"The Crux with the Germans"

SPIEGEL cover story: When Pope Benedict XVI lands in Cologne to attend World Youth Day, he will be setting foot in a country to which he has become a stranger. The churches are empty, politicians have no religious beliefs, and people in the east have no God at all. Now the biggest religious festival of the post-war era is meant to serve as a starting point for a new religious consciousness. With World Youth Day, the Roman Catholic church wants to capture the attention of a youth that has grown up with little moral direction. The Pope is sure to evoke cheers from the young visitors - most of them Spanish, Italian and French - on Cologne's Rheinwiesen and in Marienfeld. Perhaps he will even succeed in finding a language of gestures and symbols without copying his predecessor. But what happens once the event is over?

"We Are Different"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the Axel Springer publishing company, about the motives for and aims of the ProSiebenSat.1 take-over, fears about a questionable concentration of opinion-shaping power in his hands, and the future role of Haim Saban, who has put the television network up for sale:

"We are closing up a bit on our competitors. There is another line-up which is far more powerful than we are: the Bertelsmann Group. ... What happens if Google goes into the publishing business, buys up the Financial Times tomorrow and then goes on a shopping spree in Germany the day after that? With the new line-up we would stand the chance of competing with such players, at least in this country. ...Our newspapers report a great deal on politics, but we don't have any party political agenda. ... At the moment the debate is greatly obscured by the interests of our competitors. In addition, there is some ideological foaming at the mouth. ... You can be sure that we aren't going to do our competitors the favour of being unable to respond to their attacks or to seize opportunities. We are, for instance, well armed for any attacks by new newspapers distributed free of charge. ... Haim Saban will be available to the management as a television adviser."

"The Dithering Giant"

Corporate groups: Following its successful restructuring, Deutsche Telekom is facing new problems. While the industry is rapidly changing, the Bonn-based telephone multinational appears to be making no headway. Is group chairman Kai-Uwe Ricke putting off important decisions too long? Since taking office in November 2002, Ricke has all but halved the record-level debts of nearly 70 billion euros and put the company on a strict cost-cutting diet. As a result, the group has been generating sizeable profits and paying out decent dividends. But new technologies, such as DSL and Internet telephony, are changing the competitive conditions for the entire industry much more rapidly than expected. And the question as to whether the classical division between landline, mobile and Internet communications is still in keeping with the times, is becoming more and more pressing. Instead of spelling out clear objectives and perspectives, Ricke is losing himself in endless discussions and putting together more and more teams to address more and more new issues. At the same time, the unsolved questions are mounting up.

"It Was Never a Matter of Power"

Interview with French sociologist Alain Touraine about the historic achievements and the failings of the trade union Solidarnosc, which was founded a quarter of a century ago:

"The people at Solidarnosc described their movement as a 'self-limiting revolution'. They didn't want to embark on the decisive battle against Communism, nor could they. ... The trade union Solidarnosc achieved its historic importance by bringing together the resistance of the intellectual dissidents and the protests of the workers, and then receiving support from the Catholic church into the bargain. Nevertheless Solidarnosc wasn't a group with a clear political strategy. It was a movement shaped more than anything by emotions.

"A Major Attack on Shir Khan"

India: 850 dollars for a tiger's penis. Poachers are exterminating the big cats in the national parks on orders from a Chinese mafia organisation. The trophies are sold as virility drugs. Poaching and corruption, along with indifference and mismanagement by the wildlife conservation authorities, have caused the number of tigers in the 28 national parks to drop dramatically. A gamekeeper earns just 5000 rupees, less than 90 euros, a month. Many villagers don't even earn that much in an entire year. So they are willing to look the other way or fail to hear gunshots when the gangs of poachers strike. The poorly equipped game keepers rarely have much chance against the poachers anyway. In addition they are frustrated by the fact that many of the poachers apprehended are either not charged at all, or else get away with ridiculously mild sentences. Deadly amounts of money can be made selling a disembowelled tiger to buyers in Hong Kong, Taipei or Singapore. This is the realm of the Chinese virility mafia.

