Scholarly Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Art - History of Art, grade: -, Hong Kong Baptist Universitiy (Department of Government and International Studies ), language: English, abstract: This essay is a revised and expanded version of a lecture-seminar for students of the Hong Kong Baptist University and the University of Hong Kong (24 September 2010). The topic is an implicitly familiar one for Chinese audiences: an artists's attempt to stay 'true to herself' in changing cultural and social environments - and even when this entails dramatic compromises with political power. The outcome may be aesthetically spectacular. But as the somewhat bizarre life of Leni Riefenstahl shows, that may be possible only if the artistic vision of the self is rather limited and inconsequential. In the light of recent scholarship, the essay discusses Riefenstahl's artistic origins in the Weimar Republic, her subsequent work as dancer, actress, film director and producer in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as her photographic work in the 1970s/1980s and her last film in 2002. Seen over a period of eighty years, Riefenstahl's main theme appears to be remarkably static and simple: the erotic dreams of a young woman bent on self-liberation, camouflaged in radically different stage-settings - up to and including her version of the 1934 Reich Party Day in Nuremberg ('Triumph of the Will').

Scholarly Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - History, Hong Kong Baptist Universitiy, language: English, abstract: The paper was addressed to an East-Asian audience conscious of national 'unification' demands in their own region, familiar with life in an authoritarian system, and aware of criticism of 'Western' political freedoms. Against this backdrop, it interprets the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in summer/fall 1989 within the framework of Karl Popper's and Ralf Dahrendorf's 'closed society' paradigm. It concludes that the East German system imploded because of pervasive popular disillusion in light of growing contradictions between official rhetoric and actual economic failure. It was not in the interest of the East German population to reform the existing structures but to pursue a quick path towards reunification with the West. Reunification demands were thus not primarily based on patriotic (or nationalist) discourse but on rational political choice.

Wissenschaftlicher Aufsatz aus dem Jahr 2010 im Fachbereich Kulturwissenschaften - Sonstiges, Hong Kong Baptist University, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In der offentlichen Diskussion Europas wird Multikulturalitat" immer mehr zu einem fragwurdigen Begriff. Er wird ersetzt durch das Bild eines sich verscharfenden Kulturkontrastes, bei dem der Islam" zunehmend als Gegenentwurf zur Konstruktion einer eigenen," all-europaischen Scheinidentitat benutzt wird. Der Beitrag befasst sich mit Aspekten der Entstehung dieses konfrontativen Konzeptes und seinen moglicherweise gefahrlichen Auswirkungen auf die Gesellschaft.