A crise entre Turquia e Rússia envolve, porém, um terceiro ator político nem sempre mencionado: os turcomenos. Etnicamente turca, essa população vive na região de Síria, Iraque e Irã desde o século 11. São entre 1,5 e 2,5 milhões de pessoas –frequentemente citadas pelo governo turco em sua retórica externa.
Ao justificar o abate do avião russo, por exemplo, o presidente turco Recep Tayyip Erdogan afirmou que o país tem o direito de defender “nossos irmãos e irmãs –turcomenos”. O gesto, sugere o jornal americano “Washington Post”,é um gesto para esse grupo minoritário na região.
Os turcomenos são uma entre diversas etnias no Oriente Médio. No Iraque, se dividem entre sunitas e xiitas. Na Síria, são de maioria sunita.
O governo turco repetidamente demonstrou preocupação em relação aos ataques russos à Síria, que têm incluído rebeldes turcomenos entre seus alvos.Centenas de turcomenos fugiram da região rumo à Turquia devido aos bombardeios russos, informa a rede de TV Al Arabiya.
Desde o início da crise na Síria, em 2011, grupos armados turcomenos têm combatido –com apoio turco, segundo especialistas– as forças do regime sírio de Bashar al-Assad. Há diversas brigadas, parte delas aliadas às forças curdas, o que complica ainda mais o cenário regional.
Escavações ilegais destroem o patrimônio cultural da humanidade. Não somente gangues de ladrões, mas também terroristas ganham com esse negócio. Colecionadores muitas vezes desconhecem a origem das peças.
No meio do deserto, o cenário parece mais o de um massacre: partes de crânio, fêmur e costelas estão espalhados pelo entorno; ossos humanos estão sobrepostos descuidadamente uns sobre os outros. Entre eles, um pequeno pedaço de madeira pintada, um caco de cerâmica, restos de bandagens.
Abu Sir al-Malaq, a cerca de 90 quilômetros do Cairo: aqui, os arqueólogos alemães Otto Rubensohn e Georg Möller escavaram uma necrópole no início do século 20. Os trabalhos de escavação terminaram em 1908. Posteriormente, as tumbas foram encobertas novamente pela areia. Hoje são os ladrões de sepulturas que aqui tentam a sua sorte. Por toda parte, veem-se cascalho e buracos cavados na areia; muitos deles adentram as profundezas.
"A região de Abu Sir era famosa por seus sarcófagos pintados", explica a arqueóloga egípcia Monica Hanna. Ela documenta as escavações ilegais e sabe que mais de 90% da necrópole já foi saqueada. Com a venda dos objetos, os ladrões esperam obter um alto lucro.
Mercado de antiguidades em expansão
O negócio com bens culturais roubados já floresce há 25 anos. Escavações ilegais já havia em muitos países, mas elas estão aumentando desde o início dos tumultos políticos no Oriente Médio e no Norte da África. Desde 2011, o número de artefatos escavados ilegalmente ou roubados dobrou no Egito, e esse não é um caso isolado. Também o Iraque vem sendo sistematicamente saqueado nos últimos 25 anos, afirma Markus Hilgert, diretor do Museu do Oriente Próximo (Vorderasiatisches Museum) em Berlim.
Os saqueadores atendem a um mercado ganancioso, que vem aumentando vertiginosamente desde os anos 1990. Naquela época, ações de empresas perderam valor, e muitas pessoas procuraram novas possibilidades de investimento. Muitos aplicaram o seu dinheiro na arte – e em antiguidades. Atualmente, pagam-se preços elevados por objetos antigos.
Escavação ilegal em Abu Sir, no Egito
Por exemplo, em agosto de 2014, uma estátua egípcia de 75 centímetros de tamanho foi vendida por 14 milhões de libras (cerca de 85 milhões de reais) num leilão em Londres.
Em dezembro de 2007, uma escultura de arenito de oito centímetros, proveniente do atual Iraque, alcançou num leilão da Sotheby's em Nova York a soma de 57 milhões de dólares (por volta de 228 milhões de reais).
Gangues e terroristas organizados
Montantes tão elevados atraem quadrilhas organizadas. Se antes o roubo era praticado somente por agricultores de vilarejos, hoje essa tarefa é executada por gangues organizadas que têm especialistas à sua disposição e sabem exatamente onde escavar, afirma a arqueóloga Monica Hanna. "Elas utilizam equipamentos de ultrassom para encontrar os dutos subterrâneos das sepulturas, e empregam máquinas pesadas", relata. Os saqueadores não se deixam intimidar por nada. Hanna conta que já foi vítima de ataque a tiros.
Além das gangues, grupos terroristas também se financiam com a venda de peças escavadas ilegalmente. Está mais do que provado que o "Estado Islâmico" não somente destrói o patrimônio cultural, mas também saqueia e obtém altos lucros com a venda dos bens culturais roubados.
Colecionadores sem noção
O colecionador que compra uma antiguidade numa casa de leilões ou numa galeria quase nunca tem conhecimento dessas práticas, pois os artefatos muitas vezes são oferecidos com falsas identificações de origem. Foi o que aconteceu, em meados de 2015, numa galeria da cidade alemã de Oberhausen: uma estatueta de marfim de cinco centímetros do período tardio do Egito faraônico (664 a 332 a.C.) fora escavada, de acordo com o seu certificado de origem, supostamente por volta de 1900, indo então para Nova York e, desde 1960, integrava uma coleção particular. Na verdade, a escultura fora roubada em 2013 de uma escavação na ilha egípcia de Elefantina.
Confrontados com tais exemplos, os negociantes tentam minimizar a situação e falam de casos isolados. Segundo eles, a maioria das antiguidades no mercado provém de antigas coleções. Friederike Fless, presidente do Instituto Arqueológico Alemão, discorda: "Não existem tantas coleções antigas que justifiquem a grande quantidade de objetos ofertados." Os colecionadores devem estar cientes, assinala Fless, que a maioria dos artefatos entrou na Alemanha de forma ilegal e vem de escavações ilícitas.
Venda de arte roubada não é delito trivial
Ladrões deixam somente buracos para trás
O contrabando de objetos roubados ou escavados ilegalmente não é nenhum delito trivial, esclarece Sylvelie Karfeld, do Departamento Federal de Investigações da Alemanha (BKA). Segundo Karfeld, a receita proveniente do comércio ilegal de antiguidades varia anualmente entre seis bilhões e oito bilhões de dólares (por volta de 24 bilhões a 32 bilhões de reais). Isso coloca o comércio de bens roubados numa das primeiras posições na lista dos negócios ilegais mais lucrativos.
Para os arqueólogos, no entanto, não é o valor das antiguidades que está em primeiro plano. Eles enfatizam sobretudo que as escavações ilegais destroem o passado de um povo: pois, fora do contexto da escavação, um objeto isolado não conta história nenhuma – eles são como páginas soltas de uma biblioteca incendiada.
Lei de proteção cultural é insuficiente
O papel da Alemanha nesse negócio ilegal é inglório. A ministra alemã da Cultura, Monika Grütters, admite a existência de "regras de importação relativamente frouxas na Alemanha". Ela pretende mudar isso com a prevista alteração da Lei de Defesa da Propriedade Cultural, mas muitos arqueólogos afirmam que as mudanças são insuficientes.
A Sociedade Alemã de Pré e Proto-história adverte que "muitas das planejadas disposições do projeto de lei são imprecisas em determinados pontos, além de ineficazes."
Um remendo feito às pressas fixou a barba do faraó após um acidente no ano passado. Agora, restauradores alemães tentam remover a cola, unir as partes novamente e, quem sabe, desvendar mistérios sobre a peça.
