Newspapers and Magazines

In most cases, cultural magazines find themselves in a marginal market. When they are primarily supported by the commitment of those producing them and not by strong publishing houses or fat advertising contracts then it is all the more a question of how strong this commitment is.

The first edition of the quarterly magazine Kultur & Gespenster (i. e., Culture and Visions) appeared in August 2006. The editors are Jan-Frederik Bandel, Nora Sdun and Gustav Mechlenburg. When asked how this publication can be described, the team answers: " 'Drawers' always stick. Of course it isn't a literary magazine because we don't print narrative prose or poetry. We are a magazine of culture and visions. And we don't intend to give anyone who wants to read it any 'house rules' to be going on with." In the first issue it said, cultivation and enticement were the programmatic goals of the cultural magazine; here 'enticement' comes from the Old German 'gispanst' (Gespenst, a vision or phantom) and accordingly "Kultur & Gespenster provides advice which is to be taken seriously for all cultural enticements, even if one does not know where they will lead." The magazine is published in the Textem-Verlag by Gustav Mechlenburg who has brought out a series of fairly small literary publications in pamphlet form, a daring experimental novel by Carsten Klook (Korrektor, 2005) and a History of German Literature in an Hour (Deutsche Literaturgeschichte in einer Stunde) by Klabund. Still gentle beginnings – but the internet page of the publishing house is a dynamic interactive forum, and the magazine Kultur & Gespenster (circulation 2000) can well be seen as its flagship.

"We are making an offer"

Hubert Fichte, underexposed in his many-sided creativity, seems to be a key figure of this scene; the main articles of Issue 1 were dedicated to him; Jan-Frederik Bandel has been responsible for several independent publications on Hubert Fichte. In the second, considerably larger December-issue (400 pages, topical theme: Unter vier Augen (i. e., Face to face) ) with a focus on interviews/discussions, Kathrin Röggla even relates her media authorship to Fichte. All in all, the topical theme 'discussions and interviews' has produced a comprehensive and broad range of subjects; moreover, the selection of authors from literature, the academic world, critical circles, art publishing and pictorial art also raises hopes of an even larger spectrum in the future. The publishers have an "open but emphatic" concept of culture and are not willing to subordinate themselves to the fetish of current trends: "What is 'current' is everything that fascinates and interests us and our authors, and which gets us really het up. But we haven't got anything to do with any kind of specialist insider gossip or affected didactic intentions. We don't want to mediate; we are simply making an offer. It's just all there. There are more texts and pictures than fish in the sea." From the above, links can indeed be made to a great many things: among others an interview with Thomas Bernhard has been dug out, published in German for the first time; an essay by Robert Neumann from 1966 about the Gruppe 47 (Spezis in Berlin) demonstrates concentrated polemics, and an essay on the current art of Pierangelo Maset warns of the spectre of the mainstream and the "loss of the fringe".

We're the fattest

There is not complete consensus as regards editorial role-models: "Our advertising sales person says: the "Teutsche Merkur". Others maintain: American quarterlies, the "Beute," "John Sinclair" and "Texte zur Kunst". But that's all rubbish. Kultur & Gespenster is the fattest." It is indeed fat and also reminds one in its format of "Kunstforum International", offers a careful selection of well-reproduced pictorial material (art, photographs, cartoons) and all in all an original and not overdone layout The only thing is that the print is unfortunately much too small. In the jargon of the publishing houses one talks of Augenpulver (small print that strains the eyes) which even the large publishers unfortunately use often enough in books, especially for the young public with their insubstantial funds. Information chits enclosed with medicines or the small print in life-insurance contracts are also Augenpulver, but there's one thing one certainly can't accuse producers of Kultur & Gespenster with – that they spread editorial Augenpulver. The contributions are serious and are (usually) written in a journalist way or are in essay form (i.e. are easily read), the editorial mix is inspiring and the general trend leads one to expect a constant supply of fresh thoughts. Anyway, the self-confidently expressed motivation of the producers promises long staying-power: "The need to pipe up in between, transformed into fantasies of what is possible, and a frenzy of creativity."