Posted on 06/26/2006 11:04:21 AM PDT by Bokababe
Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks".
www.novosti.co.yu Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade
June 24, 2006 By D. Sekulic, June 23, 2006
Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks".
The Berlin Ensemble, headed by the also frequently controversial Klaus Peymann, the famous former head of the Vienna Burgtheater, recently organized donations with the help of numerous actors to award Handke an alternative Heinrich Heine award in the amount of 50,000 euros. The highly prestigious German language award was awarded to Peter Handke by an expert jury in Dusseldorf but the city council refused to accept its decision, stating quite literally that the award could not go to a writer who is of pro-Serb orientation!
The case provoked spirited discussion and many concluded that it represented an instance of brutal political censure of literature. Local politicians are judging one of the greatest living writers in the German language, warned eminent intellectuals, among them some, like Nobel laureate Gunther Grass who at one time advocated the bombing of Serbia.
At the same time Handke informed Peymann and his friends that he is renouncing the alternative award as well because, as he had previously stated, he did not wish his work to be the subject of meddling by local politicians. The money that they collect should be sent to the Serb enclaves in Kosovo and Metohija to people who are living under impossible conditions thanks to the supporters of "freedom" imposed upon them by NATO bombs.
Grass dismisses jury
In Dusseldorf it has now been openly admitted that the decision really was of a political nature and that the Heinrich Heine award allegedly has a clearly political character. In response to this, Grass, who is highly influential, has sent a request that in the future the city council be stripped of the right to approve or reject the decision of the expert jury.
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Related article:
Disputed Author Handke Awarded German Literary Prize
DEUTSCE WELLE 25.05.2006
Großansict des Bildes mit der Bildunterscrift: Austrian writer Peter Handke is controversial because of his stance on Serbia
Controversial Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke was awarded the city of Düseldorf's Heine Prize for literature.
The Heine Prize, endowed for 50,000 euros ($64,000), is one of the three highest-paying literature prizes in Germany. The jury said Handke -- like Heinric Heine, the German poet after whom the prize is named -- obstinately follows the way to an "open truth." He puts forth his own poetic world view, in contrast to broader public opinion, they said. The prize will be awared on Dec. 13.
Handke wrote the groundbreaking experimental play "Offending the Audience" and the novel "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick", but may be best know for writing the novel "Wings of Desire", whic was turned into a film by Wim Wenders.
Pro-Serbian stance
He is controversial because of his pro-Serbian stance during the Balkan wars, and his support for the Serbian regime.
Recently, Frenc national theatre Comédie-Française removed the play "Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking" from its 2007 season lineup, after Handke spoke at the burial of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in Marc.
Handke, who lives in France, said in an esay in the Frenc newspaper Libération: "Let's stop laying the masacre . on the backs of the Serbian military and paramilitary. And listen -- at last -- to the survivors of the Muslim masacres in numerous Serbian villages around Srebrenica."
'Glad' aceptance
Last year, Handke's publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, said the author would categorically refuse any more literature prizes; in Paris, however, Handke said he would "gladly" acept the Heine Prize.
Up to now, winners of the Heine Prize have included Walter Jens, Günter Kunert, Max Frisc, Wolf Biermann, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Elfriede Jelinek und Robert Gernhardt.
No it was not, and I did miss it when searching for what Eleni might have said to you to warrant such a weird response from you.
However, it only confirms my intial intuition. Her post to you still in no way should have provoked in any American guy, your response. So where are you from?
Thanks for the kind words.
I'm trying to be a realist in my assessment of the whole situation. It seems to me that everyone who comments on the Balkans either harbors illusions that Milosevic was a misunderstood patriot, or that Tudjman wasn't a neo-Nazi whackjob that he was, or that Izetbegovic is a democrat instead of the Zarqawi in a business suit that he is, or some other fantasy.
What I see is millions of people run roughshod over by three different kinds of totalitarian ideologues and slick opportunists, and a useless-as-usual UN making things worse.
What I cannot abide is the suggestion that US troops deployed to the region were bad actors and war criminals in some kind of sinister plot.
That is not how the US operates, and it enrages me when people blame America for the consequences of Milosevic's actions.
Also, the Serbian wine industry of families and individuals was destroyed in Tito's time.
The building of the St. Sava Cathedral, the largest Orthodox temple in the Balkans, (which had been started a few years before WWII), only began again in 1985, after Tito was gone.
Tito pushed atheism on the Serbs, while, at the same time mosques were going up all over Bosnia and Kosovo (Yugoslavs referred to Kosovo as Cape Canaveral because of all the rocket-looking minarets).
Tito, who directed U.S. and British bombing - they allowed him to choose targets - had them bomb directly Serbian churches to harm their faith and show them there was no God. The U.S. wrote hateful messages on the bombs which could be read when they didn't explode.
New York, NY. The most recent arrival to America on my dad's side came here in 1847 and on my mom's side 1898.
I am a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
Nice try, but no cigar.
I apologize for having a broader vocabulary than you expected.
Agreed, although they are far more Germanic than ever before and that "erased people" issue is a hard one to swallow.