Christian Eckmann e a máscara mortuária
Bastou uma única desatenção num dia de agosto de 2014 para que um patrimônio cultural fosse quebrado. Lá fora, o calor escaldante do Cairo. Dentro do Museu Egípcio, expressões faciais de ouro: a máscara mortuária do faraó Tutancâmon, intacta e protegida por vidros à prova de bala. Até aquele momento.
A lâmpada do mostruário precisava ser trocada, e o impensável aconteceu. Quando a peça de mais de 12 quilos foi içada para retornar à base, a longa barba, artisticamente trabalhada e mundialmente famosa, quebrou. Pânico no museu. Os pedaços do faraó foram rapidamente, e de forma um tanto desleixada, colados de volta. Agora, especialistas alemães se debruçam sobre a máscara para restaurar o restaurado.
"Acidentes acontecem", diz Christian Eckmann, restaurador do Museu Central Romano-Germânico em Mainz, na Alemanha. Um holograma ocupa o lugar do tesouro do museu, enquanto o original está nas mãos dos especialistas.
A cola, feita de uma resina epóxi insolúvel, "deve ser removida mecanicamente", explica a restauradora Katja Broschat, colega de Eckmann em Mainz. Todos os dias, Eckmann e Broschat trabalham numa sala do museu que mais parece um centro cirúrgico: equipamentos, luzes e um microscópio voltados para o paciente Tutancâmon e sua barba.
Máscara de Tutancâmon pesa mais de 12 quilos e foi descoberta em 1922
Para não danificar o ouro, os dois raspam, milímetro por milímetro, a cola entre a barba e o queixo com pauzinhos de madeira. Em poucos dias, eles querem ter separado a barba da máscara – foi assim que ela veio para o museu, após o egiptólogo Howard Carter descobrir, em 1922, a tumba de Tutancâmon, falecido há cerca de 3.300 anos, no Vale dos Reis, em Luxor, no Egito. Há evidências de que a máscara do falecido e a barba eram mantidas juntas somente por um conector destacável.
As duas partes foram coladas uma a outra pela primeira vez após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, quase 70 anos antes de acontecer o que Eckmann chama de "o acidente". Pode ser que a remontagem da máscara só seja concluída no final do ano. Ainda não se sabe se a ligação entre a estrutura e a barba será feita com um conector, um ímã ou uma cola especial.
O acidente, no entanto, tornou-se uma boa oportunidade: a de investigar a máscara mortuária, incluindo a busca por possíveis evidências que sustentem a teoria de que ela não foi feita originalmente para Tutancâmon, mas sim para uma mulher. Além disso, ninguém sabe com o que a barba do faraó é preenchida. Eckmann e Broschat poderão ser os primeiros a saber.
A pressão e as expectativas são enormes. "Devo admitir que ter a máscara à minha frente foi um momento muito marcante na minha carreira", diz Eckmann. "Eu dormiria melhor se a bela peça já estivesse na vitrine outra vez."
Desde a deferida lei da "descomunização", símbolos e insígnias que remetem ao passado comunista são proibidos no país. Em Odessa, escultor transforma uma estátua do ex-líder soviético em uma do vilão da saga "Star Wars".
Em tempo para o lançamento do mais recente filme "Star Wars: O Despertar da Força", ucranianos transformaram uma estátua do ex-líder soviético Vladimir Lenin em uma do vilão Darth Vader, curiosamente uma figura proeminente na política da Ucrânia. A estátua foi formalmente apresentada nesta sexta-feira (23/10), em Odessa.
O fundador da União Soviética, fortemente desprezado na maioria das partes não-separatistas da Ucrânia, foi vítima de uma lei aprovada em abril, que ordenou a remoção de todos os símbolos e insígnias que lembravam o passado comunista do país.
E, apesar de personificar o mal nos filmes de George Lucas, Darth Vader é uma figura um tanto mais popular no país, onde a cultura ocidental está sendo abraçada pela população e, consequentemente, se distanciando do passado comunista – uma transição que enfurece a Rússia.
Na corrida presidencial no ano passado, um homem mascarado tentou concorrer ao cargo, mas teve seu registro negado porque se recusou a revelar seu nome a apresentar documentos reais de identidade. No mesmo ano, Darth Vaders concorreram como candidatos a prefeito de Kiev e Odessa, cidade portuária no Mar Negro.
Outros personagens da saga "Star Wars", como o gigante peludo Chewbacca, o mestre Jedi Yoda e a princesa Amidala, também tentaram a sorte na eleição parlamentar de novembro, em trajes oficiais, mas todos sem sucesso.
Homem vestido como o Lorde Negro dos Sith contempla a estátua de Darth Vader, em Odessa
A maioria desses candidatos representa o minúsculo Partido Pirata da Ucrânia – um dos mais de 40 grupos que surgiram mundo afora em defesa das liberdades da internet e do limite nas leis de direitos autorais. Neste domingo, outro Darth Vader concorrerá ao cargo de prefeito de Odessa.
"Após a lei de 'descomunização' ter sido aprovada no início deste ano, tivemos que decidir o que fazer com o monumento [de Lenin]", disse o escultor da nova estátua, Oleksandr Milov. "Honestamente, não gosto da ideia de destruí-la, por isso decidimos por uma solução mais flexível."
Novos elementos foram adicionados à estátua original de gesso, sem causar danos. "A ideia era óbvia, já que o movimento Darth Vader tem estado no centro das atenções ucranianas nos últimos anos", disse Milov, acrescentando que há planos para construir um roteador Wi-Fi na cabeça da estátua.
Em uma cena notória, uma estátua de granito de Lenin foi derrubada por manifestantes no centro de Kiev durante a revolução de três meses, que derrubou o governo pró-Moscou em fevereiro de 2014.
Nomeada como capital pelos rebeldes separatistas, Donetsk está atualmente repleta de cartazes de Josef Stalin, o ditador sanguinário que comandou a União Soviética, oficialmente, por 13 anos.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt SaylesCREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Sayles
Legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven died on Sunday at the age of 76. Craven was responsible for some of the most indelible images and ideas in the slasher canon. He created Freddy Krueger, sparked the sprawling Scream franchise — he was executive producing MTV’s new series based on the films, nearly 20 years after Craven’s original film debuted — and, in a career that spanned decades, provided moviegoers with enough nightmare fodder to last several lifetimes.
“He’s gone to that big last house on the left in the sky,” said Adam Lowenstein, director of the film studies program and associate professor of English and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh; he teaches classes on horror film and is the author of a number of books on cinema, including Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film. Lowenstein shared his thoughts by phone on why horror is a vital genre, how Craven’s work was thoughtful and brutal in equal measure, and why knew the scariest things are the things closest to home.
For the uninitiated/scaredy-cats among us, why is Wes Craven’s work so important?
Just point to his three most influential films, and see how each of them is a watershed in the history of the modern horror film. And the modern horror film itself is a genre that people take more seriously because of directors like Wes Craven. Wes Craven was able to combine a real brutality with a real thoughtfulness that has really shaped what the modern horror film can be. So the three films I’m talking about are, his very first film, from 1972, Last House on the Left, and secondly, A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, and Scream, in 1996. These are the undisputed blockbusters of Wes’ career, and they all deserve the reputation that they have.
Before Craven made Last House, what was the horror movie landscape like? What was the context in which he was starting to make these movies?
