Newspapers and Magazines

Anyone interested in global culture and theory, international discourse and debate will be familiar with Lettre, the large-format journal with the lengthy texts and innovative art. After 18 years of existence and 72 issues, the German-language cultural publication Lettre INTERNATIONAL is a unique institution in the world of journalism.

In 1984, Antonin J. Liehm, a prominent Czech intellectual and journalist, launched the French edition of Lettre Internationale in Paris. It was the first step towards an innovative goal: to create a cultural publication which would appear in several language and countries simultaneously and promote the free and intensive exchange of intellectual ideas on a transnational basis. And indeed, with the birth of the French edition being followed by launches in Italy and Spain and, after 1989, several Eastern European countries, Liehm's ambitious project came to fruition. The German edition first appeared in Berlin in 1988, initially in cooperation with the publishers of the Berlin-based radical daily die tageszeitung. Entitled Lettre INTERNATIONAL, it was first produced in an abandoned dental laboratory containing three chairs and a computer, as Frank Berberich, the journal's editor and editor-in-chief, recalls. Today, Berberich has four staff and a steady stream of interns, and works from light and spacious premises in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. He allows plenty of time for the interview.

A polycentric network

"The aim was to establish a polycentric network, working on the basis of a shared concept. The basic idea was to create an international, interdisciplinary, intellectual forum as a crossing point for different types of literary, academic, poetic, intellectual and artistic creativity". In the early days, the journal featured articles by authors such as Norberto Bobbio and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Klaus Theweleit and Philip Roth, an interview with Fidel Castro and letters from Peter Weiss, and also focussed on Arab cultural issues, with contributions from Saleh al-Tayyeb, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Emile Habibi. There was artwork by Immendorf, Baselitz, Lüpertz and Penck, prompting the inevitable question how a small-circulation journal could possibly have afforded these prices in its early days: "The artists who design for one of our issues don't receive any payment; they are rewarded with a powerful presence and symbolic recognition. Artists are often very happy to emerge from the relatively closed and sometimes sterile world of art in order to create – for once – for a publication which is not a glossy magazine and is not motivated by marketing."

Seeing the world through other people's eyes The journal's original vision was overtaken by historic events and movements which made its concepts almost a precondition for public acceptance: "We know too little about the world, about the different worlds. The events of recent years have often taken us by surprise – we need only think of the fall of the Berlin wall, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, or 9/11. These events of such global magnitude were prepared outside our focus, off-camera, to speak. They have overturned the fixed constellations of the world. They demand our attention, and we must be able to see them through other people's eyes as well."

Translations – windows on the world

Lettre INTERNATIONAL's efforts to broaden our horizons have been accompanied a tough battle for survival. Berberich has a clear view of its mission: "To widen one's international perspectives – to speak with Mayakovsky, let's say – it was essential to open the windows, to make more challenging original voices and intellectual ideas visible in Germany. Contemporary thinkers should be present with original texts, not with a paraphrased version prepared by a journalistic gatekeeper." In order to reach the necessary critical mass, it was agreed that at least 70% of the texts would be translated. The translation costs are one of the journal's major items of expenditure and are met without any public funding. The journal is self-financing, covering its costs from sales through a well-organised distribution system, and from advertising, especially from the world of arts and culture.

An international award for the art of reportage

The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage, on the other hand, benefits from generous sponsorship from the Aventis Foundation. Launched by Frank Berberich, the Award is managed as an independent project in cooperation with Esther Gallodoro, with organisational support from the Goethe Institute. The LUA is an international award for the art of reporting: "It rewards literary journalism. The curiosity, the quest for knowledge and experience, journeying, encounters, probing inquiry, personal experience and anecdotal evidence should coalesce with the journalist's literary skills to create high-quality dramatic non-fiction." The generous award will be presented in October 2006 for the fourth time. An overview of this and other international projects is available in the Lettre INTERNATIONAL online archive.

In May, the jury of the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage decided upon the 2006 nominations. In mid-September the jury will select seven finalists from whom the winners will be chosen on 30 September.