ArchiveAugust 2009 Life
Salt on a goat’s nose
Three decades in Africa have given writer Henning Mankell remarkable insight – By Toby Selander
Henning Mankell likes to have his tea at the old-fashioned coffee shop on Maputo’s main avenue. Here, he can still be an ordinary fellow, not a best-selling author. Years ago, the Swede came to Teatro Avenida, 100 meters away, for an aid project. Since then, he has sold millions of books and seen many African aid projects launched, some of them doomed to failure. Mankell is critical of aid policies. He prefers sustainable business investments and, most importantly, encouraging production.
As a boy, Mankell often stood by the Swedish river, Ljusnan, looking at the timber logs slowly floating by. But in his dream, the logs were crocodiles and the river was the Congo. He loved Africa long before he set foot on it.
He was 24 when he first came to Africa; since 1986, he has been artistic director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo in Mozambique. It started as an aid project financed by the Swedish government’s development organization SIDA. And since then, he has seen many other aid projects on the continent.
Beyond folklore
A Munich-based music producer highlights the new sounds of a modern, urban Africa – By Jonathan Fischer
World music from the southern hemisphere is often homogenized to conform to European sensibilities. Jay Rutledge thinks that is nonsense. His Out There label is promoting authentic African sounds.
The fascination began in Zambia in 1996. Jay Rutledge was observing the shopping trends of Zambian youth as part of field studies in preparation for his college ethnology dissertation. “They didn’t listen to the same music as their parents,” he said. “They were more into fusion, a mixture of traditional sounds with western pop.” Intrigued, Rutledge continued his research in Mali, Senegal and South Africa, making regular stops at the local music bazaars and snapping up as many cassette tapes as he could carry. And the seed of an idea was planted.
Keeping cool while flying high
High jumper Ariane Friedrich is one of Germany’s few medal hopes at the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin – By Frank Bachner
For several years, it looked as though Ariane Friedrich might waste her talent. She was more familiar with nightclubs in Frankfurt than with her local training ground. It took a jolt from her coach before she finally adopted a professional approach to her training – and she hasn’t looked back since.
The three youngsters carry their poles like lances. Then they sprint off, one after the other, each of them just a couple of meters away from Ariane Friedrich. They catapult themselves powerfully into the air. If the bar stays put, they shout excitedly. If it falls, they curse.
The emperor’s old resorts
Bansin, Heringsdorf and Ahlbeck on Usedom in the Baltic Sea are as popular today as they were 100 years ago – By Edith Kresta
At the beginning of the 20th century, the beaches of Usedom were the “bathtub” of the Berlin upper class. Later, the unions of East Germany had their holiday complexes on the island. These days, Usedom is setting records in Germany: It hosted 442,000 guests in 2008.
The train station in Heringsdorf on Usedom has escaped the fate of many others in the eastern part of Germany: Not only do trains still stop there and the station has not been abandoned to slow decrepitude, it even shines in new splendor.
Inside the Stellwerk restaurant at the station, diners sit among old first- or second-class train compartment interiors under Art Deco lamps. A small model train chugs from table to table, transporting the drinks in its freight cars. Here in the northeast, that usually means beer.
Jörg Gleissner is the cook, the manager and the waiter. His kitchen in Stellwerk is a voyage of discovery, a return to old Pomerania. His “Kidasch” is an antipasto plate à la Pomerania: honey crayfish, creamy curd balls called “Glumse,” smoked breast of duck, smoked fish balls, candied fruit in mustard syrup and smoked pickled ham.
“The people in our region have lost their traditional cuisine, partly because so little was available in the German Democratic Republic (GDR),” said Gleissner. “Crayfish meat from Kaseburg used to be world famous. Its quality was so good that it was on the menu in noble Parisian restaurants.”
Gleissner put a lot of effort into culling recipes from the turn of the last century from old newspapers and books and archiving them. And then he set up his creative niche in the train station restaurant in Heringsdorf.
Hard life in the city
Peter Fox is currently Germany’s hottest pop star – By Thomas Winkler
His first album sold a sensational 700,000 copies in less than six months. What’s the secret of Peter Fox’s success? One can grow old with his lyrics and music – and still have fun.
The greatest pop star of all time had just died when the latest German pop star decided he didn’t want to be one any more: In early July, Peter Fox announced the end of his career, which was as brief as it was successful.
The singer, whose real name is Pierre Baigorry, retired in part due to concerns over his loss of privacy on the streets of his home Berlin district of Kreuzberg. He said he wants to live a normal life but is constantly being recognized and approached. The hype surrounding him is simply getting out of hand.
