“Poet’s Treasure from the Führer’s Rooms”

Plundered art: Once a private gift to Hitler, now very nearly auctioned off in London: a rediscovered family journal kept by Goethe’s son August – including dedications by famous authors – bears evidence to German contemporary history, from the comical to the macabre. Can it be brought to Weimar? The rarity was to go on auction on December 10th in London with offers starting at 50,000 to 70,000 pounds. But nothing came of that. Sotheby’s removed the gem from its auction of “Continental Books and Manuscripts”, literally overnight. The reason behind this dramatic step was an extremely bizarre story, even for the experts on plundered art.

“With Incense and a Machete”

Rwanda: Witnesses accuse Roman Catholic priests and nuns of having supported the genocide of the Tutsi. Now the first cases are being heard before courts of law. If there was any institution that might have put a stop to the killing in 1994, then it was Rwanda’s Catholic church. Of the 90 percent of the population that professes the Christian faith, 62 percent were Catholics. Priests enjoy a high standing among the people. Nevertheless only few people spoke out against the Hutu advocates of the killings. The ties between the church leaders and the regime were too close. Two prominent church officials have now been sentenced to death by Rwandan courts. However the Vatican and the high dignitaries of the church are sheltering others who managed to escape.

“Then Let Someone Else Do It”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Austrian Chancellor Viktor Klima on the negotiation marathon to form a new government, the fossilised state structures and the rise of Jörg Haider:

“There is a deep common understanding with the ÖVP concerning the goals: reduction of the budget deficit, creation of a uniform pension law for everyone – including civil servants – lowering of ancillary wage costs, more accurate targeting by the social welfare system. … I think in terms of the amount of right-wing extremist thought in Austria, we are no different from other European countries. Only that we have a party which uses that for its electoral success and which plays it up. … I have set up an international commission of historians to openly address the issue of seizure of property on Austrian territory and of restitution. It will also deal with the issue of slave labour. … Germany’s behaviour is certainly exemplary. We will probably have to follow suit. … If the decline of our party over the past 13 years continues, then in eight years’ time at the latest we will reach a point where the FPÖ lies ahead. Maybe already in four years.”

An incident at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research into Totalitarianism in Dresden has given rise to a public dispute with tinges of rightist extremism.. An employee of the institute has denounced Johann Georg Elser, the would-be Hitler assassin who set off a bomb in a beer hall in Munich in November 1939, because he killed several people and endangered the lives of bystanders. Supporting members of the Institute are enraged, and the Dresdner Bank has threatened to cancel a commission for a study of its past placed with the institute.

“The Somewhat Different War”

A SPIEGEL series on Kosovo (Part 1): Did German politicians do everything they could to prevent the war? Did Nato’s bombardment play into the hands of the Serb dictator? What actually made Milosevic yield? Now, seven months after the end of the fighting, some of these mysteries can be solved.

“Written in the Skies”

Bavaria: Bavarian self-confidence has been shattered as the result of someone’s sloppiness: the archives contain no trace of the Constitution which is meant to secure law and order in the Free State. Is the original document gathering dust on a rickety shelf somewhere between Washington and Munich? Or did “a grand document of this kind probably never even exist”? And so 50 years later historians, politicians and Bavarian citizens are having to rely on speculation and rumour regarding their constitution.

“A Matter of Respect”

SPIEGEL interview with film director Jim Jarmusch on the pleasure of quoting, the decline of the Mafia and his new gangster film “Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai”:

“I wanted Forest Whitaker. He’s an actor I really wanted to work with … Before, when I used to write film scripts I would always eradicate any ideas that reminded me of other films or literary examples. This time I did exactly the opposite … “Ghost Dog” does state that things sometimes have to happen in the established, traditional way. But in fact it is a matter of respect. You have to respect the different ways in which people live, according to their beliefs and their convictions, and if you succeed in doing that you are more in harmony with your own way of living too.”

“Adultery Outside the Monastery”

Authors: Doris Dörrie is regarded as being a successful film director who also writes books – but her first novel “What Do We Do Now?” is clearly superior to her new, thematically related film “Enlightenment Guaranteed”. Doris Dörrie portrays the protagonist of her new book as being a broken and deranged but at the same time also a refreshing hero. The book is her first novel, which went on sale in time for the beginning of the new century – the story is set slightly ahead in time in the summer of 2000, giving the title question a sort of secular dimension. It is a long time since a female author dared to look so boldly into a man’s soul. The way she manages to turn the antihero into a veritable “hero of the year” at the very last moment is quite astounding – a true novel.

For the first time, a successful attempt to picture the “inside” of a sexual act has been made. Dutch scientists have used magnetic resonance imaging to show that Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the act is anatomically incorrect.

“Really Laid Back, Just Wild”

Bob racing: This winter sport offers a new attraction: Susi Erdmann, seven-time luge world champion is now driving a bobsleigh. Her colleagues sneer at her – as usual when women break into a male domain. The gentlemen of the International Olympic Committee last year made women’s bobsleighing an Olympic discipline. There was a good reason for this: toboggan runs are an expensive affair and in order to make their construction for the Olympic Games more acceptable, new attractions are needed. The appeal exerted on spectators by women in a bob can already be observed in America.