A review of German culture in the English-language media

What’s New

One world ending, another about to begin

One world ending, another about to begin

Amrun, "a Hark Bohm film by Faith Akin," is a coming-of-age story based on Bohm's own childhood on a North Sea island at the end of World War II.  (The Wall Street Journal, 4/16/26; The New Yorker, 4/18/26)  
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“A divided person in a divided culture in a divided land”

“A divided person in a divided culture in a divided land”

Tilda Swinton is reviving her role in Manfred Karge's one-woman play, Man to Man, thirty-eighty years (!) after she first performed it—with two new scenes that depict the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reemergence of the far right—translated by Anthony Vivis and Stephen Unwin.  (The Guardian, 9/10/26; Time…
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A lifelong love for Schubert

A lifelong love for Schubert

Anthony Tommasini, Marian Anderson's biographer, reflects on a shared love of Schubert's lieder. (Literary Hub, 9/10/26)
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Illusions by Ruth Rehmann

Illusions by Ruth Rehmann

Ruth Rehmann's 1959 novel Illusions—overlooked (not just) in the Anglosphere—has been restored "to its modernist glory" in a new translation by Rob Madole. (The Observer, 8/11/26; The Auflauf, 9/15/26)
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Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

"Each year, 300,000 to 350,000 visitors come to Salzburg primarily because of 'The Sound of Music,' according to city estimates." Now they can visit a dedicated museum that covers the movie lore and the story of the real von Trapps.  (The New York Times, 9/19/26)
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A portentous regional election

A portentous regional election

"Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe." The hard-right AfD received more than 40 percent of the vote in a high-turnout election in Saxony-Anhalt.  (The New York Times, 9/6/26; The Guardian, 9/8/26; Foreign Policy, 9/9/26)
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Arts

Aiming for the heart of Germany’s open society

Aiming for the heart of Germany’s open society

The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is campaigning not only on a right-wing extremist and anti-immigrant platform, but an explicitly anti-Bauhaus one: "a Trojan horse aiming for the heart of Germany's open, liberal society." (Financial Times, 6/20/26; The Guardian, 8/27/26; The New York Times, 9/18/26)
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Human Dignity Shall Be Inviolable

Human Dignity Shall Be Inviolable

For this year's Venice Biennale, artist Sung Tieu has clad the German pavilion with a replica of the facade of the now-abandoned Gehrenseestraße complex where she grew up in eastern Berlin—"recreating the grey concrete and smudges of graffiti with three million mosaic stones made in Ravenna."  (Artforum, 5/6/26;  The Guardian, 5/12/26)
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“In serenity lies strength”

“In serenity lies strength”

Jérémie Queyras's new portrait of Angela Merkel subtly features "one of the most Merkelesque quotes." It's now on display at the Bode Museum before it heads to Berlin chancellery. (The Guardian, 7/3/26)  
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August Sander’s people of the 20th century

August Sander’s people of the 20th century

"Making your way through 'August Sander's People of the 20th Century' at the Yale University Art Gallery is like going through Grand Central Terminal at rush hour; it is crowded with every sort of person there is."  (The Wall Street Journal, 5/16/26; The New Yorker, 5/21/26)
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A lifelong love for Schubert

A lifelong love for Schubert

Anthony Tommasini, Marian Anderson's biographer, reflects on a shared love of Schubert's lieder. (Literary Hub, 9/10/26)
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A miniature portrait of Gustav Mahler

A miniature portrait of Gustav Mahler

Robert Seethaler's The Last Movement, translated by Charlotte Collins, is "a miniature portrait of a genius all at sea, both literally and metaphorically"—an ailing Gustav Mahler, on his last transatlantic crossing in 1911.  (The Michigan Daily, 4/10/26; Financial Times, 5/4/26)
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“Radioactivity” turns 50

“Radioactivity” turns 50

Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity" turns 50, morphing over the decades "from elegiac melody to club banger and anti-nuclear clarion call." (BBC, 5/12/26)
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German thrash metal

