the night watch by rembrandt is right now being restored under the watchful eye of well anyone who wishes to see the painstaking restoration process the painting is a 400 years old and it was lost restored after a knife attack on it in 1975 that restoration has started to discolor a bit the rice museum in amsterdam has decided it is such an important painting that the public should be allowed to see it as its current renovation precedes. operation night watch cutting kerner is allowed to get right up close to the rembrandt painting the chemist is in charge of a team of 20 researchers restoring the night watch is the chance of a lifetime. many other one hind of pigments did he use 400 years ago with and how has the condition changed i'm certain that it will gain a lot of information from these investigations and that will be able to dive deeply
into the analysis of this art work the painting is famous for several things its size measuring 16 square metres and weighing 170 kilograms the way rembrandt created the perception of motion in what traditionally would have been a static military group portrait and the use of light and shadow it's well known that the master painted himself into the scene but what secrets might the work be hiding. my days in america the 1st step is using this macro x. ray fluorescence analysis to scan everything bit by bit and analyzing the layers from the vanish to the canvas and it tells us something about the way rembrandt worked on paper bag that's of vital importance because the plan is to clean the painting repair damage and make visible details that had previously been hidden. the work was successfully hidden from the nazis during the 2nd world war it's been vandalized 3 times including being stabbed 13 times with
a kitchen knife in 1905 that. the last time the painting was restored behind closed doors back then this time the work is visible to the public the 20 researchers are working in a purpose built 60 square meter glass cube in the middle of the museum set up by a specialist company from france the we must restore it now and it's fantastic that we can do that publicly the nightwatch deserves to be treated with the utmost care if we were to simply take it down from the wall and restore it in a studio and we'd have to rush the work term optional do what it's all planned to take more than a year the visitors don't mind this is absolutely spectacular to see how much work the museum has put into it in terms like renovating and preserving the best out of this painting this is an interesting experience especially because we're related to the man in the white clothes he's our great uncle from 12 generations back or so as
we found out from studying our family tree and yeah the some of them come in unfortunate also before and there may be other surprises in store over the next months from now kathleen curnow is concentrating on unlocking the chemical secrets of rembrandt's color spectrum. now germany is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of teared off on tom he was a journalist poet and author most probably best known for effie priest just one of many novels featuring strong female characters fontana is also known here in germany as the pioneer of travel guide publishing many volumes about his journeys through parts of the state of brandenburg which surrounds my colleague adrian kennedy has been tracing his steps. we begin at the end here at the french cemetery in berlin light the mortal remains of. the great
writer is buried alongside his dear wife media. traveled frew his beloved brandenburg mostly by train and coach i've got myself saddled up with to follow the front cycle trail our journey takes us away from berlin and to. the town in which the writer was. by having lunch appointment with a man who knows all about what. ate and drank. this isn't just the food that fun turner could have actually the food that you have proven. yes i search for all the books you wrote. his wife that he has a cold. ok very good troy. enjoy thank you.
was born here his father ran this pharmacy the present pharmacist nicole conrad sees it as a great responsibility to continue the tradition. the main front. an exhibition is at the. there's a whole room dedicated to the novel effie priest one of a number of works by fontana with strong female the odds here i have a close encounter with a male know a routine and fun tarnas. is an authentic running from the time we can be 100 percent sure that it has fontana's fingerprints on it if you could a forensic scientist in here he would definitely prove that this stood in front on his home. a little bit.
of work. journey brought be nearer. to the landscape he loves. and i learned that fun is absolutely relevant today. and our intrepid from time to reporters here with me now is rick kennedy plenty of eating and drinking in your phone tom the journey this is that how you got closer to the great man well yes i think it's well established that from time to eat and drink he said himself he was not a fan of half portions so that was part of the process of getting inside fun town and just taking one for the team but of course i did ask people along the way what fun time i has to say to people around the world in the 21st century many people
see him as a kind of proto feminist because he wrote many novels with strong female characters who broke with tradition think is a bit of a push to say he was a feminist but he was a man who is very interested in women in their emotions in their feelings and in the white. they were constricted by society an interest in women that was very rare that simon which is by no means universal to do a pioneer in other ways as well in the sort of travel guide yes my journey took me to many places that he describes in a 5 volumes work that gives a detailed picture of brandenburg original journey not spectacular as the outs but with a lot to offer $3000.00 plus likes for example this travel journal was one of his early successes but not to publish till he was in his early forty's for the time of course initially started a career as
a pharmacist and only full time till its share in his thirty's and i believe actually concerning novels he could be an inspiration for late starters absolutely because the major novels he didn't start to much later in life indeed a few breaks which we talked about. which was a kind of german madame bovary and put germany back on the european at the time he didn't write in so his seventies and. as well you had this hope for me yeah she received 76 star. you also had a musical encounter as well that's why much of the soundtrack to the journey comes from a wonderful fun time album from the band taught in i met up with club found reinhard rep current singer katherine frank in el trooping rep set fontana's
exquisitely potence to music and i think we can take a listen to one track called john maine on. the shore. this song tells the tale of the heroic american steamboat captain who saves all the passengers but dies himself one of many poems that fontana wrote about a u.s. and british daring to he was posted in london he travelled in scotland he was even prisoner as a spy in france at one point in his journalistic career obviously led a very eventful life to a progressive man and another progressive man who did kennedy thank you very much
i'm off to write my 1st novel it did you got a bit of talk about. staying with a literary theory the swiss or the new counts bear force has just been awarded the most important german literary prize by the german academy of language and literature. would most probably be as well known today as good or schiller if he hadn't died aged just 23 and the prize awarded in his name was sometimes seen as a precursor for the nobel prize for literature garson heinrich bird are 2 such instances so watch out for lucas bear force is more about him. so the state of the world to listeners everything that is happening or not happening right now is there's no other way to say it's disgusting. he says criticisms of the rich west research sharp and unsparing he says writers have to
get involved and he doubts in his books essays and plays such as the guys or the elephant mind it's a play about the obsession with power and helmut kohl the former german chancellor is never mentioned by neat it's a provocative reckoning. deference. it is a wonderful human virtue which is unfortunately completely inappropriate and you know so is his 1st novel $100.00 days is about the genocide in rwanda and in koala he addresses his brother's suicide the academy found his worth prize where the due to the way bill frist constantly experiments with the drama and novel formats and i do one hand he finds new and unique solutions using a very precise and visually strong language which is nonetheless completely transparent to the reader and i'm on the other hand he allows people to remain any of mattick in mention. just this year's prize will be handed over to
the provocative new customer foods at a ceremony in november. that brings us the end of awesome culture for today don't forget the website d.w. dot com slash culture where there's more on all today's topics but also lots of cultural news from all around the world also on facebook at g.w. culture so.
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try to stay. calm d.w. . and. i was if you when i arrived here i slept with 6 people in a room. it was hard. i even got white hair. learning the german language head me a lot this gets me and they go bush maybe to entrap oh say do you want to do their story. or finding a reliable information for margaret. this