser" in her. Not to say "Besserwessi;" her position as a transplanted westerner shouldn't preclude her being able to make accurate or even insightful observations based on the interviews she conducted. But it seems that Rellin employs a lot of cliches. Marika Bent at the Märkische Allgemeine writes,
Whereas Maxie Wander wanted to convey a critical image of society, Rellin is interested in confirming her own image of the savvy, energetic, tolerant Eastern woman, whom she herself would like to emulate. Thus the book becomes suspenseful at certain points at which the interviewees fall out of these particular pigeonholes: "Lots of people in the West are just too lazy to work," says the organic farmer Conny, without even noticing the insulting stereotype she's using. Eastern women are, after all, just people (but so are Western women).
Hmm. Seems to put the lie to the publisher's description; repeating someone's stereotyped notion of the West German is no way to "shed light on the differences between East and West."
Birgit Walter at the Berliner Zeitung writes a terrific, scathing review of the book in which she focuses on Rellin's notion of the kind of life a woman should try to lead, tying womanhood to 'having it all:'
[The right kind of life to lead is] that of Eastern women, because they practice the lifestyle of "Full-time employment with child." Western women, on the other hand, "haven't yet internalized this necessity."[...]The single thesis of the book consists of the already sufficiently accepted fact that many more women were employed in the East than in the West...She posits that "the topic of the Ostfrau is becoming more and more current," because eastern women have "answers to questions we're increasingly concerned with." Rellin's answers are very simple: be self-assured, work, have children, save the nation from extinction, and then, well, you'll never be depressed again.
I think as more reviews are published this will develop into an interesting public discussion of East German identity past and present. Can't wait to have a look at the book myself.
Ostblog finds a FT write-up of Das Magazin, a long-running culture rag with offices right down the street from our house in Schroederstrasse. (Sigh.) They're celebrating their 80th year. The website offers little bits of current and older articles, including the sex columnist, Beate Kruse. Get it? Like Beate Uhse, only, well, Kruse. As in "cruise." Or maybe I've got that all wrong.
Henry at Crooked Timber posts about a recent Pew survey of antisemitism in Europe. It reminded me of the data released in Germany late last year, which showed different results, apparently, than the Pew study found:
23% of the 1301 people surveyed were found to have “latent antisemitic attitudes” compared to 20% three years earlier.
28% (versus 21% in 1998) agreed that Jews have “too much influence in the world.”
35% (versus 25% in 1998) agreed that Jews feel bound first and foremost to Israel rather than the country in which they live.
The study was conducted by Forsa; its publication corresponded nicely with the Hohmann-Affair.
Wow. Eighties pop groups gave away computer games on their records for play on the Sinclair.
[via Things.]
Since I was looking for an image of the Palast der Republik...
Ostblog linked to the homepage of Faltplatte, a company that makes paper models of socialist-era buildings in Berlin. We own the Stalinallee/K-M-Allee editions, though we've left them in the plastic because we'd actually rather put them in a frame some day than build them. There's something really appealing about flat models, with all the tabs and upside-down pieces.
We bought up a bunch of the postcards, too, which I see are now sold out; I'm sure they'll reprint them.
I also looked online, without success, for the Mitteldeutscher-Kartonmodell Verlag, which manufactures paper models as well. A friend gave us one of an apartment building in Henningsdorf, and it's a specific, uninteresting building that people live/d in. I thought that was a nice concept and would have liked to get more models of every-day, small-town buildings rather than just the big historical ones in Berlin. And frankly I'd like some of those monstrosities in Wedding, too.
Der Prignitzer reports that Dresden's Kupferstichkabinett has returned to its original location in the residential Palace. The collection of nearly 510,000 prints had been stored in the decorative arts museum while the Residenz was being renovated. The inaugural exhibition will open at the end of April.
Here's the homepage of the "Initiative Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit," the other group calling for a split from the SPD.
Die letzten Jahre, insbesondere aber die Politik der sozialdemokratisch geführten Bundesregierung in den letzten Monaten haben gezeigt: Die SPD hat sich von ihren Grundsätzen verabschiedet. Entgegen ihrer Wahlversprechen von 1998 und 2002, die sie als eine Alternative zur neoliberalen Politik der Vorgängerregierungen erscheinen ließen, hat sie sich zur Hauptakteurin des Sozialabbaus und der Umverteilung von unten nach oben entwickelt. Niemand von uns hatte erwartet, dass eine Partei mit so großer sozialer Tradition in so kurzer Zeit zum Kanzlerwahlverein mutiert, dessen aktuelle Politikziele nahezu alles negieren, wofür diese Partei in über hundert Jahren stand.[keep reading for English]
In the recent politics of the social-democrat-led federal government, especially in the last few months, we have seen that the SPD has removed itself from its basic principles.