German thrash metal

"What Kreator, Sodom, Destruction and Tankard—the 'big four' of German thrash metal—might have lacked in finesse and professional outlook, they made up for in sheer unbridled aggression."  (The Guardian, 3/18/26)
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“A divided person in a divided culture in a divided land”

“A divided person in a divided culture in a divided land”

Tilda Swinton is reviving her role in Manfred Karge's one-woman play, Man to Man, thirty-eighty years (!) after she first performed it—with two new scenes that depict the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reemergence of the far right—translated by Anthony Vivis and Stephen Unwin.  (The Guardian, 9/10/26; Time Out London, 9/12/26)
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Timmy: Hope Dies Last

Timmy: Hope Dies Last

A satirical play at Hamburg's Ernst Deutsch Theater about Timmy, the stranded humpback whale, "reimagines the media spectacle as a passion play in which the leviathan is worshipped, crucified and eventually cut up into sacramental blubber bites."  (The Guardian, 7/16/26)
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The RSC’s Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

The RSC’s Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Mark Gatiss "gives a splendidly skin-crawling performance" as the title gangster in the Royal Shakespeare Company's new staging of Brecht's Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. (The Guardian, 4/22/26; The New York Times, 4/22/26)
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Souffleurs in Germany

Souffleurs in Germany

"The souffleur has all but vanished, except in Germany, where they sit in the front row—or even take to the stage."  (The Guardian, 9/26/23)  
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One world ending, another about to begin

One world ending, another about to begin

Amrun, "a Hark Bohm film by Faith Akin," is a coming-of-age story based on Bohm's own childhood on a North Sea island at the end of World War II.  (The Wall Street Journal, 4/16/26; The New Yorker, 4/18/26)  
Read More
Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

"Each year, 300,000 to 350,000 visitors come to Salzburg primarily because of 'The Sound of Music,' according to city estimates." Now they can visit a dedicated museum that covers the movie lore and the story of the real von Trapps.  (The New York Times, 9/19/26)
Read More
In die Sonne schauen / Sound of Falling

In die Sonne schauen / Sound of Falling

Mascha Schilinski's In die Sonne schauen (Sound of Falling) unspools a haunting family story across four generations of girls, never straying from the setting of one Altmark farmhouse.  (The New Yorker, 11/20/25; NPR, 1/28/26)
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Politics at the 2026 Berlinale

Politics at the 2026 Berlinale

"In Berlin, world events are for ever on the cinema doorstep and keep on spilling inside." İlker Çatak won the Berlinale's Gold Bear for Yellow Letters, a drama about creeping authoritarianism—but as the festival opened, jury president Wim Wenders caused an uproar by stating that filmmakers "have to stay out of politics."  (NPR, 2/21/26; The Guardian, 2/21/26; The Guardian, 2/26/26; The New York Times, 2/27/26)
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History

Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

Salzburg’s new favorite thing?

"Each year, 300,000 to 350,000 visitors come to Salzburg primarily because of 'The Sound of Music,' according to city estimates." Now they can visit a dedicated museum that covers the movie lore and the story of the real von Trapps.  (The New York Times, 9/19/26)
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Max Planck, copyright violator?

Max Planck, copyright violator?

The Science of Nature (formerly Naturwissenschaften) retracted two papers from the 1940s by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist—illuminating the hazards of retroactively applying "contemporary standards regarding duplicate publication or self-plagiarism to historical papers." (Science, 6/26/26; Ars Technica, 6/28/26)
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Eine Erklärung durch die Representanten der Vereinigten Staaten von America

Eine Erklärung durch die Representanten der Vereinigten Staaten von America

"Eine Erklärung durch die Representanten der Vereinigten Staaten von America, im General-Congress versammelt": Only days after July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was translated into German—by the publisher Charles Cist!—and printed as a broadside. Two known copies of that first print run survive, now owned by Gettysburg College and the Deutsches Historisches Museum.  (The New York Times, 6/26/26; ATA German Language Division, 7/2/26)
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An archive of love letters

