Germany

The Edge of Heaven, directed by Fatih Akin, is a carefully crafted, tender account of six interwoven lives. Ali is a effervescent Turkish expatriate living in Germany with his bookish son Nejat. The film begins with Ali inviting Yeter, a Turkish prostitute, to become his live-in girlfriend - much to Nejat's dismay. Yet Nejat quickly gains respect for the grim but kind hearted Yeter and after her sudden death, he returns to Turkey to search for her daughter Ayten. Ayten meanwhile, is a defiant political activist desperately refuge in Germany after an encounter with the Turkish police. Penniless and homeless, she is taken in by a German student named Lotte and her disapproving mother. When Ayten's asylum plea is rejected, Lotte follows Ayten to Istanbul to help secure her release from prison.

HEALTH WARNING: THIS IS A LONG REVIEW OF AN IMPORTANT BOOK

Guy Aitchison reviews Constitutional Patriotism by Jan-Werner Muller.

Moderator: This is an ongoing debate, started by Anthony Barnett and Martin Wolf, about whether an intelligentsia is needed if Gordon Brown, or anyone else, is to reform Britain. You can read the whole of the debate here.

Tilman Spengler (Berlin, Kursbuch): It was indeed the case that there was an intelligentsia that emerged from 1967 onwards in Germany as Anthony Barnett describes. An important moment was when Willy Brandt defended the role of writers in response to a diatribe against them by Ludwig Erhardt, who had had resigned as Chancellor in 1966. Usually traditional, trade-union-based social democracy is anti-intellectual. Brandt’s response as the leader of the Social Democrats was to reach out to their influence. The young Gunter Grass became one of his advisers. The Greens when they started around that time were not considered an intellectual party. If anything they were part of the de-intellectualised, ‘practical’ politics and Joska Fischer was initially considered not so much as brainy but as someone who got things done. In a more familiar way, Helmut Schmidt, the SDP leader who was Chancellor from 1974 to 1982 was also of this school. He was impressed by rather vacuous ‘strategic thinking’ but not by ideas. He was particularly irritated by what he considered "visions". "If you want visions", he once cried out, "consult your optician".

Moderator: This reply to Martin Wolf is part of a debate the whole of which can be seen here. It started with a comment by Martin to an article in openDemocracy Anthony wrote on Gordon Brown, the intellectual. His Part II is here.