Peace, joy, and one’s own garden: Pictures of a happy retreat into country life are typical of the magazine “LandLust.”

Germans crave to feel a sense of security – the magazine LandLust hits the zeitgeist – By Anne Hansen

In these times of crisis in the media, publishers would rather avoid the day that the quarterly circulation figures are released. And it is not only the large news magazines like Der Spiegel, Stern and Focus who continually lose readers. The news-for-free culture that has developed because of the Internet is hanging like the sword of Damocles over the entire industry.

Still, the CEO of Landwirtschaftsverlag, Karl-Heinz Bonny, doesn’t understand all the fuss. He says everything is going great. And does he dread the day quarterly figures are released? Not at all, says Bonny cheerfully, admitting that he is always anxiously awaiting the numbers. “No,” he corrects himself, “I’m actually looking forward to it.”

Bavarian monarchists continue to make pilgrimages to Altötting where royal hearts were once buried – By Thomas Grasberger

Every gathering of Bavarian monarchists is a colorful event. Many are wearing traditional costumes with a bushy gamsbart, a tuft of goat's hair, decorating their hats, carrying signs and flags identifying their hometowns and celebrating their heroes. “Dear King Ludwig II, you gave us so much and you will continue to bless our country in the future,” or some other equally reverent sentiment marks speeches by the chairman of the association of monarchists. And then comes the Bavarian anthem: “Gott mit dir, Du Land der Bayern, Heimaterde, Vaterland” (God be with you, land of the Bavarians, native soil, Fatherland).

All are singing “Heimaterde” (native soil), which was commonly used in older text versions. Nobody is using “deutsche Erde” (German soil), as stipulated in the current variant recommended in 1980 by former Bavarian leader Franz Josef Strauss. Many of the royalists prefer the original version by Michael Öchsner from 1860/1861, reading “Gott mit ihm, dem Bayern-König, Segen über sein Geschlecht!” (God be with him, King of Bavaria, and blessed be his house).

“Images of an Era” – Gerhard Richter’s early paintings from the 1960s go on show in Hamburg – By Klaus Grimberg

Two women and two men, cheerfully laughing, on a motor boat plowing through the water at high velocity – to the delight of the four passengers who are obviously enjoying the summer, the sun and the thrill of speed. This picture perfectly captures the unrestrained carelessness of the moment. But what is the real story behind this painting?

In 1965, Richter used an advertisement in the July 11 issue of the weekly Stern as a template for “Motor Boat.” In this ad, Kodak was promoting its camera Instamatic launched two years previously. The picture of the motoring jaunt on water was one of several examples of “simply good pictures”– as the Kodak slogan went. The photograph inspired Richter as “it looked like a snapshot – yet it was completely artificial, professionally staged joie de vivre. But that was also a form of truth,” he said.

“Nader and Simin, a Separation” is about the seperation of a couple who suffers under Iran’s social ambivalence.

An Iranian film took the top prize at the 61st Berlin Film Festival – German entries did well, too – By Jan Kepp

There are those rare moments where art and reality meet in a timeless space, mirror each other and allow the world to be understood better. At this year's Berlin Film Festival, there was such a moment. While people in the Arab world, revolted against ossified, authoritarian regimes, one movie in the festival showed the ambivalence in societies torn between modernity and tradition.

“Jodaeiye Nader az Simin” (Nader and Simin, a Separation) by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is an intense film about a couple who wants to leave Iran. Nader, however, decides to stay to take care of his father who suffers from dementia. During the day, Nader hires a woman from a poor background who is to look after him. When this deeply religious woman who is pregnant, unexpectedly loses her child, Nader is accused of causing the miscarriage: A court decision looms, threatening to shatter his life.

A group of activists protest with bare facts against the drastically increasing rents in the trendy districts of Berlin.

As apartments in Berlin become more expensive an unusual protest has emerged – By Anne Hansen

When the rents reach €10 per square meter, the patience runs out. Apartments in this price category are for “hedonistic internationals,” according to a group of Berlin activists. They are campaigning against unscrupulous landlords by attending open houses. And once the tour begins, they start shedding their clothes.

The portable CD players come out. Painted with slogans on their bodies reading “Mietwucher” (exorbitant rents) and “zu teuer” (too expensive), these protesters begin to dance. After a few minutes, it’s over and they retreat, leaving slack-jawed estate agents in their wake.

By Derek Scally, Berlin correspondent for the Irish Times

For anyone who loves Berlin, it’s easy to squint your eyes and pretend that the normal rules don’t apply here.

Before Berlin became known as a graveyard for ambition, it earned notoriety as a cemetery for capital.

After the Berlin Wall fell, investors piled into the city only to lose their shirts in grand style when their speculative bubble burst in the mid-1990s. Two decades and many bankrupt investors later, however, the smell of money in the city is now impossible to ignore.

Augsburg is Germany’s oldest Renaissance jewel – By Christine Schulz

Where else could you find a city that holds the right of passage right through its 1,000-year-old cathedral only because this house of worship was built on an ancient Roman road. Or one whose most famous envoy is a pair of wooden heads and whose tradesmen and bankers of the 16th century were already familiar with globalization.

That city is Augsburg: second-oldest town in Germany, third-largest in Bavaria. The wooden heads are puppets of its world famous marionette theater, Augsburger Puppenkiste. Augsburg’s mercantile patriciate was headed by the Fugger family who financed emperors and popes and got in on business and politics around the world.

Ten years old, the German-language version of the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia receives high marks on quality – By Thorsten Schatz

German Wikipedians work with particular thoroughness. The deciding factor probably relates to the time-honored printed competition: For two hundred years, the “Brockhaus” was the authoritative German collection of knowledge. And it still remains the yardstick against which Wikipedia authors measure themselves.

How good they manage this was shown by comparisons carried out by the computer magazine C’T, Stern magazine, and the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. It showed that German Wikipedia is just as accurate as its renowned competition. They, just like many scholars and teachers, had originally cast doubt on the authors, their knowledge, and their research abilities and warned about using Wikipedia – and must now recognize the online encyclopedia’s high quality.