At first glance, cleaners, freelancers, care workers and sales staff have little in common, but for all of them it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a living from their work. Julia Friedrichs portrays people who are struggling to survive. She asks about the causes of the social upheavals – and calls for a new class consciousness.

Positions, activism, whistle-blowers, refugees – the latest books for young people take up political and socially critical topics from the past and present.

Two books attractively present information on various forests, forests per se and particular tree species. Fascinating fact: planting your own forest is not hard at all.

Visitors to museums and archives usually interact with exhibits locked in display cases in darkened rooms. Yet modern technology has given us ways to more directly experience art and cultural artefacts. Coding da Vinci is an open, cultural data hackathon that digitally brings museum pieces to life.  

University teaching has become increasingly specialised over the centuries. But the topics addressed in research today increasingly require an interdisciplinary approach.  Leibniz Association president Matthias Kleiner sees a renaissance of universal research. 

Carbon offset schemes promise to compensate for the emissions caused by private individuals – as air travellers, for instance – with donations to climate projects. But are they not just a way of salving guilty consciences?  

Over the past 120 years, Marxist ideas have undergone frequent revivals on the silver screen.

German television shows tend to have a bad reputation for poor writing and cheap productions not suited for an international market and audience. Now series like “Deutschland ‘83” and “Babylon Berlin” are putting a new shine on that tarnished image. 

Who are they and how do they live? The advertising and media world has discovered a new target group: Generation Z, fully digitalized since birth, is coming of age. But on screen they are (still) representing the lives of Millennials.

2020 was a year of great upheavals, a turning point. The pop and electronic music sectors had to grapple with the basic question of how to make a living amid a pandemic, ensuing crisis and concrete policy decisions.

As in many other areas of society, the coronavirus pandemic took a heavy toll on German musical life in 2020. Patrick Hahn recalls what did happen last year all the same in the classical, contemporary and early music scenes.

What happens when musicians and their audience have to keep their distance? Jazz festivals came up with various strategies to cope with that situation in the year of the coronavirus crisis. But even more auspicious are some ideas musicians themselves have come up with – for their own sake and for the future of improvised music. They deserve a hearing because their livelihoods really are at stake now.