Eine enge Beziehung zur Volksrepublik China (VRC) spielte eine wichtige Rolle in der Außenpolitik der DDR am Anfang des Kalten Krieges. Der ostdeutsche Staat charakterisierte ihre Allianz mit der VRC mit ideologischen Symbolen wie „Freundschaft“, „Brüderlichkeit“ und sogar „Liebe“. Dennoch diente ein positives China-Bild weniger dem tiefgehenden Verständnis der chinesischen Lebensart als vielmehr der Legitimierung der DDR bzw. der Kennzeichnung der ostdeutschen Weltoffenheit und internationalen Anerkennung. Die kulturwissenschaftliche Theorie des Orientalismus, die Entwicklung der Gattung Reiseliteratur und die neue Konzeption von Rasse in der DDR in Betracht ziehend, analysiert die vorliegende Arbeit Gerhard Kieslings und Bernt von Kügelgens Reisebericht China (1957) als ein repräsentatives politisches Produkt, das direkt von der kurzfristigen Faszination der DDR für China inspiriert wurde. Die Abhandlung erklärt, dass die DDR einerseits eine vielversprechende neue Volksrepublik vor Augen führt, die als Folie der ostdeutschen Imagination für eine ideale sozialistische Gesellschaft in der Aufbauphase inszeniert wird. Andererseits schildern die Autoren ausführlich den Machtmissbrauch durch das Kaisertum sowie die gedankliche Rückst.ndigkeit der normalen Bürger in den dunklen Zeiten Chinas, was zur Abgrenzung und Abwertung des Anderen im Gegensatz zum Eigenen beisteuerte. In dieser Hinsicht verweist der Reisebericht auf einen Neo-Orientalismus, der China zwar oberflächlich als einen schnell heranwachsenden sozialistischen „Bruderstaat“ anerkennt, aber gleichzeitig an einigen in früheren Zeiten verbreiteten rassistischen Klischees festhält.

In queer German director Monika Treut’s film Ghosted (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.

Book Review for Asian Fusion by Caroline Rupprecht

Radical substitution is a useful method to functionalize heterocycles, as in the venerable Minisci reaction. Empirically observed regiochemistries indicate that the CF2H radical has a nucleophilic character similar to alkyl radicals, but the CF3 radical is electrophilic. While the difference between •CH3 and •CF3 is well understood, the reason that one and two Fs make little difference but the third has a large effect is puzzling. DFT calculations with M06-2X both reproduce experimental selectivities and also lead to an explanation of this difference. Theoretical methods reveal how the F inductive withdrawal and conjugative donation alter radical properties, but only CF3 becomes decidedly electrophilic toward heterocycles. Here, we show a simple model to explain the radical orbital energy trends and resulting nucleophilicity or electrophilicity of fluorinated radicals.

In 1965, Woodward and Hoffmann proposed a theory to predict the stereochemistry of electrocyclic reactions, which, after expansion and generalization, became known as the Woodward-Hoffmann Rules. Subsequently, Longuet-Higgins and Abrahamson used correlation diagrams to propose that the stereoselectivity of electrocyclizations could be explained by the correlation of reactant and product orbitals with the same symmetry. Immediately thereafter, Hoffmann and Woodward applied correlation diagrams to explain the mechanism of cycloadditions. We describe these discoveries and their evolution. We now report an investigation of various electrocyclic reactions using DFT and CASSCF. We track the frontier molecular orbitals along the intrinsic reaction coordinate and modeled trajectories and examine the correlation between HOMO and LUMO for thermally forbidden systems. We also investigate the electrocyclizations of several highly polarized systems for which the Houk group had predicted that donor-acceptor substitution can induce zwitterionic character, thereby providing low-energy pathways for formally forbidden reactions. We conclude with perspectives on the field of pericyclic reactions, including a refinement as the meaning of Woodward and Hoffmanns Violations. There are none! Lastly, we comment on the burgeoning influence of computations on all fields of chemistry.

We uncovered and reconstituted a concise biosynthetic pathway of the strained dipeptide (+)-azonazine A from marine-derived Aspergillus insulicola. Formation of the hexacyclic benzofuranoindoline ring system from cyclo-(l-Trp-N-methyl-l-Tyr) is catalyzed by a P450 enzyme through an oxidative cyclization. Supplementing the producing strain with various indole-substituted tryptophan derivatives resulted in the generation of a series of azonazine A analogs.

This is the German original and English translation of Zafer Şenocak's "Die Rückseite der Dinge / The Other Side of Things," which itself is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel Eurasia.

The reaction of peracetic acid (PAA) and Fe(II) has recently gained attention due to its utility in wastewater treatment and its role in cloud chemistry. Aerosol-cloud interactions, partly mediated by aqueous hydroxyl radical (OH) chemistry, represent one of the largest uncertainties in the climate system. Ambiguities remain regarding the sources of OH in the cloud droplets. Our research group recently proposed that the dark and light-driven reaction of Fe(II) with peracids may be a key contributor to OH formation, producing a large burst of OH when aerosol particles take up water as they grow to become cloud droplets, in which reactants are consumed within 2 min. In this work, we quantify the OH production from the reaction of Fe(II) and PAA across a range of physical and chemical conditions. We show a strong dependence of OH formation on ultraviolet (UV) wavelength, with maximum OH formation at λ = 304 ± 5 nm, and demonstrate that the OH burst phenomenon is unique to Fe(II) and peracids. Using kinetics modeling and density functional theory calculations, we suggest the reaction proceeds through the formation of an [Fe(II)-(PAA)2(H2O)2] complex, followed by the formation of a Fe(IV) complex, which can also be photoactivated to produce additional OH. Determining the characteristics of OH production from this reaction advances our knowledge of the sources of OH in cloudwater and provides a framework to optimize this reaction for OH output for wastewater treatment purposes.