Wes Craven was part of a generation of American horror film directors that really popularized the modern horror film as we know it: George Romero, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper. What I think Wes Craven really brought out, even within that pantheon of extraordinary directors, was this ability to combine the brutal and the thoughtful. So Last House, on the one hand, it’s a very cerebral, high-minded remake of an Ingmar Bergman film, The Virgin Spring. On the other hand, it is a completely, uncompromisingly horrific, nightmarish take on the worst case scenarios of the Vietnam era. And some of the stories that Wes would often tell is how he would run into people he knew and liked and trusted, and after they saw Last House, they didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And Wes was a very mild-mannered person — he was an English teacher before he was a film director, and he grew up in a very conservative, religious environment — and he was a gentle soul. But the films are not gentle. And I think that gives you a sense of what he was trying to accomplish. He was trying to get at us both through our hearts, our minds, and our guts.
Can you talk a bit more about Last House as addressing Vietnam?
Coming out in 1972, Last House was a product of the anguish of the Vietnam era. And it’s basically a revenge story. Two young girls go from the Connecticut suburbs into New York City, try to get pot at a rock concert, and wind up in the hands of the Mansons. They are brutally raped, tortured, and murdered. But then the Mason-esque group falls into the hands of one of the girls’ parents, and what the parents do to them once they find out what was done to their daughter makes the initial round of cruelty seem almost tame by comparison. And you emerge with: There is no difference between the civilized and the uncivilized. It’s a matter of a society completely broken down, untrustworthy and terrifying. And you can’t look to the young to be trusted over the old, or the middle class to be trusted over the working class. It leaves you with a very upsetting sense of the place America has gotten to at this juncture. It’s a terrifying film, still today. I do teach it periodically, and it’s one of the films that students still have a difficult time with.
Do you ever think, watching these films, that they are so violent and gory, they get in the way of this deeper idea they’re trying to get across?
It really feels like a film carefully and thoughtfully designed to shock us in ways that are maybe not pleasant, but that’s the point. It’s about unpleasant things, and it’s about confronting us with that unpleasantness, and asking us to think about it. And it’s true, though, I think the sense that Craven himself learned a lesson from Last House: He never made a movie again that was that confrontational. He made films that were, I think, equally smart and important, but never that confrontational. And I think his seeking of a broader audience made that imperative, because Last House, still, is not for everyone. Don’t recommend it to people if you haven’t seen it yourself.
So he had that in mind when he made Nightmare on Elm Street?
The important thing to remember, in terms of the landscape in which it emerged, by the time 1984 rolled around, the market was already glutted with imitations of Halloween and Friday the 13th, movies we refer to as slasher movies. Lots of the imitators of those films are not very imaginative; they’re really paint-by-numbers. And what Craven brought to the slasher subgenre was a really fresh sense of imagination and feeling. The whole trope of a killer that invades your dreams, rather than a killer that’s wielding a hatchet or a knife in the real world, is a brilliant innovation. It really opened up the subgenre to more interesting territory. I think it saved the slasher film in many ways from complete exhaustion at some point.
The other thing Nightmare does so well is, its feel for family dynamics is really superior. A lot of those slasher films, there’s really no room for parents at all. The whole trick of the films is teens alone in danger, and what happens then. But Craven really pumps energy into the dynamics between parents and children, and wider than that, between families and their communities. And that dimension of the slasher film was really in sore need of development, as well, and Craven really brought that out. And in terms of Nightmare‘s importance, a figure that we’ve come to know in the slasher formula is the idea of the final girl, the girl who survives, the girl who vanquishes the killer on her own. Nancy, in Nightmare, is outstanding. She is so gritty and resourceful and smart and fearless, without being a superhero. She’s recognizable as a person and as a teenager, but her resourcefulness and her grit is just thrilling to see, even today.
Scream is an interesting case, in that I think it’s how people who only see mainstream movies — people who do not like horror flicks — have an understanding of what horror movies are. That’s the reference point.
And I often bemoan the existence of Scream in certain ways, because of precisely that quality. People who don’t know much about horror films can go to it and feel almost superior to the genre, and comfortable with it. But the memory I always put alongside of that is, horror films are a central part of my work, so I see a lot of them, and I have friends who don’t like horror films at all, and Scream was one I could convince people to come with me to when it premiered, because I could say it would be fun but not scary. And the first 20 minutes of Scream is really scary. It’s intense. I remember my friends looking over at me across the aisle and saying, “You lied to us.” I think that’s a good summation of Wes Craven, in a certain way. Even within the framework of an entertaining horror film that is not very confrontational, that is interested in winking at its audience, there’s still moments that grab you buy the throat.
Do these tropes from horror movies that people know so well stem from Scream, or did Scream just popularize them? It’s such a self-aware movie, and you see these characters talking about other horror movies, like they know they’re in one.
Slasher films may not be imaginative overall, but they are very tuned in to the formula. Slasher films didn’t need to parodied, because they were doing it themselves already. You watch Halloween, after having watched Psycho, you already see the films very much aware of their predecessors and very interested in nodding their hat to their predecessors. So Scream didn’t invent that. But Scream brought it to the awareness of an audience that wasn’t necessarily genre-savvy, and made it fun for them as well. Which is an important feat. It’s good for horror to be able to reach people that don’t necessarily want to deal with it, because that can open the door to different sorts of engagement with the genre.
Horror has always been a very self-aware and self-conscious genre. And what Scream did is, it sort of heightened that experience of awareness for a wider audience. But it did it in a way that remained true to, I think, the way the genre had been working along before Scream. It was basically putting it in highlight and bold.
It seems like one of the recurring themes in Craven’s work is that the scariest things — the villains, the monsters — are actually pretty normal. They’re sort of, not mundane, but they’re not out-of-this-world, supernatural killers. They’re primal, everyday ideas.
Yes, absolutely. One of his favorite things to say is that the horror film is a boot camp for the psyche. Horror, for Wes Craven, was always about the immediate, the primal, the here-and-now. It was not about fantastic things. For him, the scariest things are the things that are closest to us, the things that we know the best, that we think we know and trust.
Why is horror an important genre? What can horror films do that other movies can’t?
I think horror has the potential to show us ourselves in a light that we need to see ourselves in, that we’re also not comfortable enough to try to do. I think horror is more honest about who we are as people, as families, as a culture, as a society, than most other types of films are. And they can get away with it, because a lot of people think horror films aren’t up to anything serious. But under that cover, they are deadly serious. And we ignore the horror film at our peril, because I think if you want an accurate account of who we are and where we are at, you need to go to the horror film as a place to gauge that. That thing becomes particularly crystal-clear during moments of what I call historical trauma. Something like the Vietnam era: A movie like Last House is telling the hard and painful truth about that era that a lot of the contemporary films of that time were not yet ready to talk about. The horror film could do it, because the horror film already has a vocabulary for the shocking, the horrific, the awful. So this is a genre that can engage with these things rather than hope they don’t exist or that they’ll go away.
Where do you see Craven’s influence in modern horror?
One of the themes that Wes Craven pioneered and developed and perfected is the revenge theme, and we can see it most clearly in Last House and The Hills Have Eyes. That’s still a formula that’s very crucial and powerful for the genre. Someone like Eli Roth’s movies and the Hostel films in particular really tapped into that dynamic, that the blood that is spilled in vengeance winds up tainting the avenger at least as much as the crime that was originally committed. And in America, a country where the whole idea of American exceptionalism and entitlement and might-is-right, that lesson about revenge is something we need to be taught over and over again. We never seem to quite learn it. It Follows has got something to do with something Craven was already interested in in Scream, which is: Where does horror come from and manifest itself in a culture that is so over-saturated with media exposure? Where everything seems like it could be broadcast, televised, tweeted? Where there’s really no such thing as an original experience? I think It Follows is tuned into that. And I think Scream was, too. Looking back, 1996 was a primitive media era compared to now.