"Elevators without Electricity"

Russia: When the Soviet Union came to an end, the state gave away its ramshackle flats to its citizens. Now they are responsible for maintaining them - and are overtaxed by the task. Statistically, you have to stand in virtual line for an average 20 years in order to get a housing upgrade. Nation-wide, the charges associated with apartments have risen by 25 percent just within this year. According to a recent survey, 43 percent of the population are already spending between one quarter and half of their earnings on such expenses. Experts expect the rates for electricity, water, gas and maintenance work to rise by more than 50 percent by the end of the year on a national average. They have long come to realise that market mechanisms will not work here, and that they would in fact trigger even greater outrage than the so-called "monetarisation" of social group privileges at the start of the year.

"I'm Interested in the Mania"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with painter Gerhard Richter about excessively overpriced contemporary art, beauty as a programme against deterioration, and his artistic examination of a difficult family history:

"Hearing such record figures is of course very gratifying at first, and at the same time it is alarming. [...] When I'm not in a good frame of mind I take this kind of success as a sign of the depravity of our times, a sign that the buyers haven't a clue about art, that I have perhaps swindled them, and that they've paid far too much. And they really do that: generally speaking they pay far too much for art. There is an enormous disparity between the value and relevance of art, and these crazy prices that people pay for it. ... That isn't an appreciation of art, it's a sign of deterioration and it's part of the dismantling of culture. The feeling for and interest in art is disappearing. Maybe people are interested in investing their capital. ... Perhaps just one percent of my paintings portray relatives of mine, and you are asking whether this is a way for me to come to terms with these problems? These problems can probably only be depicted. But I keep finding photographs, both private ones and others, which fascinate me so much that I want to paint them.

"Aircraft from the Net"

Aviation: Almost 30 firms in 7 countries have jointly created a new aeroplane in the form of a highly detailed computer simulation on the Internet. The French aircraft maker Dassault believes that this is where the future of global manufacturing lies - also for cars, ships and high-rise buildings. All the companies involved have Internet access to the virtual plane in Saint-Cloud near Paris, where Dassault is coordinating the production process. All 40,000 components are stored there in a huge database, right down to the last wing sheet. The aim is to create as perfect a blueprint as possible for manufacturing and assembling the plane - because any mistakes that sneak in at this stage will be extremely costly to put right later on. Costly surprises, like those that used to crop up in large numbers in old times, are hardly to be expected. This time Dassault did not even build a prototype for testing. Aircraft number one recently flew at the Le Bourget air show. But the main advantage of the digital model lies in the global division of labour, which it facilitates considerably. As the simulation can be accessed from anywhere, the process of constructing an aircraft - or car or ship - can be distributed almost arbitrarily all over the world.

"The Miracle of Vrin"

Alps: In the backwaters of Graubünden, a small village is actually growing, despite the general trend towards emigration to the cities. An architect and an economist have turned it into a model for mountain regions lacking in infrastructure. Today, 280 people live in Vrin; twenty more than in 1990. That may not sound impressive, but it represents an increase of eight percent, in a valley characterised by migration from the land. The school of Vrin has two entire classes; the butcher's shop, a multipurpose hall, stables, residential houses, telephone boxes and a cemetery building have been newly constructed. However, it remains uncertain whether the experiment will ultimately be a success. The economist Peter Rieder says he will have won if people settle there who don't have to: planners, translators, architects, advertisers. "If that third sector is missing, the village doesn't stand a chance."

"The True Wild Life"

Contemporary history: A new biography of Oskar Schindler promises to reveal the ultimate truth about the German who saved 1100 Jews from being put to death in concentration camps - but despite its formidable length of 850 pages, it promises too much. Historian David M. Crowe, from North Carolina, spent seven years researching his Schindler book. He interviewed contemporary witnesses, rummaged through archives and unearthed records that no one had read before. The entire work is 856 pages long, the footnotes and the index alone account for 150 of them. Crowe wrote more than 800 pages because he wanted to do more than just portray Oskar Schindler's changeable life - at the same time he has reconstructed the Third Reich in all its ramifications including the intrigues between the Gestapo and the SS.