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Finger, Evelyn
4 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
The nudist beach war
A conflict has broken out on the Baltic island of Usedom between German nudists, adherents of the "Freikörperkultur" or free body culture, and Polish holidaymakers. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit reports from the front line in the "nude beach war". "The birthday suit is older than the swimsuit industry, and beach ordinances are younger than the nudist tradition. What people forget today is that Goethe bathed naked, Bismarck bathed naked, and the royal spa-doctor Richard Kind from Swinemünde on Usedom warned in 1828 against bathing in swimsuits, because they neutralise the beneficial effect of the pounding of the waves. ... The bathing war is as old as bathing itself. It is an irony of history that Swinemünde of all places should fall prey to prudish mores. You will never see a topless woman on the beach at Świnoujście, but you will see masses of people in various states of undress. ... Soon Poles will be warned in Polish of naked Germans, while the Germans will be warned in German of prudish Poles. The finishing touches are being put on the signs."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU enlargement, » Public Culture, » Germany, » Poland
Salomon Korn on comparing dictatorships
In an interview with Evelyn Finger, Salomon Korn, vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, criticises the German government's memorial site concept, dealing with the Nazi era and the history of the GDR. "I also have problems with the formula according to which the Nazi crimes are unique and incomparable. The Holocaust must be compared with other events; otherwise one cannot establish its uniqueness. It is in comparison that it becomes clear that the crimes of the Nazis were on a European scale and the injustice of the GDR was on a scale that covered part of Germany. If you compare what Hitler's Germany did with what the GDR did, you see on one side an inferno without precedent and on the other a gross injustice, but one which was not aimed at destroying a certain minority or other peoples."
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More from the press review on the subject » Exhibitions / Museums, » History, » Germany, » Europe
All available articles from » Salomon Korn
A film about how Germans and Polish deal with Auschwitz
Evelyn Finger was impressed by Robert Thalheim's film "Am Ende kommen die Touristen" (And Along Come Tourists), in which he decribes how people deal with the legacy of Auschwitz with a mixture of irony, light-heartedness and earnestness. "The young director, who also wrote the script for the film, explores the longing for the much-touted 'normalisation' and its impossibility through two characters who are as different from each other as could be. The young German Sven, who is doing community work to avoid compulsory military service, meets the Polish concentration camp survivor Krzeminski at the guesthouse at the Auschwitz memorial site... This is a meeting between a member of a later generation and a witness of the events, between a care-free nature and a traumatised person who isolates himself behind a wall of sullen taciturnity. While the young hero attempts in vain to break down this wall, he learns from his Polish contemporaries how difficult and at the same time straightforward life is in a small town that bears the name of the ultimate crime."
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More from the press review on the subject » Film, » History, » Germany, » Poland
Documentary theatre in Bulgaria
The Swiss director Stefan Kaegi has created a unique form of documentary theatre. Commissioned by the German Goethe Institute in Sofia he drove through Eastern Europe in a lorry converted into a travelling auditorium with one side made of glass, and has now returned to the city where his travels begun. Theatre critic Evelyn Finger attended the rehearsals: "Kaegi finds the stylised losers of trendy trash theatre as boring as the old kings. His plays have featured bee researchers, funeral speech-makers and heart transplant specialists. In 'Cargo Sofia' he has long-distance lorry drivers tell their stories. They take the magic out of the myth of boundless freedom in travel, throw light on Europe's pockets of social misery and, with their long-distance-driver perspective on Bulgaria, they torpedo the legend of the blessed democratisation of the East... Unlike most experimental theatre projects, the Cargo project's deconstructive approach focuses not on the theatre but on the world."
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More from the press review on the subject » Stage, » Switzerland, » Bulgaria
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