When Craven made Last House, he wasn’t clear in an explicit way, “Oh yeah, I’m talking about Vietnam. I’m talking about the present.” It was there in the work but it took a long time for people to really see it, even the directors themselves. I think that’s true now, too. I think with certain exceptions, it’s going to take time to get a sense of, well, what was this historical moment all about anyway? And what were the films that were tapping into it consciously or unconsciously? But I think even early, there’s evidence that the horror film is still doing that job. The movie I would point to semi-recently is Hostel, in the context of the war on terror, the post-9/11 war era. And what Hostel does with the idea of Americans abroad as something to be scared of is a very important and effective intervention into a post-9/11 America.
Trigésimo sexto volume da série chega às livrarias com tiragem de 4 milhões de exemplares em mais de 20 línguas. Controle da informação é o tema central da nova aventura de Asterix e Obelix.
Imagem da capa de "O papiro de César", novo álbum da série Asterix
O 36º livro da série de histórias em quadrinhos Asterix chegou nesta quinta-feira (22/10) às livrarias da Europa. Em Paris, alguns fãs fizeram fila em frente a uma loja para poder comprar um exemplar autografado pelos novos autores a partir da meia-noite.
O papiro de César foi apresentado há cerca de duas semanas num evento para a imprensa na Torre Eiffel, com as presenças do roteirista Jean-Yves Ferri, do ilustrador Didier Conrad (desenhos) e de Albert Uderzo, de 88 anos, um dos criadores da série.
O título do novo álbum já havia sido anunciado em março, mas só neste mês foram revelados pormenores da história, que faz referências à atualidade e foca no controle e também no vazamento de informações. Entre os novos personagens está o jornalista gaulês Doublepolemix, que é inspirado na figura de Julian Assange, fundador da organização WikiLeaks.
O novo personagem Doublepolemix, inspirado em Julian Assange, conversa com Obelix
O papiro de César tem uma tiragem inicial de 2 milhões de exemplares em francês e outros 2 milhões em outras 20 línguas, entre elas o português.
Ferri e Conrad são os mesmos autores que, em 2013, assinaram o volume anterior, Asterix entre os pictos, o primeiro livro no qual Uderzo não participou.
Uderzo e René Goscinny publicaram a primeira história de Asterix na revista Pilote em 1959. O primeiro livro próprio, Asterix, o gaulês, só saiu em 1961, dando início a uma das mais bem sucedidas séries de histórias em quadrinhos do mundo, com mais de 350 milhões de livros vendidos.
Asterix é um pequeno gaulês de bigode farto que tem como melhor amigo Obelix, um personagem gordo e desajeitado, dono de uma força incomum e que adora comer javalis. Ambos são habitantes de uma aldeia invencível, que teimosamente resiste às investidas militares dos romanos.
A parceria entre Uderzo e Goscinny terminou em 1977, com a morte do roteirista, mas o nome de ambos foi sempre mantido na assinatura das histórias. Em 2011, Uderzo, de 88 anos, retirou-se da série alegando cansaço.
Fonte: The Guardian Autor: Matthew Sweet Data: 06.06.2014
Vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein – as John Logan's gothic TV series continues, Matthew Sweet explores the legacy of lurid Victorian fiction
Reeve Carney and Eva Green in Sky's Penny Dreadful. Photograph: Allstar/DESERT WOLF PRODUCTIONS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
In a large dark Victorian house on Barton Street, Westminster, something dreadful is happening. The gas lamps are dead. Screams are rising from the next room – sounds of ordeal and agony. You wouldn't run in to help; you'd knot sheets together and escape through the window.
I know it's all confected for the cameras. I've read all the scripts. We're in Ardmore Studios – a cluster of hangars on the edge of the Wicklow mountains – and I've been walking around them all day. I've examined the maps of the Belgian Congo pinned to the drawing room wall; goggled at the batteries in Victor Frankenstein's laboratory; ducked low to inspect the cogs and pulleys under the stage of the Grand Guignol theatre. I know the rats heaped in the prosthetics store have been moulded in latex; that, contrary to small print on the bills pasted on the walls, no Victorian playwright called Michael Grandage ever wrote a play called Emperor of the Universe; that the people gathered beside me – Timothy Dalton and Josh Hartnett – are actors, watching the business of another actor – Eva Green – being relayed from a camera in the next room. The performance she's giving, though, is so intense, so out-there, so Renée Jeanne Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc, that even these two rugged old turns are exchanging glances. And, hunkered down over the monitor, the man who unleashed this madness is grinning from ear to ear.
Penny Dreadful, eight hours of gothic television filmed in and around Dublin, gathers a synod of monsters, criminals and lost souls – a vampire-hunter (Green), a sharpshooter (Hartnett), a grief-wracked explorer (Dalton), a prostitute (Billie Piper), Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). The story has been bubbling away inside John Logan – author of the Rothko play, Red, screenwriter of Hugo and The Aviator and Skyfall – for a decade or more. Ask him about its origins and he'll talk about his regard for the Romantic poetry that crackled into life beside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; the late-Victorian moment that brought Dracula, Dorian and Dr Moreau into being; the uses to which these creatures were put by Hollywood and Hammer. He'll also talk about his own feelings of monstrosity and his sense of isolation as a young man. How it felt to make scarifying visits to New York's Christopher Street in the 1970s, or to be young and gay in the years when America first became acquainted with HIV. Logan is keen to ensure that everybody involved in the series feels like part of his gang. If you're there, you're one of the Dreadfuls. When he says it, it feels good.
In the 19th century, "penny dreadful" was an unofficial literary category – used by its enemies and its fans to describe cheap serial fiction produced in weekly eight or 16-page instalments, which might, in the course of months or even years of publication, supply rambling narratives founded on poisoning, strangling, burglary, flagellation and hairbreadth escapes from drowning and sexual assault. Their titles generally gave away their natures: Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood (1845-7); Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1846-7); The Night-Hawks of London; or, the Noble Highwayman and the Miser's Daughter (1865). The semi-literate – who made up an important part of their market – were reeled in by the lurid woodcuts: Black Bess, rearing against the moon; the heroine, bare-breasted and manacled in a burning attic; a bloodsucking fiend scuttering over a four-poster bed.
Their authors, who might keep 10 of these stories spinning simultaneously, were paid at the rate of a penny a line, which had a legible effect on the text. Skilled practitioners knew that staccato sentences were the most profitable, and learned how to oblige the compositor to leave one or two words hanging at the end of a paragraph. The typography of the genre was as full of widows and orphans as its plots. Smart strategy, if you're hungry.
Some writers pursued parallel careers of the sort that didn't bleed lampblack all over your fingers. As Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sensational Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was being devoured by subscribers to Mudie's Circulating Library, its author was staying up late to meet her deadlines on a rather less prestigious project: The Black Band; or The Mysteries of Midnight – a 240,000-word shocker about a bigamous noblewoman, a persecuted ballerina, a clique of Italian revolutionaries and an Austrian gangster whose brain is being slowly dissolved by poison.
Unsurprisingly, Braddon produced the keenest sketch of a "dreadful" writer at work. In The Doctor's Wife (1864), itself a sophisticated heist on the plot of Madame Bovary, Braddon introduces the reader to the fictional Sigismund Smith, inky-fingered author of Count Montefiasco; or, The Brand Upon the Shoulder-Blade, a cheerful hack who specialises in pop-fiction plagiarism. "I'm doing a combination novel now," he explains. "The Heart of Midlothian and The Wandering Jew. You've no idea how admirably the stories blend together." Reality went one better: in 1884 the American newspaper Beadle's Weekly published a story called Monte Cristo Afloat; or The Wandering Jew of the Sea: A Romance of Weird Mystery One Hundred Years Ago.
