Culture and Media

Olaf Lies freely admitted that he didn’t have the easiest of jobs. Monika Griefahn’s “successor-successor-successor”, as the current environment minister of the German federal state of Lower Saxony smirkingly described himself, said: “You can’t list all of Monika Griefahn’s merits – you can only mention the highlights.”

It is a very gratifying task to serve on the jury of the Ökofilmtour (“eco film tour”) festival for films about nature and the environment.

“Nothing is finished” – that’s the motto under which Klaus Staeck invited guests to celebrate his 80th birthday at the Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin. More precisely it was the Social Democratic Party’s executive, who organised the evening in Staeck’s honour.

“Trees wouldn’t vote for Trump…” – that’s how the forester and author Peter Wohlleben summarised his view on the current political landscape. Trees, he says, know that they can only survive as part of a group.

Just ahead of the recent general elections the German Cultural Council issued a gratifying news release: “The Chancellor and the Secretaries-General of the CDU, SPD, Greens, the Left and the FDP consider computer games to be a cultural asset”, it announced.

Dr. Alexandra Widmer? Heike Langguth? Annette Pascoe? None of them are names necessarily known to everyone. And yet all of these women have recently received the Emotion Award in Germany.