The point is that each of these new states now all owe Germany. And given that Nazi Germany and Islam were allied in WWII, and now Germany and Islam are both rising and flexing their muscles at the same time and in the same place with the same line up of players once again, with no one noticing the historical connection between them, it worries me.
It especially concerns me that, at a time when we are battling Islamic terrorism, we support the establishment of two Islamic countries in the Balkans with known Islamic terrorist connections? It makes no sense!
Tito seized all private property in Yugoslavia in the years immediately following WWII.
In 1950 he introduced his "self-management" policies - in which the seized, collectivized property became the collective possession of the "workers" who were managing the stolen property.
These "workers" were allowed to benefit from the excess value their production generated - in other words theyw ere allowed to participate in the "profits."
This is basically a combination of Soviet collectivization and syndicalist Communism.
After 25 years of this, Tito began allowing individuals favored by the state to begin profting individually.
Milosevic's policy, of granting property concessions to favored cronies was not different in any noticeable respect from Tito's late 70s policies. Milosevic was a Communist and Tito was a Communist and they pursued the same economic policies.
Tito, who directed U.S. and British bombing - they allowed him to choose targets - had them bomb directly Serbian churches to harm their faith and show them there was no God. The U.S. wrote hateful messages on the bombs which could be read when they didn't explode.
Thanks for the added lying, anti-American propaganda.
Again, I point out that it is hilarious that you America-bashers are questioning my ancestry and patriotism.
Being a Serb and an American first, it did pain me that we as Americans in general were so duped into believing the Clinton lies.
The troops are a great group of guys, mainly bunch of kids in their early, mid 20s that believe what they are told. There are ignorant morons, but many know the deal but they can't change a thing.
Slobo brought it upon himself. Everyone is responsible and has to be held accountable for their own actions. i.e I or someone kills your mom or dad because 'they' shot or poisened 'my' family member. Does that give me the green light and absolve me of my retribution? No, I still am accountable for my actions regardless of emotions.
Regarding Handke, I don't buy his genuine nature at all. A commie pig will always find fault with US policy regardless how great a decision or outcome came about.
I agree, but those things were allowed to happen when America was still in a September 10 mentality.
The threat of Islamic radicalism was not taken as seriously in those days as it should have been - most policymakers assumed it was just another form of nationalist rhetoric.
And yes, the "erased people" stuff is victimological garbage.
No, there were a lot of entrepreneurs and start-ups by the littler peoples all over who were not his cronies nor influential/involved in politics and did not know him personally.
And Tito's late 70s policies were only at the very end of his reign, after 30 years under his wieldy, inefficient, wasteful governance - with ugly architecture to boot.
Tito also made Yugoslavia heavily indebted while Milosevic tried to resist IMF dictates.
Milosevic also did an amazing a lot of rebuilding after the NATO bombing from June 1999 until October 2000 - many, many times the pace of this puppet government.
"And yes, the "erased people" stuff is victimological garbage."
Hardly. It was pretty racist, although "genocidal" was a serious overstatement. Slovenia does take a bit too much pride in its homogeneity.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1408564,00.html
You give Slobo way too much credit, ask his goofy wife how much influence she had over him.
I didn't realize you were discussing the Roma.
I thought you were talking about Slovenian complaints that their cultural heritage was particularly repressed under Tito - which is not really true.
Bingo. Nice one.
You have to admit that Clinton's interventionist policies were boneheaded, he helped create the current Bosnian mess, it's another attempt at creating another mini-Yugo State with a bunch of unwilling participants forced to live together.
The original Yugo experiment didn't work, why should this one?
I never claimed they were otherwise. His policies showed clear favoritism toward Albania, when the Albanian government was clearly guilty of violating Yugoslavia's sovereignty.
Neither side's hands were clean there, but Clinton did not place the KLA under the same scrutiny that he placed the Yugoslavian forces.
This was a repetition of the same flawed policy pursued vis-a-vis the Croatians in Krajina and vis-a-vis the Bosnians.
It was as if the Clinton administration had no overarching long-term goal in the Balkans but simply acted in disconnected bursts.
Again, we are in agreement. Its good to see that someone is thinking around here.
Have you ever seen the film "The Brooklyn Connection"? PBS ran it and it's available at Blockbuster.com and on Netflix.
"Therefore, I refuse to pretend along with Peter Handke that the Milosevic regime was worth defending."
*****The Milosevic regime was defeated by their own people least we forget. I'm an American, and was in the Marines. So, the US Lead attack in Kosovo for example was almost one of the worse in history due to its indiscriminate bombing of both Albanians and Serbs....who were just escaping and we in the work place at the wrong time or, purposely targeted, we'll never know. If you talk bad about the Milosevic regime you must also talk bad about the Muslim atrocities and their continued murder of thousands of Serbs, innocents and POW's since Bosnia in the 90's to Kosovo literally to this month without........stopping. I know this because I was there for five years in Kosovo. lastly, our entrance into Bosnia to Kosovo was predicated on fabrications in order to justify our total use of military force to the degree they used it, and not get repurcussions from from the world.......Many lies and fabrications were told from Srebrenica..to Kosovo.
If you read wideawake's posts Tom, he has a pretty even keeled approach. He's an anticommunist, hence his disdain for Milo which is justified.
Yes....it seems so.....
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