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donate Summary Merkur 11/2008
The November issue (number 714) deals with cultural topics. Harry Lehmann explains why contemporary art desperately needs a criticism that, in recourse to the categories of the "Romantic School", itself will become a genuine part of the art; Daniel Hornuff examines what the theoretical concept of the "pictorial turn" – the "image science" that has been deliberated with so many advance laurels – has accomplished so far (not much); Ernst Osterkamp analyses Stefan George's female portrait in works and in life and reaches fairly dark conclusions; in his exclusive tutorial on postwar literature Peter Horst Neumann so enthusiastically revives a completely forgotten writer that not only his poems become alive but also that era – you can almost smell and taste it.
The issue opens with an essay by the British philosopher and writer Roger Scruton, who calls narcissistic and misanthropic architecture by its name, an architecture that behooved more than a few greats of modernism. A plea for what not only Scruton considers Western culture's most significant legacy: Europe's cities.
Still hungry for culture? Sanford Schwartz on the enigmatic figurative painter Peter Doig; Richard Klein on Richard Wagner's media technology; Birgit Recki on a successful German TV show that, because of its tormenting exhibitionism, leaves the anxious viewer to ponder.
And so that the philistines don't go home empty handed, we might recommend Volker Gerhardt's philosophy column; Kenan Malik's sharp-witted critic of well-meaning multicultural and anti-racist ideas; Renatus Deckert's and Theodore Dalrymple's reviews; and finally Rasmus Althaus's little trip through the Balkans, which gives us little hope for a peaceful future in this ethnic and national mess.
Roger Scruton
Cities for Living
The city, as we have inherited it from the ancient Greeks, is both an institution and a way of life, one coterminous with the civilization of Europe. The confluence of strangers in a single place and under a single law, there to live peacefully side by side, joined by social networks, economic cooperation, and friendly competition through sports and festivals, is among the most remarkable achievements of our species, responsible for most of the great cultural, political, and religious innovations of our civilization. Nothing is more precious in the Western heritage, therefore, than the cities of Europe, recording the triumph of civilized humanity not only in their orderly streets, majestic facades, and public monuments, but also in their smallest architectural details and the intricate play of light on their cornices and apertures.
But this heritage is endangered, because until recently, European architects have either connived at the evisceration of our cities or actively promoted it. Fortunately a later generation rebelled against the totalitarian mind-set of modernists, rejecting the collectivist approach to urban renewal. One of these architects is Leon Krier.
Published 2008-10-31
Original in German
© Merkur
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