The SPD's promises during the 1998 and 2002 elections made it seem like an alternative to the neo-liberal politics of its immediate predecessors; but it contradicted those promises, becoming a leading actor in the dismantling of the social system and the reappropriation of wealth from those on the bottom to those at the top.
None of us could have anticipated that a party with such a great social tradition could have mutated into an [incumbent's club] whose current political goals negate nearly everything that this party has stood for over the past hundred years.
An update on my last entry: The FR reports that the SPD has in fact begun the process to strip the membership of the 6 people responsible for planning to form a splinter party. These are, apparently, 5 union members from Bavaria and a Hamburg professor. The plan is to deprive them of their party voting rights for three months, but they might not actually be kicked out, if, for example, they were to retract their signatures. How will this progress and, really, does it matter?
Update: further reading at the FR:
Hinter dem Projekt stehen bundesweit vor allem zwei Bewegungen. In Bayern haben linke Gruppierungen unter tatkräftiger Anleitung von IG-Metall-Funktionären eine "Initiative Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit" ins Leben gerufen. Die Gruppe tritt für ein "sozial gerecht finanziertes Gemeinwesen ein", sagt der Schweinfurter IG-Metall-Chef Klaus Ernst. Daneben wirkt die "Wahlalternative", bei der Mitabeiter der Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft Verdi ebenso mit von der Partie sind wie enttäuschte SPD- und PDS-Mitglieder oder auch Vertreter von Attac und Sozialverbänden.[translation]
And: at the site of the Wahlpolitische Alternative, the group in question, a few words on the whys and wherefores, including a position paper (which I haven't read yet): "Die Wahlergebnisse und Mitgliederentwicklung der Sozialdemokratie zeigen, dass viele BürgerInnen sich von der Politik der Agenda 2010 getäuscht fühlen." [The election results and membership development of social democracy reveal that many citizens are disappointed with the politics of Agenda 2010.] The group was formed in order to give voice to those disaffected voices, who will meet at the beginning of June to clarify their position.
** I wonder if this is comparable in any way to the feelings that mobilized people behind Howard Dean (initially at least). Now, I don't harbor much hope that Kerry signals a remaking of the Democratic party, but certainly at one point there was a widespread belief that the party does need to be reformed.
Two nationwide movements are the primary forces behind the project. In Bavaria, leftist groups, under the firm leadership of IG Metall functionaries called for an "Initiative for work and social justice." The group seeks "a community that is funded in a socially just manner", says Schweinfurt's IG-Metall head Klaus Ernst. Working alongside them are the "Election alternative", made up of colleagues from the service industry union Verdi as well as disaffected SPD and PDS members, and representatives from Attach and social organizations.
For a week or so I've been reading rumors of disgruntled SPD members threatening to
found their own party. Here's a recent write-up from the Süddeutsche:
Nach Medienberichten verfolgen zwei Initiativen die Gründung einer neuen Partei links von der SPD. Dazu sollen Gewerkschaftsmitglieder und Sozialdemokraten gehören...Allerdings bemüht sich die SPD auch, den Konflikt herunterzuspielen und ihren parteiinternen Kritikern entgegenzukommen. Die Partei müsse klarstellen, „dass wir immer wieder Brücken bauen, auch in das Lager von Kritikern hinein“, so Schartau.
Nicht jeder Kritiker der SPD wolle jedoch „gleich eine Partei gründen“, fügte Schartau hinzu. Vielmehr gebe es insbesondere in Bayern „einige wenige“, die zur Gründung einer neuen Partei aufrufen.
So: how likely is this? And what are the possible consequences for the SPD, for the German political landscape in general were it to happen? I remember reading that the PDS wanted to change its image after its awful defeats in the last election...is there room for another left-wing party? How would its goals be different from those of the PDS, the SPD, the Greens? Or any other smaller, left-oriented parties?
I suppose this is all totally speculative, since no one has yet (that I've read) come out and stated their intentions formally. The SPD has declared that anyone who does so will be kicked out of the party. Well, duh.
According to press reports, two groups within the party are pursuing the creation of a new party to the left of the SPD. The groups are said to consiste of union members and social democrats...
The SPD is making an effort to downplay the conflict and to respond to the party's internal critics. The party needs to be clear "that we will always build bridges, even into the camps of our critics," says Schartau [head of the SPD in NRW].
And not every critic of the SPD wants "to go out and found a new party," continued Schartau; rather there are, especially in Bavaria, "a few" people calling for the foundation fo a new party.
Read Lucas Kovar's paper, on Electron Band Structure In Germanium, here. No, really, read it now. It's hard to be an undergrad in the sciences.
[via Crooked Timber.]
"Spring Breeeeeak! Yeah!" - Milhouse
I am facing a "week off." This of course means that I don't have any time off, but I do have a little more time to focus on some of the things that I desperately need to finish. The first of these will be the paper I'm giving on Kunst in der DDR on a panel about Ostalgie at the Conference of the Popular Culture Association next month.
