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Culture calendar

Silke Wünsch / rbNovember 27, 2013

Pre-Christmas celebrations, mulled wine and scented candles... You get all this in hundreds of Christmas markets throughout Germany. But December in Germany offers even more than that.

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Lightwave International - Pink Floyd Laser prism for Roger Waters' 2008 Dark Side of the Moon World Tour, Copyright: cc by LightwaveIntl sa 3
Image: cc by LightwaveIntl sa 3.0

The dark side of the moon

It is the most famous album of avant-garde rock group Pink Floyd. The record was in the Top 200 on the Billboard charts for 773 weeks and was sold more than 50 million times. With this album, Pink Floyd produced a milestone in 1973. The prism on the black album cover is just as famous as the song, "Money."

The Planetarium in Hamburg is now honoring the Pop Art movement with an audio-visual exhibition. Images, 3D effects and laser beams are projected onto the star dome, plus there is the bombastic sound from "The Dark Side of the Moon." Find out the dates of the show here.

Schlingensief exhibition in Berlin

Christoph Schlingensief was a multi-talented director a film, theater and opera, as well as an action and performance artist. He was radical and provocative and turned the art scene upside down more than once. His debut at the Bayreuth Festival with the staging of "Parsifal" earned him high praise from critics. In 2011, he was posthumously awarded the Golden Lion at the Biennale in Venice, a year after his death from cancer. The "opera village" in Burkina Faso was his last major project.

An exhibition now traces the development of the art rebel. It can be visited from December 1, 2013 until January 19, 2014 at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, before it moves to the MoMa Museum of Modern Art in New York.

A portrait of the late German artistic talent Christoph Schlingensief (Photo: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Hubert Burda Media)
Christoph Schlingensief died in 2010Image: Getty Images

Cologne celebrates the Bible

The new director of the Köln Schauspielhaus, or Cologne Theater, Stefan Bachmann, seems to have a penchant for gigantic productions: He has now brought a real theater blockbuster to the stage. It is an elaborate staging of Genesis - the first book of the Old Testament in the Bible. However, there is not much that is holy and righteous is in this piece. It's more about fighting, revenge, blood, and obedience. There is rape, betrayal and murder - everything in a five-hour performance, which brought the first-night audience to its limits, but also to thunderous applause.

If you want to test your limits as well, you will have the opportunity from December 13-15 in Depot 1 in the Cologne Carlswerk, an alternate venue for the Köln Schauspielhaus, which is currently under renovation.

Actors sit at a table in a scene from the play "Genesis," Copyright: Thomas Aurin
A Cologne theater is going back to the rootsImage: Thomas Aurin

Models on the bike

The Munich City Museum presents a retrospective of the photographer Herrmann Landshoff. His descendants have offered the museum a complete collection with prints from the time period 1927 to 1970. Landshoff had already caused a stir as a teenager with cartoons and photographs. As a Jew, he had to leave Germany in 1933 and became a fashion photographer in Paris.

His images appeared in Vogue magazine, among other highly regarded publications. Finally, he had to flee to the United States. He continued his career as a fashion photographer and started working for the biggest fashion magazines. His series of portraits and architecture photos are also impressive. The exhibition will be showing more than 250 photographs until April 21, 2014 in Munich.

A Herrmann Landshoff photo of cyclists, circa1946, Copyright: Münchner Stadtmuseum, Archiv Hermann Landshoff
A Herrmann Landshoff photo from circa 1946Image: Münchner Stadtmuseum, Archiv Hermann Landshoff

Ringing in the New Year

Every year on December 31, the biggest party in Germany takes place in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate - outside and for free. A million people were there to welcome in 2013. The party stretches for more than two kilometers, between the Gate and Berlin's Victory Column monument, with screens, party tents, beer and sausage stands along the way.

Numerous bands, artists and DJs will take to the stage. Exactly who will play is traditionally announced shortly before the performance. The highlight of the event, of course, is the New Year's fireworks display at midnight.

Fireworks light the sky above the Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Copyright: Gero Breloer
Fireworks will again light Berlin's skies on New Year's EveImage: AP