Spotlight on Germany

Being Black should be completely unremarkable in today’s multicultural Germany. Yet many people still struggle with everyday discrimination and sometimes even blatant racism. Their stories are increasingly finding their way into German literature.
 

Photographer Tobias Zielony is known for his photographs of young people from disadvantaged urban regions. An interview about his work and the boundaries between realism and reporting.

Like research laboratories for the literary world, magazines present new voices, provide space for experimentation, and test formats. And right now diversity is higher than ever before.

For decades, Maria Eichhorn has critically explored both social power relations and the art system itself in her work. Now she has an exhibition planned for the German Pavilion at the 2022 Biennale in Venice.

Katharina Grosse is fascinated by how colour can transform places and materials: her gigantic spray gun artworks have taken her to the world’s largest exhibition halls.

The Kultursymposium Weimar has just taken place with many exciting contributions on the topic of “Generations” that absolutely nobody should have missed.

In May 2021, Germany is celebrating a special art centenary on what would have been legendary artist Joseph Beuys’ 100th birthday. We look at what made the provocative lateral thinker tick.

He was a poet and a lawyer, theatre director and naturalist, politician and traveller – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an all-rounder and his interests varied greatly. His aim was always – to make the best of life.

Whether in the Bundestag or in city and town halls, women are underrepresented in German politics. We explore the reasons and possible solutions.

2020 was a year of great upheavals, a turning point. The pop and electronic music sectors had to grapple with the basic question of how to make a living amid a pandemic, ensuing crisis and concrete policy decisions.

You read and hear in the media at regular intervals that people are either moving to the country or moving away from it. What is really going on? Is it an urban or a rural exodus? Where are Germans going?

The image of the moody teenager who thinks politics is just boring is outdated. The Fridays for Future movement has shown how enthusiastic young people can be about democratic processes and political issues. It would seem then, that an overhaul of the voting laws is long overdue. 

Thousands have taken to the streets in Germany to protest the government’s Coronavirus policies. Driven by very different motivations, the protests have created an intersection of new agers, conspiracy theorists and far-right radicals.

Signing petitions, booking a visit to the local swimming pool, home schooling – all kinds of everyday things work digitally today. Those who have no access to the internet or who have only limited digital skills could be marginalized in our society.

In the worst case, targeted disinformation can become a real and present threat to our democracy. A number of initiatives in Germany have responded by taking on the mission of fact checking information on the net. 

A young generation of directors is taking German cinema in a new direction with intercultural perspectives, unusual narratives, and novel aesthetic approaches.

One in every four Germans listens to podcasts, and in the United States it is one in every two people. What makes the audio programs so popular and who is involved in the German-speaking podcast scene?

One year into the coronavirus pandemic, most people are tired of all the restrictions. How can they be inspired to embrace less consumerism for an ecological transformation? Sociologist Harald Welzer is confident that changing the narrative and positive visions will do the trick.

Germans feel a deep affinity for the forest that was uniquely expressed in the art of the Romantic Age. Now though, this place of dreams and yearning has become a poorly patient with a long and troubling medical history. 

Germany’s most sustainable towns and cities rely on the participation of their residents. Quite a lot can be achieved even with comparatively few financial resources.