When I proposed the paper, we were in the thick of the most recent Ostalgie craze, and I was a little annoyed to see the Berlin Nationalgalerie's exhibition mentioned in conjunction with the sensationalizing tv shows and even Good Bye Lenin, because I saw KidDDR as an anomaly within the rest of the nostalgic reminiscence that was going on. Now the challenge is to articulate why (if indeed) it was different.
I remember reading sometime around January, in places I can no longer find, that the wave of nostalgia for the GDR was over. Seemed unlikely to me at the time, and now as I look around to see what people are saying about it at the moment, I see that the general consensus is that Ostalgie is still with us.
Seriously: Andreas Krause at the Berliner Zeitung:
Kritiker dieser Kuschel-DDR fürchten die Verharmlosung der untergegangenen Diktatur. Das ist ja gerade der Zweck des ganzen Zaubers. Man kann von der Popkultur kaum verlangen, in schöner Ausgewogenheit die Ergebnisse historischer Forschung unter die Leute zu bringen. Zumal es bei der Ostalgie nicht um die DDR, sondern um das Verhältnis der Deutschen zu sich selbst fast 15 Jahre nach der Wende geht.
And less seriously: A report on the furniture store Möbel Höffner, which is selling mugs bearing the emblem of the GDR (or an alternate design with a Trabi). The director of the Stasi-Memorial in Hohenschönhausen protests that this is a "slap in the face" for victims of the regime. (Here's the Berliner Zeitung's extremely unimpressed reaction to the same thing.) This was all a few weeks ago, though; might be water under the bridge now.
[update: Ah, yes; one of the places I had read about the end of Ostalgie was here, at a trustworthy source.]
"Oh, Rosalind, Barbara, Michael, and Annette et alia, how foolish and arrogant you all were. Some of us knew it then, but now it is confirmed in your own words..."
John Perreault at ArtsJournal reviews Amy Newman's Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974. Perrault sums up:
What blood was spilt! What spleen was spewn! (Or whatever you do with spleen.) And it continues. But who now cares? It just makes a good, mean story. Some may wax nostalgic for a time when a handful of people called the art-world shots, but I don't. Did we really want Fried and Krauss deciding what great art was? Someone had to be the opposition, so Earth Art could emerge. As we see, it certainly did emerge in the person of Robert Smithson. Smithson, as several report, somehow managed to rescue Leider from the clutches of Clem.
Browsing through der Tagesspiegel today I came across this photo gallery of the Terra Cotta soldiers currently on display in the Palast der Republik.
What I had meant to find were images of the Palace itself: a Google image search was very productive. Perhaps most interesting was this page at Arbeiterfotografie (even though the use of java there is annoying and unnecessary).
Spurred by a story in the Post (for which I have no link because you have to register), Andrew writes about the cottage creativity industry in Berlin. Things are looking dreary.
A quibble: The original article misrepresents the Kulturbrauerei which, to my mind, has long since ceased to be very interesting (though we did see a Trail of Dead show there). Not that the MiniMal isn't a nice grocery store, but the bug-themed restaurant SODA is sort of limited in scope, the movie theatre shows (gasp) mainstream movies, and there's a Bavarian-esque restaurant that just doesn't jive with the P-berg flava. This is no arty, rad social space. Or has the Bavarian placed closed?
From Stanford's GDR poster collection, seen at Ostblog.
At Invisible Adjunct, an excellent offshoot discussion of lecture and discussion methods in the college classroom. Struggling with all of this myself at the moment...
At Ostblog, I read about the landfill where the asbestos-laden scrap from the Palace of the Republic had landed, out along the Havel somewhere (full story at the Märkische Allgemeine). It got me wondering what the status of the Palace's dismantling was, and I found this interesting story at the MDR, which tried to trace all of the stuff left inside the building: dishes, furniture, fixtures, etc:
Wir finden heraus, dass vor allem das Geschirr des Palastes in einem Antiquitätenladen am Berliner Kuhdamm gelandet ist. 3,5 Millionen Teile hatte der Inhaber übernommen. Offensichtlich hatte er das richtige Gespür: Die Nachfrage war so groß, dass es mittlerweile kein einziges vollständiges Service mehr gibt, nur noch Einzelstücke. Nach Angaben des Händlers waren es vor allem Westberliner, die sich für die Hinterlassenschaften aus dem Palast interessiert haben, vom Arbeiter bis zum Promi.
Darn. No Palast-Geschirr for me, I guess. I'm still looking around to see what the schedule for tearing down the building is.
Mini-Update: Neues Deutschland reports on the coming "invasion" of Chinese terra-cotta soldiers in the Palace, where they'll be on display from late March until the end of June. Apparently the construction company had to re-install steel beams and electricity, and come up with things like emergency exits, to the tune of about 40 thousand Euro. Nothing like investing in a ruin-to-be!
