secret revealed
“In major global political situations, we need smart people who can mediate conflicts to us, people like Natalie Amiri,” writes the Focusmagazine and announces something that should actually remain secret. Natalie Amiri will be honored with the Bavarian Constitutional Order in February 2024 for her work as a journalist, presenter and author. Amiri posted a photo of the text on Instagram: “My father just sent it to me without a word. Typical for a Persian father. Persian fathers generally don’t compliment their daughters,” she wrote under her post and continued: “They are convinced that it could harm the daughters. They would then become arrogant and vain. Also a motivation – for the daughters.”
The Munich native grew up between Persian carpets and organic vegetables as the daughter of a German mother and an Iranian father. She was in her father’s country for the first time when she was four years old. But only with her mother and sister, because in 1982 there was the Iran-Iraq war and her father could have been drafted. Since this trip, Amiri has visited Iran again and again. After graduating from high school, she studied Oriental Studies with a focus on Iranian Studies in Bamberg, with semesters abroad in Tehran and Damascus. In 2005 she worked in the German embassy in Iran’s capital, was headhunted by the ARD correspondent and eventually became a journalist. From 2015 to 2020, Amiri headed the ARD office in Tehran, but then had to hand over the management for security reasons.
She has received many awards, including being chosen as Journalist of the Year 2022 by Medium Magazine. Even if her father doesn’t give compliments, he is still proud, she says.
Appreciated gags
Martin Rassau and Volker Heissmann.
(Photo: IMAGO/B. Lindenthaler)
This year the Narrhalla has the comedians Volker Heissmann and Martin Rassau presented as a prize winner. They have been on stage together for 40 years – for 25 years they have been leading and supporting the Comedy Fürth together with their partners. Heissmann and Rassau are present in German-speaking countries as cabaret artists, actors, singers and authors. The multi-talents of humor shine as a duo and not just as the unlikely pair of widows “Waltraud and Mariechen,” writes Narrhalla in a press release. As stage artists, they were funny, cheeky and subtle and with a large portion of self-irony in their turbulent sketches. Like Karl Valentin once did, they imitate and parody the simple things of everyday life, it goes on to say. Because of their love and passion for carnival, they are an integral part of many events during the foolish season. Heissmann and Rassau are pleased about this award and feel honored to be included in the illustrious circle of medal recipients. In Loriot’s sketches – Vicco von Bülow was awarded the prize almost 50 years ago – the original form of the “widows” can be found again, noted Martin Rassau. And Volker Heissmann shone with the wording of “Mariechen: “Luck is when you’re unlucky and don’t notice it.” The award winners will be announced on January 20th at the Deutsches Theater as part of the “Great Narrhalla Ball – Soirée Münchner Leben” as the 51st . Order winners are awarded and receive the Karl Valentin Order No. 53 and 54. Previous award winners include Dieter Hallervorden, Philipp Lahm, Helmut Kohl and Michael “Bully” Herbig.
The taste
Claudia Dietsch.
(Photo: Luisa Härtel)
A reason for toast: For the first time, a German wine shop was awarded the South Tyrolean “Prize for Wine Culture”. Their founder Claudia Dietsch, 53, traveled through South Tyrol with her husband Johann 20 years ago and discovered her love for the northern Italian wine region. Twelve years ago the couple opened the “Bergwein” shop on Gärtnerplatz in Munich. Before that, Dietsch gave up her job as a doctor in a general practice. She says retail was something she was born into; her father had a delicatessen in Siegen. “I inherited the pleasure genes from him.”
Ghost towns
Christopher Thomas.
(Photo: Christopher Thomas)
Many of his pictures are what you sometimes want cities to be: deserted. To be able to capture them and see details that bodies would otherwise obscure. Christopher Thomas has made this selfish desire the principle of his artistic work. Through it we see the Eiffel Tower in Paris without tourists. He makes New York’s Brooklyn Bridge shine in solitude. It turns Munich’s Odeonsplatz into a wide field. The SZ editor Herbert Riehl-Heyse once asked himself in his foreword to Thomas’ illustrated book “Munich Elegies” what the city would be like without its residents and also found an answer: probably not as Munich-like, but “very beautiful and surprisingly mysterious “.
Munich’s Odeonsplatz with Feldherrnhalle and flagpoles.
(Photo: Christopher Thomas)
For 25 years, photographer Christopher Thomas, born in Munich in 1961, has been playing with exposure times to keep people out of his pictures. At Bergson, the pop-up shop on Marienplatz, he is now celebrating this anniversary with a showcase of his work, which opens on November 25th at 5 p.m. It can be seen until December 31st.
Siblings
Nina and Maximilian Hugendubel.
(Photo: Moritz Kind)
In “Side by Side” Hugendubel bookseller Andrea Schuster talks with guests from literature, music, film and television. In the latest podcast (can be found wherever podcasts are available since November 17th). Nina and Maximilian Hugendubel himself a guest. The siblings have been running the company, which was founded in 1893, for around 20 years and is the fifth generation. They reveal what it was like to grow up in such a book-driven family tradition, talk about books that shaped them and also have their favorites with them: “The Last World” by Christoph Ransmayr and “Ach this gap, this terrible gap” by Joachim Meyerhoff .