June 2010: DW's culture calendar

Robert Schumann's 200th birthday

Robert Schumann is among Germany's most important composers and even achieved international success during his lifetime in places like London and New York. Schumann's hometown of Zwickau has long celebrated the composer and established the Schumann Festival in 1847. Robert and wife Clara Schumann performed at the first festival. He conducted his Symphony in C Major, while she appeared as a soloist during his piano concert.

Robert Schumann died nine years later, but the Schumann Festival has endured. It took place at irregular intervals following Schumann's death but has been an annual event ever since 1960. Zwickau is going to special lengths this year in light of it being the 200th anniversary of Schumann's birth on June 8. Visitors can expect a full program of readings, concerts, and opera and ballet performances.

Organizers anticipate Schumann enthusiasts to visit from throughout Germany as well as the USA and Japan. The Tchaikovsky Society in Moscow welcomed the festival with an acknowledgement of how greatly Schumann influenced the Russian composer.

Rescued treasures of Afghanistan

The remainder of Afghanistan's artistic treasures are now travelling the world because their home is too unsafe. In 2001, the Taliban stormed Kabul's National Museum and destroyed most of the collection. Just a few objects were rescued swiftly and hidden. The museum remained silent about them until 2003, when it announced that several pieces were preserved in deposit boxes at Kabul's central bank.

The items were transferred out of Afghanistan to the Musee Guimet in Paris, where they were first restored and eventually presented to the public for the first time at the end of 2006. Since then, the exhibition has been on the road. After Paris came Turin, Amsterdam, the USA, Canada and now Bonn, Germany, where they will be on view until October 3.

The next stop is undecided, but returning to Afghanistan remains out of the question for now.

Art in Basel and Berlin

For the 41st time, Art Basel (June 16-20) will bring art lovers from around the globe to Switzerland. Typically, the event draws a big crowd with more than 60,000 visitors last year. The Basel art fair is among the most important in the world, even if its home city may strike some as an unlikely location. After all, Basel is a small city with a central district dating to the middle ages and a mere 190,000 inhabitants.

Gallery owner and collector Ernst Beyeler played a major role in establishing Art Basel in the city. He was one of Art Basel's founders and drew upon his international contacts in the art world to help set the festival in good stead. In contrast to the renowned art fair in Cologne, which originally allowed only German galleries to present work, Art Basel has long been internationally oriented.

Many art experts travelling to Basel will add a stop in Berlin to their trip, where the sixth Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art begins on June 10. The Biennale has quickly carved out a niche in the international art market. Through August 8, international artists will focus on contemporary society under the curatorship of Kathrin Rhomberg. The Biennale's title is "was draussen wartet" or "what waits outside".

c/o pop in Cologne

It's tough to compete with Berlin - and the city of Cologne knows this all too well; its music festival Popkomm migrated to Germany's capital in 2003. But Cologne snapped back, and compensated by establishing the "c/o pop" festival the very next year. c/o pop focuses on indie, alternative and electro music as well other aspects of club culture.

From June 23-28, there will be numerous concerts at venues across Cologne. Big names in the German music scene like DJ Shantel from Frankfurt and the band Die Sterne ("The Stars") will be there, alongside plenty of local bands. Last year's festival drew around 30,000 attendees.

c/o pop is about more than just concerts, though. It's a platform for exchange and discussion. One project, "Europareise," invites festival managers from other countries to present the pop culture in their native countries. Another event is the "C'n'B Convention," which brings together those working in the creative and music industry - label managers, set designers, etc. - to discuss various aspects of pop culture in the internet era.

Literature Days in Klagenfurt

In June, the city of Klagenfurt will once again become a meeting point for the German-speaking literary scene. From June 24-26, 14 selected authors will take part in a juried reading. Each author has 25 minutes to read a passage. Then, the seven-member jury discusses the text, while the author listens but is not permitted to comment.

The event is public and televised. Three days of readings decide who will win the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, one of the most significant literary prizes in the German-speaking world. Alongside the honor and media attention associated with the award, the winner receives 25,000 euros ($30,835). The event in Klagenfurt was organized at the end of the 70s and modelled after the Group 47 - an association of post-war authors who read to each other and offered criticism of one another's work.

Author Ingeborg Bachmann, who was born in Klagenfurt, also belonged to Group 47. The group awarded Bachmann its prize in 1953 as a young author, helping to establish her literary reputation. Now, the organizers of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize hope to do the same for other authors.

Munich Film Festival

After a false start in the 1970s, Germany's second-largest film festival was launched in 1983 in Munich. Eberhard Hauff, a film director active in many aspects of the industry, took over the festival in the early 80s and did away with the festival's glitzy approach prior to his tenure.

From June 25 to July 3, around 200 German films will be premiered, often in the presence of their directors. In contrast to the Berlinale, the Munich Film Festival does not feature a central competition, but prizes will nevertheless be awarded, including a prize for young German filmmakers. It carries an award of 60,000 euros ($74,000).

This year's festival will focus on India. Following four decades of "Bollywood" productions, new kinds of films are gaining popularity in India, particularly among the western-oriented middle class.

"Theater of the World" in Germany's Ruhr valley

The Ruhr valley in western Germany has banded together as one of this year's European Capitals of Culture and offers an extensive cultural program. An international theater festival called the "Theater of the World" is one of the events taking place there this summer.

From June 30 to July 17, 32 productions from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America will be presented.

Festival Director Frie Leysen from Belgium travelled across the globe to select this year's artists. There is no given theme, but the artists are encouraged to bring something they would like to share to the stage. Many aspects of the productions are created specifically for the event, and this year features eleven premieres including dance, music and performance pieces.

There are no prizes at Theater of the World, since the festival doesn't seek to foster competition among participants. Instead, the focus is on the exchange and presentation of different perspectives. Also, performance spaces aren't limited to classical theater venues. They include industrial buildings, a factory owner's villa, and other parts of the region's largest city, Essen.

Singing at the soccer stadium

The soccer stadium in Gelsenkirchen, Germany will burst into song on June 5. That may strike German soccer fans, who are likely to burst into a verse of a team anthem, as nothing unusual. But on June 5, the singing won't be about sports.

Instead, Gelsenkirchen's stadium will house an enormous choir concert. Around 8,000 singers will take to the field to lend their voices to folk, opera and pop songs. Singers like pop sensation Bobby McFerrin and opera diva Vesselina Kasarova will join them. The audience is expressly invited to join in, and whoever wants some practice can get a copy of the song book beforehand.

The concert marks the conclusion of a special musical weekend in the Ruhr region. !Sing is the name of the project that serves as one of the high points of this year's European Capital of Culture programming. The goal is that singers will keep going from morning until night and fill the area with music. At 12:10 on June 5, church bells will pick up the tune of Herbert Groenemeyer's "Komm zur Ruhr" ("Come to the Ruhr") simultaneously in all of the Ruhr region's cities.

Author: Petra Lambeck (gsw)
Editor: Jennifer Abramsohn