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09/01/2009

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Spiegel, Hubert

3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany | 09/12/2008

A Nobel Prize without prize money?

The administrators of the estate of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize, have lost money in the financial crisis due to speculation. This could lead to a major reduction in the prize money, writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "If the bosses of the American car industry are ready to work for one dollar a year, perhaps Nobel Prize winners will also have to settle for less in the future. ... This would not be the first time that the golden Nobel Prize belt has had to be tightened. Two world wars and the depression of the 1930s caused prize sums to sink by up to two thirds in some years. The low point was in 1920, when [author] Knut Hamsun had to make do with a measly 134,100 crowns - measured in terms of buying power that represented just 28 percent of the original sum from the year 1901. Knowing Horace Engdahl, the Academy's clever general secretary and a declared enemy of American culture, the emergency plan has already been drawn up. If the foundation's tills are empty the Nobel Prize in Literature can finally go to the United States. The estimated prize money: one dollar."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany | 29/08/2008

The endangered book?

In view of the success of electronic devices for reading books such as Amazon's "Kindle", the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung asks whether "the printed book, our culture's most important medium, is menaced. ... So far only one thing seems certain: anyone who has anything to do with books, be it writing, printing, binding, publishing, transporting, selling or reading them, will be affected in one way or another by the new technology. ... It is not just the economics of the book market that will change. An unprecedented upheaval is threatening to radically alter the long-standing profanation of the written word. ... The cult of the book has its oldest and deepest roots in religion. The process of Enlightenment and secularisation has not destroyed this cult, but simply given it new roots. Anyone who picks up Amazon's e-book reader cannot fail to be impressed in the first hours and days by the technical possibilities offered by the device. Then when he goes back to his bookshelf, the aura of the book appears to him as tender and vulnerable as the wings of a butterfly."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany | 13/10/2006

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's other voice

"Pamuk is not only Turkey's most important contemporary literary voice, he is also one of the few internationally acclaimed representatives of Turkish cultural life," writes Hubert Spiegel. "However, he can't escape the danger of being perceived as a representative of Turkey in the West while being regarded as an agent for the West in his own country. Not only do his books illustrate this dilemma, they revel in it, tirelessly portraying the fascinating interplay between cultures and traditions across the centuries. If Pamuk is a mediator between the cultures, then he is a very unique one. He is less interested in the often cited - if exaggerated - similarities between the West and the Islamic world and more interested in the convergence points of the differences between these cultures. They form the starting point for his novels. Pamuk uses them to create incredibly complex stories that are full of innuendo and sometimes not easy follow."

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