'Narratives are founded on poisoning, strangling and flagellation' … Wagner the Wehr-Wolf pr
Cheap, violent serial fiction had flourished since the 1830s, but its strongest, maddest phase of life was the product of a statutory lightning-strike: the 1861 repeal of the paper tax. The sudden rush of printing caused a type-famine that brought about the momentary return of the 18th-century's long "S" letter, unpacked from dusty boxes in printshop backrooms. The hunger for stories sent writers back to old tropes, to folklore, to half-remembered figures from chapbooks and broadside ballads. In James Malcolm Rymer's The Dark Woman; or Plot and Passion (1861) for instance, the fictional heroine (an organised crime boss and illegitimate royal) collides with two historical figures whose lifetimes did not overlap – the highwayman Jack Sheppard (1702-1724), and the Prince Regent, later George IV (1762-1830). Logan's TV series occupies the same dreamlike space: in Penny Dreadful, Frankenstein coexists with Dorian Gray and the survivors of Bram Stoker's Dracula, who, over the course of the series, form a strangely familial alliance. Resurrection men remain busy, in defiance of the 1832 Anatomy Act. The Romantic era and fin-de-siècle seem to be occurring simultaneously, brought together by blood and electricity.
For most of its history, the penny dreadful was a genre for lost boys. Boys were often its protagonists, its readers, and the figures who legislators and campaigners believed required protection from its pleasures. Wily publishers, keen to exploit a growing market for more self-consciously wholesome material, picked up their pitchforks in sympathy with this moral panic. "The police court reports in the newspapers are alone sufficient proof of the harm done by 'penny dreadfuls'," asserted Alfred Harmsworth, future owner of the Daily Mail, as he launched a new boys' title, the Halfpenny Marvel, in 1893. "It is an almost daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of 'dreadfuls', followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds and finished by running away from home and installing themselves in the back streets as 'highwaymen'. This and many other evils the 'penny dreadful' is responsible for. It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols." In August 1895 the MP for Leicester launched a campaign against the "grossly demoralising and corrupting character" of the penny dreadful. By a sweet coincidence, his name was John Logan.
The boys in whom this corruption was identified have left sad little footprints in the printed record. Thomas Richard Nash, a 15-year-old who, in September 1895, killed himself by drinking carbolic acid: the Leeds Times reported that his box of belongings contained "a number of books of the penny dreadful description, dealing with daggers and poisons, guillotines, scaffolds etc". George Sharp, a young sailor, was, in 1904, reprimanded for threatening his stepfather with murder: "Sharp had in his possession a 'penny dreadful' and also a clasp-knife," said the Dundee Evening Post. In 1892 Joseph Margerison and Robert Thompson, two teenage textile workers from Blackburn, robbed a local farmer while he was milking his cows. Under the headline "Effects of the Penny Dreadful", the Grantham Journal claimed "the boys formed part of a gang who, led by sensational literature, had built a cave in a yard and filled it with firearms, knives, and the proceeds of robberies".
Reading back over such reports, what strikes me is the breathless journalistic effort required to transform the penny dreadful into the cause of the crime. Nash left a suicide note that stated: "I wish you to know the reason I did it is because I could not work." Sharp declared that his threats were made in protest against his stepfather's violent treatment of his three-year-old sibling. Accounts of the Blackburn boys written by hacks closer to the scene supply sharper details of their lives. Margerison was a creeler – a boy who dodged under the whirring loom and replaced spent spools for a few shillings a week. A more considered description of their criminal activities mentions no bandits' cave, no guns, no knives – just a loose sod in the Moss Street Corporation Yard that concealed cash tied in a handkerchief.
"No one in his senses," wrote George Orwell in 1939, "would want to turn the so-called penny dreadful into a realistic novel or a socialist tract." A kind of radicalism, though, does haunt many of these stories. Its protagonists are outcasts and outlaws, its villains figures of privilege and authority. George WM Reynolds's The Mysteries of London (1844-6) thrums with Chartism and thieves' cant. The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London (1865-6) is led by a youth who assumes transvestite disguise to foil the plans of his wicked stepmother, Barbara, kingpin of a gang of counterfeiters. The Wild Boys of London; or, The Children of the Night (1864-66) details the adventures of a gang of dangerously likable sewer-dwelling thieves. In 1877, copies were seized in police raids. Decades later, they were pored over by William S Burroughs, who populated his fiction with their criminal descendants.
They're present, too, in Penny Dreadful – a drama about a group of wounded individuals who have a number of things in common – aching loneliness, a cognisance of their own sin, and knowledge of a supernatural world unseen by those they pass on the pavement. It would be against the rules of bloodcurdling serial fiction to reveal what was happening behind the wall in that house on Barton Street – except to say that the dreadful world has space in it for the possessed, as well as the dispossessed.
Penny Dreadful continues on Tuesdays at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. Matthew Sweet's books include Inventing the Victorians.
Descendentes de famílias da nobreza herdam e administram castelos e palácios na Alemanha. Mas o alto custo de manutenção, as normas de preservação e a vida no campo afastam muitos integrantes das gerações mais jovens.
O castelo de Namedy, em Andernach
Quando criança, Anna corria e brincava pelos cômodos do antigo castelo de Namedy, em Andernach, no oeste da Alemanha. Havia objetos dos séculos passados por todo lado: móveis ornamentados, pinturas da nobreza e troféus de caça faziam parte do playground da menina.
Hoje, aos 32 anos, a princesa Anna e sua mãe, a princesa Heide von Hohenzollern, de 72 anos, são responsáveis por administrar a construção do século 14. Por mês, elas gastam 8 mil euros com contas de água, aquecimento e luz – isso sem contar os custos de manutenção e renovação.
"É um negócio difícil", diz Anna. O senso de tradição não foi o único motivo para começar a investir no castelo, há quase seis anos. "Eu tive a sorte de não ser obrigada por ninguém da família a fazer isso."
Anna não se intimidou com a tarefa de ser "herdeira do castelo". Apesar disso, sua mãe afirma: "Administrar um negócio familiar nunca é fácil." No início, elas discordavam bastante. Anna tinha acabado de se formar em Gerenciamento de Mídias e queria trabalhar com filmes, até que ela desembarcou no castelo cheia de ideias.
O castelo de Namedy serve hoje não apenas como local para eventos culturais, mas também para casamentos e conferências.
Troca de gerações
Com frequência, a transição entre gerações da responsabilidade por castelos e palácios que são propriedade privada de antigas famílias da nobreza não acontece de forma tão natural quanto no caso de Anna. Muitas vezes, o alto custo de manutenção, as normas de preservação e a vida no campo afastam os jovens.
Princesa Heide Von Hohenzollern: "Administrar um negócio familiar nunca é fácil"
"Quando não conseguimos convencer os descendentes da família, isso pode representar uma enorme ameaça para o patrimônio cultural", diz Hartmut Dorgerloh, diretor-geral da Fundação de Palácios e Jardins Prussianos de Berlim-Brandenburgo.
Se não houver nenhum investidor e o país não assumir a responsabilidade, a propriedade pode se deteriorar. "O setor público já está fazendo muito, e somos muito gratos. Mas ele deveria também definir incentivos para que bens públicos e privados sobrevivam", diz Dorgerloh.
"É um problema constante. De geração para geração, mais e mais propriedades são perdidas", diz o presidente honorário da Associação Alemã de Castelos, Alexander Fürst zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, de 71 anos. No palácio Sayn, a poucos quilômetros do castelo de Namedy, ele ainda tem a palavra final.