An archive of love letters

The University of Koblenz maintains an archive of more than 60,000 love letters, "filled with sweet nothings dating back to the 1700s."  (The Guardian, 6/3/2026)
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Books & Ideas

Illusions by Ruth Rehmann

Illusions by Ruth Rehmann

Ruth Rehmann's 1959 novel Illusions—overlooked (not just) in the Anglosphere—has been restored "to its modernist glory" in a new translation by Rob Madole. (The Observer, 8/11/26; The Auflauf, 9/15/26)
Read More
Max Planck, copyright violator?

Max Planck, copyright violator?

The Science of Nature (formerly Naturwissenschaften) retracted two papers from the 1940s by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist—illuminating the hazards of retroactively applying "contemporary standards regarding duplicate publication or self-plagiarism to historical papers." (Science, 6/26/26; Ars Technica, 6/28/26)
Read More
A miniature portrait of Gustav Mahler

A miniature portrait of Gustav Mahler

Robert Seethaler's The Last Movement, translated by Charlotte Collins, is "a miniature portrait of a genius all at sea, both literally and metaphorically"—an ailing Gustav Mahler, on his last transatlantic crossing in 1911.  (The Michigan Daily, 4/10/26; Financial Times, 5/4/26)
Read More
When Susan Sontag met Thomas Mann

When Susan Sontag met Thomas Mann

In 1949, Susan Sontag and two high school friends looked up Thomas Mann in the phone book and paid him a visit at his home in Pacific Palisades. Seventy-seven (!) years later, Merrill Rodin returned to the room where it happened. (The New Yorker, 3/14/26)
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Et Cetera

A portentous regional election

A portentous regional election

"Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe." The hard-right AfD received more than 40 percent of the vote in a high-turnout election in Saxony-Anhalt.  (The New York Times, 9/6/26; The Guardian, 9/8/26; Foreign Policy, 9/9/26)
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The pseudonymous soccer fan with the everymensch image

The pseudonymous soccer fan with the everymensch image

Germany's World Cup dreams ended abruptly, taking @FreddyLA7 along with them. The pseudonymous soccer fan with "the everymensch image" gained a viral following by posting "about the beauty of big-box chain stores and gas stations, projecting an infectious enthusiasm for American mass culture."  (The Boston Globe, 6/26/26; Forbes, 6/30/26; The Atlantic, 7/1/26)  
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What Germany can teach us about birthright citizenship

What Germany can teach us about birthright citizenship

Germany began extending citizenship at birth to an expanded group of immigrants' children in 2000. Research shows that children born after the cutoff integrated better with their peers, had greater academic success, and committed 70 percent fewer crimes. (The New York Times, 6/2/26)
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Merz has achieved something almost mythical

Merz has achieved something almost mythical

"Friedrich Merz has achieved something almost mythical in just under a year as a chancellor: he has united the Germans. East and West, North and South, city and countryside – no trace of polarization. Almost everyone agrees on one thing: they don't like Merz, and that he's somehow impossible as chancellor."  (The Guardian, 5/6/26; The Economist, 5/6/26; Der Spiegel - The German View, 5/9/26)
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About me

 

I’m a German-English translator with years of professional experience as a writer, teacher, and historian. To learn more about my work, please visit translatorplease.com.

I started kulturplease.com in 2009, when I was in between careers and craving a little more Kultur in my daily life. My life—and the world at large—has changed a lot since then. But I’m just as enthusiastic about following the latest developments in the German arts and culture, and celebrating the talented people who write about them.

I aspire to keep this site as up-to-date as possible, but sometimes life intervenes. If it looks like I haven’t updated things in awhile, stay tuned! I’ll be back. You can also look for me on Bluesky.

Elizabeth Janik