The world’s young under one roof
The youth hostel movement was founded in Germany 100 years ago – By Thorsten Schatz
In 1909, the first “student hostel” opened in Altena, North Rhine-Westphalia. Today, there are more than 4,000 youth hostels in 80 countries.
In summer 1909, Richard Schirrmann (1874–1961), a teacher and adherent of the Wandervogel, part of the broader German Youth Movement, was hiking with his students from Altena to Aachen. On the evening of Aug. 26, they were taken by surprise by a thunderstorm and found shelter in an empty village schoolhouse.
Schirrmann was haunted by a vision during that night. He wrote that along with schools and gymnasiums, every “location important for hiking within a day’s march from one another” should also have “an inviting youth hostel in which without distinction young hikers would be able to retire for the night.” The “without distinction” was important to him as there were already noble lodgings for students from affluent families. However, there was not yet any kind of low-cost accommodation for those students from less well-off families.
‘Great-grandpa was a Nazi after all’
A new study shows that young Germans are becoming increasingly open-minded on the subject of their country’s national-socialist past – By Jan Kepp
For many Germans, admitting to a family involvement in National Socialism and the Holocaust was taboo for decades. But much has changed these days: The younger generation now talks with increasing openness about the culpability of their grandparents and great-grandparents.
For Germany, the Jewish history is primarily associated with shame. There were Nazis in my family too (my great-grandfather) and it’s difficult to deal with that. Of course, I don’t have anti-Semitic attitudes but there is always a sense that this accusation is there simply because one is German.”
Laboratory of modernity
A Berlin exhibition marks unprecedented cooperation between the three German Bauhaus institutions and New York’s MoMA – By Klaus Grimberg
From 1919 to 1933, Bauhaus in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin was the testing ground for a modern approach to art and architecture. The school valued experimentation as the greatest virtue – in the search for perfection of form and functionality.
The ideal was the Gothic cathedral! It was the ultimate work of art for which artists and craftsmen converged from many different countries, inspired and uplifted by their common task. This was the tenor of the Bauhaus manifesto as formulated by the movement’s first director Walter Gropius – that it should be a school whose very idea would gather individuals, creating “new associations of the crafts, of work and communities.”
Making German fun
Music and song help students learn a new language – By Nick Geretshauser
German teacher Uwe Kind saw that people remembered words and phrases better when they were set to music. From that he developed the LingoTech method, which is making language studies more popular with students around the world.
Germany is the world’s biggest exporter, a global superstar in international trade. The same cannot be said about the German language. Here is what Mark Twain had to say:
“I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested. After I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly ‘unique’ and wanted to add it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it.”
Loony ideas
Pleasure in the failures of others, according to a German saying, is the greatest pleasure of all. Buckets of this sentiment have been raining down on Madeleine Schickedanz in recent weeks. That is because the heiress to the Quelle mail-order business complained in a newspaper interview that she is now forced to live on €500 to €600 per month; that she and her husband can’t afford more than a pizza and a glass of wine when they go to a restaurant. Schickedanz, once a billionaire, has to live like many other people these days because the Arcandor conglomerate – of which Quelle is a subsidiary – is bankrupt, and Schickedanz’ stocks are only worth about €27 million these days. The heiress says that does not even cover the debts for which she has mortgaged houses, stocks, and other shares in the company. And Schickedanz does not even have the right to a state pension. A TV reporter went out rattling the collection tin, seeking donations for Schickedanz. That it should come to this! Fortunately, the failed businesswoman and her husband have a prenuptial agreement which states that the paintings in the Schickedanz villa belong to her husband.
Carrying on regardless
Dresden has lost its World Heritage status but still milks its past – By Bernhard Schulz
The construction of a four-lane bridge across the Elbe Valley in Dresden lost the city its UNESCO World Heritage listing in June. As if in defiance, the city is currently unfolding its wealth of cultural treasures in magnificent style.
The dispute split the citizens of Dresden. The bridge has been built right across the Elbe Valley, which was until recently a UNESCO World Heritage site. Some see it as a curse; others regard it as a blessing. The city’s traffic problems are immense and a daily annoyance to its residents. The bridge holds the promise of relief for the city center – and to many of its inhabitants, that is more important than the honorable title of UNESCO World Heritage site. Especially because the tourists continue to arrive – in the millions – regardless of whether the city has that designation or not.