Os filhos de Sayn-Wittgenstein-Say vivem e trabalham em grandes cidades europeias. "Assumir a responsabilidade sobre o castelo significaria mudar-se para a província com a família. Eles teriam que apertar o cinto e arregaçar as mangas para manter a histórica e economicamente complicada posse. Muitos preferem esperar até que as gerações mais velhas não possam mais [administrar os castelos]."
O problema é evidente sobretudo em cidades da ex-Alemanha Oriental. As expropriações de 1945 fizeram com que diversas sucessões geracionais fossem interrompidas. Com a Reunificação do país, muitos antigos proprietários tentaram comprar de volta suas mansões. Mas eles não foram autorizados a arrematar os terrenos adjacentes, excluindo a agricultura como fonte de renda.
Muitos investidores privados compraram as construções antigas, mas logo as revenderam. "É sempre um problema quando a pessoa não tem uma ligação histórica com a casa", diz Sayn-Wittgenstein-Say.
Nos estados da Baviera, Renânia do Norte-Vestfália, Baixa Saxônia e Hessen, os castelos e palácios estão, em sua maioria, ligados a terras agrícolas. Na Renânia-Palatinado, esses vínculos foram cancelados por causa das sucessivas invasões francesas e destruições no século 17. Por isso, propriedades como os castelos Sayn e Namedy são, frequentemente, usados com fins comerciais.
Com muito orgulho, as duas princesas Von Hohenzollern caminham pelo castelo. Elas contam sobre vazamentos de água e a construção equivocada do terraço, que é sempre motivo de preocupação. "Mas, 99% do tempo, [administrar o castelo] é um grande prazer", diz Heide.
Fonte: Deutsche Welle Autor: Silke Wünsch (as) Data: 19.10.2015
Eles sobreviveram ao CD e ao MP3: os velhos bolachões atraem um público cada vez maior, que inclui DJs, amantes da música, colecionadores e até investidores financeiros.
Na sua loja em Colônia, Uwe recebe todo tipo de cliente e oferece uma ampla variedade de gêneros musicais
Alto-falantes de discoteca, antigos aparelhos de som 3 em 1 e caixas de papelão cheias de discos de vinil se amontoam em frente a uma loja especializada em música num bairro alternativo de Colônia, na Alemanha. As paredes são forradas com pôsteres de bandas de rock e cartazes de shows, e o som das guitarras domina o ambiente.
Bruno é um cliente fixo do local e conhece a loja como poucos. Ele retira um vinil do toca-disco, coloca-o cuidadosamente de volta na capa e pega outra bolacha. "Este é um disco de sete polegadas, um compacto simples", diz Bruno. "De 1954, lançado por um selo famoso, o Brunswick."
Ele coloca o disco para tocar, e o som inicial é o tradicional chiado dos discos de vinil. Depois começam os primeiros acordes de um swing, tocados por uma big band. O rosto de Bruno se ilumina de felicidade. "Sy Oliver and his Orchestra com Louis Armstrong, tocando um grande hit: C'est si bon."
Bruno é um grande fã dos discos de vinil, um freak, como ele mesmo diz. A sua coleção inclui cerca de 5 mil discos, principalmente jazz, trilhas sonoras de filmes e música clássica. Ele nem considera a possibilidade de ter essa coleção em CD.
"A sensação de ter um LP nas mãos é insuperável. A trilha de Spartakus, por exemplo. Você abre o disco como se ele fosse um livro, e Kirk Douglas salta no seu rosto em technicolor. Isso é arte. Um CD não tem algo assim", afirma.
A capa é uma das vantagens citadas pelos amantes do vinil. Outra é: ninguém sabe ainda quanto tempo duram as informações armazenadas num CD. Um disco de vinil, quando bem cuidado, dura para sempre. Um pouco de chiado é aceitável e, às vezes, até desejável. Por fim, o argumento definitivo de todos os aficcionados pelo vinil: o som é mais quente e encorpado, bem diferente do som agudo e frio do CD.
Valor depende do estado de conservação
Exemplar de uma prensagem de teste (sem a capa) do primeiro disco do Velvet rendeu mais de 150 mil dólares
O resultado é o revival do vinil. Pessoas de todas as idades vasculham mercados de pulga, procuram na internet e reviram antiquários atrás das antigas bolachas, declaradas mortas pela indústria quando ela decidiu apostar todas as fichas no CD, na virada dos 80 para os 90.
O dono da loja de Colônia, Uwe, entende tudo de selos musicais e gravadoras, edições e prensagens dos vinis. Ele também sabe reconhecer uma coleção decente de discos. Se alguém lhe oferecer uma coleção de jazz, ele saberá dizer se alguém já botou antes as mãos nela para retirar as pérolas. "Sem os principais discos, uma coleção não tem mais muito valor", atesta.
Uwe mostra um disco de Oscar Peterson do selo MPS, a primeira gravadora alemã de jazz, famosa pela alta qualidade das suas gravações. "Um disco como este da MPS, dos anos 60 ou 70, custa uns 20 euros." O valor sobe se o disco estiver em excelente estado de conservação – e também se a capa estiver inteira, sem dobraduras, arranhões ou rabiscos.
Uwe apresenta outro clássico do jazz: "Este é o show do Keith Jarrett em Colônia, numa edição posterior. A primeira tinha uma capa em alto relevo, esta é uma capa lisa. Esse disco duplo custa 15 euros – desde que esteja em excelente estado, claro." De novatos e investidores
Uwe diz que a sua clientela é variada, desde DJs de 20 e poucos anos até antigos amantes do jazz. Alguns vasculham todas as prateleiras e não levam nada. Outros são principiantes quanto o assunto é vinil. "Alguns jovens nem mesmo sabem que um disco de vinil tem dois lados. Eles olham para o vinil como se ele fosse uma das sete maravilhas do mundo", conta Uwe.
Há também aqueles que se comportam como se estivessem prestes a fazer o negócio das suas vidas. "São verdadeiros freaks, como colecionadores de selos. Para os colecionadores profissionais, alguns discos são verdadeiros investimentos. Quando a crise financeira começou, pessoas que ainda tinham algum dinheiro começaram a comprar discos de vinil feito uns loucos."
Na internet, é possível se informar antes sobre o valor de mercado de um disco de vinil. Em alguns casos, o céu parece ser o limite, principalmente no caso de prensagens limitadas ou edições hoje muito procuradas, mas que venderam pouco na época do lançamento.
Muitos discos passam facilmente dos 500 euros, outros chegam a valer milhares. Um dos valores mais altos foi pago por uma prensagem de teste (sem capa, com o selo interno em branco e inscrições à mão) do disco de 1966 da banda Velvet Underground & Nico: 155.401 dólares no Ebay.
Há quase 30 anos, roteiristas já imaginavam interfaces multimídia, controles de voz e comunicação por vídeo. Robôs que passeiam com os cães e skates flutuantes sem rodas, porém, ainda não são realidade.
Martin McFly com o famoso Hoverboard: uma das previsões que os roteiristas não acertaram
Em Seattle, nos Estados Unidos, um museu preserva, protegidos por vidros, itens extremamente raros: três Hoverboards. O skate sem rodas era uma das estrelas do filme "De volta para o futuro 2". Foi nele que Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) circulou durante parte do tempo em que passou no que era futuro então: 21 de outubro de 2015.
Trinta anos depois, no futuro, a franquia é homenageada em todo o mundo com festas e maratonas de exibição. Mas, será que o filme conseguiu acertar alguma previsão?
