It's no secret that Deutsche Telekom is in the market for an international partner. Back in April the telecommunications giant made a bid for Telecom Italia, but lost out to Italy's own Olivetti.
Now the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" is reporting that Deutsche Telekom chief Ron Sommer, Telefónica president Juan Villalonga and other top-level execs from both companies met in Bonn over the weekend to discuss an alliance they would officially announce on Friday, August 6. The idea would be to cooperate in central Europe and Latin America and to make a concerted effort to enter the North American market, while each company would maintain its independence on its own home turf.
"We deny this completely," said a spokesperson for Telefónica on Monday. "There has been no contact between managers of Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom with regard to any agreement between the two companies." But representatives for the German company have refused to comment at all.
While Deutsche Telekom, which once monopolized the German telecommunications market, struggles to find its footing in the deregulated environment, it's looking for ways to cut costs. Not terribly surprisingly, the company seems to have found them in the employment rolls. A secret plan outlined in a paper presented to the company leadership in November calls for a reduction of employees from 230,000 to 170,000 by the year 2000. On this issue, a Telekom spokesperson was willing to comment, "So far, these are all simply ideas being played with at the moment."
While there are those who argue that America has ruined director Wim Wenders (see below), Rainer Gansera finds the restoration of a film made long after Wenders's run-in with Hollywood nothing less than a revelation. "Whoever knows the three-hour version of Wim Wenders's 'Bis ans Ende der Welt' ['Until the End of the World'] and thinks he can pretty much imagine what the five-hour version must be like is completely wrong," writes Gansera in the weekend edition of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". "It's incredible the way this - to put it gently - irritating, difficult and long-winded film reveals itself in a version longer by two hours to be a well-rounded, comprehensible, exciting and moving work. It was Wenders's most extravagant project and must be counted among his best films."
Munich's Film Museum has made its own copy of the full-length version and is showing it as part of its current Wenders retrospective.
In another story from Bavaria, Culture Minister Michael Naumann has announced that he'll be boycotting all receptions thrown by Bavarian Minister President Edmund Stoiber, a staunch conservative known for his vigorous rhetoric who may well run for chancellor some day. At the premiere of "Lohengrin" that opened the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth on Sunday (see Friday's "Digest"), Stoiber criticised the cuts in federal financial support for the festival since the event is significant not only for the Bavarian profile but the nation's as well. Naumann furiously called Stoiber's remarks "scandalous", accused the Bavarian head of state of "provinciality" and added, "All this screaming over a decrease of one percent. The taxpayer has other worries."
Germany and Europe on the Web today:
When a government switches capitals, the other countries of the world have to pick up and move their embassies as well. The transition from Bonn to Berlin seems to be going relatively smoothly for the Germans themselves, but not for the US and Britain. Both countries, along with their fellow WWII victor, France, have their eyes set on spots of land right in the heart of Berlin, all but nudging the Brandenburg Gate. The problem is that, as large as Berlin is, real estate in that particular area is getting tight. The Americans, led by Ambassador John Kornblum, are not only insisting on getting a road moved before they set up diplomatic shop on Pariser Platz, they also want security. Lots of big, ugly security in the form of high gates, control points and so forth.
The Berliners are trying to be patient, but if the Americans get what they want, including even a patch of land snipped out of the site for the Holocaust Memorial, the famous Unter den Linden is going to end up looking like an armed fortress rather than the proud Prussian promenade it's been for two centuries. A recent cartoon in the "Berliner Zeitung" depicted the future embassy with a drawbridge and a moat filled with snapping crocodiles. The senator assigned to oversee the city's development, Peter Streider (SPD), has suggested that if the Americans are all that worried about being the target of international terrorism, they might consider instead a location near the Japanese and Italian embassies and the Tiergarten, a vast park now known best internationally as the Love Parade playground. No way, says Kornblum. And the talks carry on.
Meanwhile, as Tony Paterson reports in "The Sunday Telegraph", the British are going to have to rent out temporary offices in their old digs on Friedrichstrasse, that is, their former East German embassy. Their new building is a year behind schedule because "leasing arrangements [with a German consortium] became bogged down in negotiations over details such as how long the embassy's air conditioning system should be left on during the summer months and quibbles about how many times the embassy's light switches would have to be repaired over 30 years."
Interviewed on television Sunday evening, Chancellor Schröder urged his fellow Social Democrats and Green coalition partners to cut the public bickering and get with his austerity program - which is outlined in "The New York Times" by Roger Cohen: "A glossy Economics Ministry report on the sweeping program of cutbacks in state spending and plans for tax changes and deregulation quoted the chairman of the Bertelsmann media company, Dr. Mark Woessner, as saying, 'A piece of America - without losing the social aspect of our market economy - that is the road to greater German prosperity.'" (Free registration required)
"The Alabama Song and Mack the Knife - from the collaborations with Bertold Brecht, Mahagonny and The Threepenny Opera - entered pop culture in recordings by Bobby Darin, David Bowie, the Doors and others. But with the exception of these his early work is still little known," writes James Loader in "Time". Kurt Weill's 100th birthday won't roll around until March of next year, but centenary celebrations have already begun around the world, launched by an epic production of "Eternity's Road" in Chemnitz, Germany.
The "antiracist and antifascist groups, political and media activists, radio and video pirates, musicians, artists, and people from all parts of Europe" that make up the "No one is illegal" campaign are planning to set up camp in Lückendorf, near the borders between Germany and both the Czech Republic and Poland from August 7 to August 15.
"When I see American films directed by Europeans - like Stephen Frears' Hero [1992] - I tell myself it's exactly what one shouldn't do. Those directors fell into every trap lying in wait for them." That's Pedro Almodovar being quoted by "The Guardian's" Damon Wise, who's just as surprised at anyone that the Spanish director is seriously considering going to Hollywood to make his next movie. Wise is dead set against it and warns Almodovar by holding up the example of Wim Wenders's career. (Free registration required)
Theodore Dalrymple's article in "The New Statesman" on the differences between northern European and southern European hedonism is itself a terrifically fun read: "Fleshly pleasure does not come easily to northerners: they have to work hard to achieve it. Anyone who has seen a German pornographic film (widely available on televisions in hotels throughout the world) will know what I mean." On a somewhat similar note, Lara Marlowe tries to figure out in "The Irish Times" why the French have gone nuts over rollerblading.
French literature dominates the excellent current issue of "The Los Angeles Times Book Review". Novelist Anita Brookner revisits Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Edmund White reviews a new translation by Richard Howard of Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma and Howard himself reviews a new biography of Andre Gide.
A thousand people turned out to hear Stephen Hawking wrap up a conference in Potsdam called "Strings '99" on Saturday, and the cover story of this week's DER SPIEGEL probes the very core of the universe, vibrating superstrings. Or so goes the theory, anyway. Snippets of interviews with Nobel Prize laureate Steven Weinberg and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as well as other summaries in English of selected articles from this week's DER SPIEGEL.
Auf anderen Social Networks posten:
HilfeLassen Sie sich mit kostenlosen Diensten auf dem Laufenden halten:
| alles aus der Rubrik Politik | Twitter | RSS |
| alles aus der Rubrik Deutschland | RSS |
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 1999
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH
Wetter
