"The Lure of the South"

Cover story: Farewell, you garden gnomes! More and more Germans are turning their backs on their fellow countrymen and settling in the south of Europe. The community of drop-outs and re-orienteers, of climate refugees and bon vivants has probably reached the one million mark.

Joschka Fischer in Washington: How the former left-winger is trying to curry favour with the Americans. (details not yet known)

"That Was a Mass Psychosis"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with the founder of SAP, Hasso Plattner, on the rise and fall of the New Economy, his old-fashioned attitude towards profits and his argument with Oracle boss Larry Ellison:

"That was a mass psychosis, the whole world joined in the gambling. The banks, the financial markets, the companies, all of them. It was the image of paradise: earning a lot of money doing little work in front of your screen. … Now the investors are having to foot the bill for their little excursion to Utopia. A lot of money has been destroyed in low and middle-income households. That's why consumer expenditure has dropped sharply in the United States. … A company isn't there to achieve the maximum possible personal profit in the shortest possible time. To my mind, a phrase in the German Constitution applies here: property also entails responsibility. … I think Ellison doesn't always check his statements thoroughly enough. If he says Oracle is the number one in the CRM field, that simply isn't tenable. We are clearly in the lead."

"The Three World Corporation"

Daimler Chrysler: Jürgen Schrempp wanted to establish the most profitable automobile company in the world. Two years later, DaimlerChrysler is itself a candidate for take-over. What went wrong? Taking stock.

"Big Plans and Little Outfits"

Notwithstanding the international embargo, Baghdad is re-arming. "Since the end of the United Nations inspections, we have noted a sharp increase in Iraq's attempts at arms procurement," says the president of the German intelligence agency BND, August Hanning. Particularly India, whose mechanical engineering industry copies German products down to the last detail, is at present suspected of behaving fairly unscrupulously. The BND believes that twenty of the eighty chemical projects in Iraq which Indian companies are involved in according to the agency, manufacture chemical weapons.

"Lenin's Grandchildren in Cyberspace"

Hungary: The group of Eastern European countries undergoing reforms and marching steadily towards the EU is spearheaded by Hungary. This country, which has few natural resources, is arming itself for the future by means of high-tech. Thousands of the heirs of goulash communism are manufacturing and programming for the IT market.

Bin Laden followers: There is evidence to suggest that the Islamist warriors of god surrounding top terrorist Osama Bin Laden by now aren't even shying away from attacks in Europe. Following the Frankfurt arrest, the courts, police and intelligence services all over Europe are carrying out investigations to expose the organisation of Bin Laden's fanatical followers.

"'Cable Creature' and 'Lonely Soul'"

Suicide: Unnoticed by their parents, teenagers are obtaining instructions for committing suicide from Internet forums. Adolescents are offered lethal drugs, school children make appointments for chain suicide. Romantic death wishes and confused emotions: more and more teenagers are plunging into the suicide sites, leaving life behind them. They dissect their mood and openly ask questions about suicide, which all the visitors to the web sites can then answer. There are about 30 such death forums for German-speaking users, several thousand world-wide. In the last three months alone, more than a dozen people who were tired of living tried to leap from the web site into the next world. Those who did not survive, live on in the chat rooms as heroes.

"Asylum for Woolly Pigs and Red Cattle"

Agriculture: One third of the approximately 6500 races of farm animals throughout the world are threatened by extinction, two of them are lost every week. In order to ensure their survival, more than 70 Noah's Ark farmers breed old races of pigs, goats or poultry, and turn them into delicacies. Their mission is to offer an asylum to those breeds in which industrialised agriculture has long lost any interest because they are not streamlined for one-sided performance such as milk, meat or wool yields.

"A Chance for Jonas"

Medicine: Should a sick baby die, or live on with someone else's heart - for an indefinite time? In emotional terms, deciding in favour of a heart transplant for a new-born infant puts parents in an extreme situation.Only a few years ago, such a child would have been lost. Doctors regarded the transplantation of infants' hearts as a questionable experiment on the human body, unlike in adults. How were they to calculate the exact quantity of the drugs needed to suppress the immune response in such a tiny organism? And how would the children later cope with the operation, both physically and emotionally. As the cardiologists were gradually to discover, the younger the baby at the time of the transplantation, the fewer drugs it takes to stop the body from fighting against the foreign tissue. Its immune system is not yet as ready for defence as that of an adult. Apparently, it is precisely the youngest whose chances are best.

"Dolce Vita for the Final Victory"

Art policy: Thousands of prints and paintings in which propaganda painters depicted and celebrated Hitler's war have been locked away for decades. The most recent argument over Buchheim's pictures raises the question, once again, what is to happen to this tricky legacy. Art museums feel it is not their job to educate, though - the standard evasive argument: Nazi art is said to be trash, far removed from any aesthetic quality. But is it therefore permissible to skip such striking, yucky items of art history altogether? The mechanisms of unscrupulousness in painting cannot be studied if they are not on show anywhere. A well-founded exhibition and a comprehensive catalogue would deprive them of the peculiar charm of the forbidden.

"I Bring the Earth and the Sea"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with actress Angela Winkler on her late theatrical fame, her role as the suffering woman of the extra-parliamentary opposition Apo, and her simple farm life in the country:

"I want people's brains to be taxed in the theatre, and imagination to soar through the air. … Suddenly I was Saint Joan of Arc, and had to serve as the projection figure for the left-wing scene. And as that figurehead I received lots of letters. … My husband is a sculptor and has a strong leaning towards adventure and experimentation, just like me. So we set out, always going to places where there was nothing as yet, or any more. And there we would erect our world and farm the soil."

"Happiness Only Comes with Unhappiness"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with psychologist Michael Mary on sexual difficulties in long-term relationships:

"Long-term relationships are geared to harmony and trust. But - as the German word itself says - sexual passion means suffering for a desire. And a harmonious partnership won't stand up to that for long. … More couples than you may believe do without sex altogether. And if it's bearable for both, why not? … It's absurd to give up a basically harmonious relationship just because the passion has gone out of it. And it's just as nonsensical to keep up a broken relationship for purely social reasons."

"Interpreter in a Data Suit"

Computers: European researchers are developing computer-animated translators for sign language. They are to read out the television news to deaf people, and to help them at the post office counter. The European Union is spending 3.7 million euros on "Visicast" (Virtual Signing, Capture, Animation, Storage and Transmission): an ambitious project particularly in view of the fact that so far computers are not even able to translate between different spoken language - such as German and English - without making mistakes.

"Racing for World Domination"

Formula One: Following the entry of Michelin into the field, the new racing season begins with a duel between the tyre manufacturers. The competitive situation has triggered a burst of innovation, and could break up the old hierarchy among the teams. For the market leaders Bridgestone and Michelin it is a matter of no less than world domination. Both of them have market shares of 20 percent. And both want more.