Antes de mais nada, Hoverboards não estão à venda no mercado. Na internet, é possível encontrar alguns vídeos do skate flutuante sem rodas, mas são falsificações ou modelos que funcionam apenas em solos muito específicos, como o protótipo de levitação magnética da fabricante de automóveis Lexus.
Não temos também robôs que levam os cães para passear, nem casacos que se ajustam ao tamanho da pessoa e secam instantaneamente. Leitores de impressão digital no lugar de maçanetas até já existem, mas não são tão comuns.
A Pepsi Perfeita: edição limitada de 6.500 garrafas marca 30 anos do lançamento do filme
A máquina que transforma, em poucos segundos, uma minipizza numa grande pizza quentinha, seria algo típico americano, mas tampouco foi inventado. O mesmo vale para os carros voadores, em que nem os próprios criadores do filme acreditavam.
"Mas, em um filme sobre o futuro, precisávamos de carros voadores", disse há cinco anos Bob Gale, um dos roteiristas do filme.
Então, todas as previsões falharam? Não exatamente. Em muitos aspectos, os cineastas foram videntes surpreendentes. No futuro, telas planas estariam espalhadas por todos os lugares — isso não era previsível em meados dos anos 1980. As pessoas se comunicariam por vídeo, assim como é possível fazer hoje — mas não há sinais no filme de celulares ou internet.
Segundo o filme, avisos chegariam por fax em 2015. Fax! Há, porém, um computador da Apple em uma loja de antiguidades — já é possível encontrá-los nesses estabelecimentos, não a preços muito baixos.
O filme acertou também ao apontar os asiáticos como peças-chave da economia, e um cartaz até anunciava "férias de surfe" no Vietnã. Dez anos após o fim da Guerra do Vietnã, o que era um absurdo para um americano nos anos 1980, agora pode ser absolutamente normal.
Martin McFly e Doc Brown: em muitos aspectos, os cineastas foram videntes surpreendentes
Má notícia: a chuva não para em um segundo. A boa notícia é que a inflação americana não está tão alta para ser preciso comprar uma Pepsi com uma nota de 50 dólares — embora a edição limitada de 6.500 garrafas da "Pepsi Perfeita", feita especialmente para o filme, possa valer um bom dinheiro como item de colecionador.
Controle de voz no dia a dia e interfaces multimídia, tudo já estava no filme. Ele apresenta até um óculos no estilo do Google Glass, e quando os dados pessoais de quem faz uma ligação são exibidos no visor, parece quase um Facebook — 15 anos antes do Facebook.
Quando se trata de energia, ainda não estamos naquele futuro. Porque quando o Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) precisa de eletricidade, basta ele jogar alguns resíduos de cozinha no reator "Mr. Fusão". Ele não só fornece energia para a máquina do tempo, o "compensador de fluxo", como é praticamente "made in Germany": a base para o dispositivo era um moedor de café Krups.
The Allies bombed the Prussian city of Königsberg into the ground in 1944. Residents of what is today the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, a desolate Soviet landscape, are considering rebuilding the city center to reflect some of its historical German architecture.
The architectural bureau looks pretty much like any other in Europe -- computer drawings hang on the walls, attractive young women concentrate as they stare into oversized monitors. Even the head of the office is wearing outsize glasses. What's different here, though, are the odd place names featured in the plans. Rather than being in Russian as one would expect, they include German names such as Altstadt, or Old Town, Löbenicht, Kneipfhof.
These were the names of the city center districts in the city of Königsberg in the former East Prussia, but Königsberg was wiped from the map at the end of World War II, 70 years ago. The city had a grand history as the coronation site for Prussian kings. It was famous for its university, where philosopher Immanuel Kant once taught. In 1724, the year of Kant's birth, the cities of Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof joined together to form the city of Königsberg. With its brick, Renaissance and baroque buildings, with a medieval castle on the Pregel River, with its Brick Gothic cathedral and its proximity to the Baltic Sea, it was one of Germany's most beautiful cities.
During the final days of August 1944, 360 aircraft with the Royal Air Force flew across the sea heading for Königsberg. They dropped hundreds of tons of highly explosive and incendiary bombs. The city continued to burn for days. The Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof districts all lay in ruins, along with the cathedral, the castle and the university. A half a year later, soldiers with the Red Army occupied the city and changed its name to Kaliningrad. Today, 430,000 people, mostly Russians, live here -- in an exclave located far away from the Russian Federation, far away from the West, stuck between Poland and Lithuania. Moscow is 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) away and Berlin 700.
The Kaliningrad Planning Office is located in a modern high-rise in an area that was once part of the historic Königsberg Old Town. Planning Office head Alexander Popadin is 50 years old, Russian, and had an earlier career as an architectural critic. Now he wants to see through an urban renewal of the Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof districts, with the support of the city. The project is known as "Heart of the City."
Bringing Life to a former Wasteland
Popadin and Vyacheslav Genne, Kaliningrad's chief architect, opened a competitive tender and 39 firms have submitted their plans with the winner set to be announced in the autumn. Architects weren't asked to submit concrete designs, but rather make fundamental decisions about the future of the districts. Should, for example, the castle be rebuilt? Or should its foundation walls become part of a museum? Can the banks of the Pregel be made interesting for investors? How many streets should there be? Prior to the war, Altstadt, Kneiphof and Löbenich had a total of 44 small streets. Today, four major thoroughfares, each with several lanes, pass through the 160 hectare area. For nearly 70 years, the city center stood almost empty and the once grand Central Square, home to the castle, is a wasteland. There's a parking lot, a lawn and a single building that people in the city just call the "monster." It is the House of Soviets, which was built for Soviet party functionaries but was never occupied.
During the 1990s, the cash-strapped city sold land for construction without any central planning at all. Now, the city has very little influence over what happens with that land because it lacks money to buy it back. When things do get built here, it is only because of ideas, aid and investments from abroad. That's part of the reason the Heart of the City competition was tendered in several countries. Much of what has been built in Kaliningrad over the past 20 years has been the product of international cooperation.
Residents of the Russian Federation's western exclave also have a different relationship with the West than Moscow, given that they profit on a daily basis from trade between the East and West. Correspondingly, tensions such as those currently dividing the West and Moscow carry greater risks for them. This is particularly true of the city of Kaliningrad, with its German history. Kaliningrad has sought to find its own identity in the debate over the past 20 years over the future shape of Russian-German relations. The Heart of the City is intended as a fusion of things Russian and Western.
An East-West History
Preparations for the competition began last year, well before the Ukraine crisis. Kaliningrad is not only a special place because of its East-West history, but also because residents of the city, more than any others in the former Soviet Union, know what it is like to be in the situation Russia has been heading towards for a few months now: isolation.
Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 in honor of Soviet leader Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, who had just died. Between 1945 and 1948, the Soviets expelled all Germans from the city. The so-called Kaliningrad Oblast, the city and the area surrounding it were turned into a restricted military area. For 40 years, no foreigners were allowed to enter the area and even Soviet citizens required special permission. Soldiers were brought to Kaliningrad from all across the Soviet Union, with as many as 200,000 stationed here at times to practice for worst-case scenarios. The Soviets also stationed nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad region.
Königsberg had been a special pace for German philosopher Immanuel Kant. "A city such as Königsberg, by the River Pregel, is quite acceptable as a suitable place for the expansion of human knowledge as well as world knowledge," he wrote. During the Cold War, though, Kaliningrad became one of Europe's potential flashpoints.
Under Soviet control, everything that evoked the city's German past had to go. The ruins of the Prussian castle were razed with explosives in 1968. The removal of the cathedral's remains was also considered, but it also happened to be the grave of Kant, a man the Soviets admired, so it was left in peace. Soldiers stationed in Kaliningrad were housed together with their families in massive newly built apartment complexes and their children were taught to hate the Germans.
