Culture

Hamburg in the near future: Instead of human drivers, robots deliver parcels. In cafes, robots roll between the tables, serving diners. On the streets, one encounters humanoid robots walking dogs — or the other way around, people taking their robot dogs for a walk.  This is the setting of Doris Dörrie's new film, "Frau Winkler verlässt das Haus" ("Mrs. Winkler Leaves the House"). At the core of the plot is an elderly woman who can no longer live on her own after a fall. With her only daughter unable to provide permanent care, the solution seems simple enough: a care robot with a built-in EOL program, or "End of Life" mode. This robot not only assists with everyday life but can also provide assisted dying under certain conditions, namely when the person explicitly wishes to end their life ...

Hamburg in the near future: Instead of human drivers, robots deliver parcels. In cafes, robots roll between the tables, serving diners. On the streets, one encounters humanoid robots walking dogs — or the other way around, people taking their robot dogs for a walk.  This is the setting of Doris Dörrie's new film, "Frau Winkler verlässt das Haus" ("Mrs. Winkler Leaves the House"). At the core of the plot is an elderly woman who can no longer live on her own after a fall. With her only daughter unable to provide permanent care, the solution seems simple enough: a care robot with a built-in EOL program, or "End of Life" mode. This robot not only assists with everyday life but can also provide assisted dying under certain conditions, namely when the person explicitly wishes to end their life ...

In a dark underground hideout, dim light spills from a handful of oil lamps. A comrade fiddles with a rifle. A red flag hangs on one of the roughly hewn stone walls, bearing a hammer and sickle on a white star — the symbol of the ChineseWorkers' and Peasants' Red Army. Weapons are scattered on the ground. One is picked up, and soon the action moves into the snowy forest, where gunfire erupts among the trees. Such a scene could fit in a new installment of "Call of Duty," the popular first person shooter game that transports players to battlefields past, present and future. But it is actually from "The Defiant." The game is currently being developed by the Chinese studio Hoothanes Technology in Hangzhou. It tells the story of Chinese forces fending off the Japanese army in the 1930s and 194...

Who would have imagined it in the beginning? A 26-year-old man without a high school diploma, but greatly ambitious, writes a two-pound book with a melancholy undertone. "I'm not exactly delighted," his publisher initially responded. But he ended up publishing the novel anyway, more out of goodwill than conviction. And the rest is history. For many, Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks is considered THE German social novel. It is indeed a classic, and one that garnered the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Global fame, an international best-seller, and required reading for many German students. Anyone who mentions Thomas Mann thinks of Buddenbrooks in the same breath. Why is that? Life as a literary model Does the explanation lie in the autobiographical connections between the work and the autho...

On Thursday, October 8, at around 1:00 p.m. CEST, all eyes in the literary world will be set on Stockholm.  That's when the new permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Ingrid Carlberg, will hold a press conference to announce the winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature, marking the end of a lengthy selection process that officially began a year earlier.  Nobel Prize in literature: How nominations work  The Swedish Academy is the body responsible for awarding the prize. Its 18 members consist of writers, professors and intellectuals. In September of the previous year, the Academy's Nobel Committee sends forms to hundreds of individuals and organizations eligible to submit nominations for the Nobel Prize in literature.  According to the Nobel Prize website, these include profes...

Aylin and Mae, both age 15, are members of their school's Little Feminist Book Club in Bicester, Oxfordshire, England. During a group discussion, the club learned that teenagers at other schools were trying to have the sale of school uniforms banned in sex shops. Schoolgirl costumes are also widely used in pornographic videos. "All of us unanimously agreed. We wanted to take it a step further; we wanted to ban school uniform from all pornography," Aylin told DW. As a result, they started a petition to raise awareness of the issue.  Many of their fellow students, as the petition states, have already had unpleasant experiences while wearing their uniforms. Some reported being harassed as early as the age of 11. Many of these experiences had left them feeling frightened, ashamed and insec...

The 2026 Youth Word of the Year, "Ragebait," was announced on Saturday at the Frankfurt Book Fair by publisher PONS Langenscheidt. The "Jugendwort des Jahres," or German Youth Word of the Year, is an annual campaign that documents the popularity of new slang expressions. "Ragebait" (in English: rage bait) refers to social media content that is deliberately designed to make people angry, frustrated or morally outraged. It aims to drive engagement, since the algorithms of platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X reward high-energy interaction. A post that generates a heated debate through angry comments, or that is widely shared due to the emotional reaction it provokes, counts as high engagement, which leads the platforms to push the content to more feeds. Shortlist also included 'Peak' a...

It's the hot-button topic at the Frankfurt Book Fair: How profoundly will artificial intelligence (AI) transform the book industry, and how can this transformation be regulated? Given the warnings about the technology's long-term risks to humanity as a whole, such debates might appear rather narrow in scope. In reality, however, they concern very concrete issues — copyright protection, the power of tech giants and the future of creativity. Many agree that the political measures taken don't go far enough. This year, however, another aspect has entered the debate: Can we actually recognize when a text has been written with the help of artificial intelligence, and if so, can this be proven? These are some of the questions raised by the current scandal surrounding Haitian-Canadian author Th...

Maria Kalesnikava knows all too well how authoritarian regimes repress art: The Belarusian flautist and activist spent five years in detention as a political prisoner, three of which were in solitary confinement.Speaking at this year's Beethovenfest, she said: "A person's external freedom can be taken away, sometimes almost entirely. Their freedom of movement, contacts with other people, and access to information can be limited." She pointed out that it is, however, much harder to control what has already become part of one's memory, imagination and inner experience. "And it is precisely in this that I find the explanation for why culture is so important for a free society and why authoritarian systems so often view it with distrust" she concluded during the keynote speech.German Foreign M...

The 1990s in Britain are often remembered through a haze of nostalgia consisting of rave culture, Britpop and provocative art and fashion by the likes of Tracey Emin and Alexander McQueen. Undeniably, the decade was a time of major change in British society — the long reign of Margaret Thatcher had come to an end and the West entered a period of relative post-Cold War stability. Meanwhile, British cultural icons like Oasis, the Spice Girls and Vivienne Westwood garnered international fame. But Tate Britain's new exhibition "The 90s: Art and Fashion," which opens on October 8 and runs through February 14, 2027, urges viewers to look beyond the familiar names and images.  Even though now prominent artists such as Damien Hirst and Juergen Teller are among the show's 70 contributors, the e...