'I Was Always Afraid of the Germans'
"War films ran on TV that showed veterans describing the terrible actions of the Germans," recalls Alexei Shabunin, who was born in Kaliningrad in 1970 and is today the editor in chief of the local Dvornik newspaper. "You could see tanks all over the place in the forest and when I asked why that was, adults told me because we Russians need to defend ourselves. I was always afraid of the Germans."
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leading to an event that no one had expected -- one that looks like a miracle from the perspective of the summer of 2014: In Kaliningrad, the East and the West came together peacefully. Old East Prussians who had been forced to flee after the war traveled to Kaliningrad to see what was left of their homeland. Russian tour guides who led the groups, speak of the many tears that flowed when the former residents of Königsberg came to realize that much of it had been lost forever. Occasionally, a visitor might find a cherry tree he or she had planted as a child. Another found the porcelain that his family had hidden before fleeing -- a brief moment of euphoria, but then the tears returned.
Kaliningrad had become a Russian city. German countess Marion Dönhoff, the former publisher of the respected weekly Die Zeit, who died in 2002 at the age of 92, traveled to Kaliningrad during the 1990s. Until 1945 she lived in Schloss Friedrichstein, the largest palace in East Prussia, which was located just 20 kilometers away from Königsberg. In January 1945, she fled by horse for 1,200 kilometers toward the West. Her palace was set ablaze by the Red Army. Today, there is nothing left of the palace; instead tall grass grows on the site. Dönhoff said of it, "Perhaps this is the highest degree of love -- to love without possessing."
At some point, the Russians living in Kaliningrad also began to fall in love with the old Königsberg. They unearthed German street signs and hung them up in their apartments. They protested when local officials threatened to pave over old cobblestone roads with asphalt. By then, it appeared it was only World War II veterans who did not share this love -- for reasons easy to understand. Journalists Shabinin says that some younger Kaliningrad residents began viewing themselves as "Prussians rather than Russians."
Igor Alexandrovich Odintsov, a former colonel in the Soviet Army who studied engineering, was largely responsible for erecting barracks in the massive prefab concrete style of the Eastern Bloc. He would later lead the effort to reconstruct the Königsberg cathedral starting in 1992. Germans and Russians alike donated to the project. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself procured a new organ -- manufactured in 2008 by Alexander Schuke-Potsdamer Orgelbau, a German company -- and is as high as a three-story home.
Cathedral construction manager Odnitsov is 77 years old today, and he speaks to visitors in the tone of a colonel. He comes from Simferopol in Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine for five decades but was annexed by Russia four months ago. "Let me emphasize that Putin is the best and most popular president, please write that," Odnitsov commands. "Please also write that the cathedral is the symbol of friendship between two people, the Germans and the Russians. Any attempts to break this friendship will fail."
Very few of those you talk to here about the city and its future, about the tensions between East and West, comment as firmly as the cathedral construction manager. Odnitsov is used to dealing with the Western media. With his work rebuilding the cathedral, he has also become a symbol of the city. He has nothing to lose because he has already won.
Other Kaliningrad architects are more hesitant to talk -- they stumble a bit and want to speak about buildings, style and aesthetics, about how Königsberg can be resuscitated without looking too kitsch. Although few want to discuss politics, they also avoid the kind of tone often heard in Moscow these days -- namely that Russia doesn't need the West -- and that is telling. They also use the word "Europe" differently than many in Moscow do. When they say "Europe," they mean the West, the European Union. Chief Kaliningrad architect Genne, a 41-year-old Russian of German descent from Minsk, adds: "Of course we're a part of Europe."
Mixing the Modern and the Historical
In conversation, Genne likes to bring up examples of architecture in Germany. He speaks often of Hamburg, saying the revitalization of the former port area, now known as HafenCity, as well as the revitalization of the bank of the Elbe River are successful examples of urban renewal. Genne also believes the new Elbphilharmonie symphony building designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron is an outstanding example of how one can successfully combine modern and historical buildings, because the structure places a modern structure on top of an old brick warehouse. Genne imagines something similar for the redesign of Kaliningrad's city center. He would like to see the structures of the three city quarters revived, but built in a largely modern way.
In their search for a new image for their city, residents of Kaliningrad are also trying to find their own identity. They are coopting the West, the old and the German to balance their own desires and aspirations.
Economist Pavel Fyodorov was responsible for building the Fishing Village, a row of houses constructed in the old style with a small lighthouse and pseudo half-timbered buildings. Fyodorov once served as vice governor of Kaliningrad. He stepped down from political office and sold his Moscow apartment in order to finance his dream to invest in and build the Fishing Village. "I decided I needed to leave my mark on this city," he says, adding that something here touched his soul. He describes it as a diffuse presence of an old history and an emptiness.
His grandfather fought in World War I and his father in World War II. He says he more or less inherited the reservations about Germans, but that he developed his own view over time. "I am the grandson and the son of soldiers, but that doesn't mean I have to view the Germans as being like wolves. You can't dislike someone but then like what they've created," Fyodorov says. And his love is Königsberg -- or at least his idealized vision of the city. The Fishing Village isn't historically accurate, it's based on Fyodorov's vision of a German place. It also turned out very kitschy.
Dreaming of Königsberg
Given that most of the buildings that would have served as a testament to what Königsberg looked like are gone, anyone can feel free to create their own image of the city. Kaliningrad architect Arthur Sarnitz, for example, comes from an Estonian family, not from a German family as he likes to claim. He grew up in Kaliningrad, but then moved to Britain and the United States during the 1990s. He's dressed in black with a Yankees cap backwards on his head. The 48-year-old designs and builds whatever the people commissioning him want, but he says what he really dreams of is Königsberg. In his office, he is developing computer-animated films that show the German city's resurrection.
He's one of the only people interviewed who brings up the Soviet era without being asked about it. He says he can remember the old buildings in Kaliningrad being torn down when he was a child. "Even at the time, I didn't think it was okay, but we were hostages of this ideology," he says. "But we have to leave the ugly 20th century, with the 100 million dead, with its division of people into Russians, Germans, fascists and communists behind us. Now, in the 21st century, the people should reach out to each other."
If he could, Sarnitz says he would rebuild the entire city center based on the historical records. He has participated in Heart of the City from the very beginning. As radical as his ideas are -- he'd like to tear down the Soviet-era buildings and reconstruct Königsberg's historical buildings -- Kaliningrad isn't some sort of palimpsest that can be erased and entirely rebuilt. There are real limits to what can actually be done.
Sarnitz has an idea of beauty in his idea that is based on Kant's theories. Sarnitz recites one of the philosopher's most famous quotes. "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
For Sarnitz, the "starry heavens" are an example of beauty. Beauty sharpens the moral sense in people, he argues, and can also promote human values and attitudes like esteem and respect. And out of esteem and respect arise other values like freedom and peace.
There's much at stake when residents of Kaliningrad contemplate Königsberg. Sarnitz would prefer for Königsberg to become more of an intellectual idea than an actual concrete place, one in which the kind of East-West bickering like that which accompanied the annexation of Crimea doesn't exist. In his mind, it would be a free and peaceful place.
But in the real and concrete Kaliningrad, there's a real threat that the redesign of Kaliningrad will fail because of complicated property ownership situation, the very questions that drive everyday politics. Still, Alexander Popadin, who heads the Heart of the City office, says he believes that ideas have the capacity to influence things. A few months ago, speaking to everyone he could, he expressed the idea that Central Square needed a new name. He says he has now heard a lot of talk in town about renaming it to "Peace Plaza".
