Bayreuth, Germany - Enthusiastic applause greeted the new production of Wagner's Parsifal by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim at the opening of the annual Bayreuth Festival Friday evening.

Herheim presented the late work by the composer as images from an excursion through the various stages of German history. It was greeted with approbation by the VIP audience, including Chancellor Angel Merkel.

The audience was less enthusiastic about Conductor Daniele Gatti, whose interpretation of the score drew the occasional boo.

Herheim set the opera in Bayreuth itself, with the backdrop designed by Heike Scheele using Haus Wahnfried, Richard Wagner's villa in the city, as the setting for the antics of high society in the Wilhelmine period.

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udwigsburg, Germany - German war-crimes prosecutors have asked police to begin a hunt for surviving ex-servicemen from a 7,500-man Nazi military unit accused of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War in Poland.

The national office on war crimes at Ludwigsburg in western Germany said Friday it had commissioned the state police of Baden-Wuerttemberg to check out new clues obtained from Red Cross archives in Munich that list names and addresses of ex-soldiers.

The most violent unit of the Nazi Party private army, the SS, was commanded by Oskar Dirlewanger and formed of ex-criminals.

Weimar, Germany -  A lawyer of Italian descent unveiled Friday in the German city of Weimar what he said was fresh evidence that German literary great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had been romantically linked to his dowager-duchess boss.

Ettore Ghibellino, 39, who was born in Germany but had his early schooling in Italy, presented passages from letters by another woman, Countess Caroline Goertz, which he said showed that Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar was in love with Goethe, 10 years her junior.

Ghibellino has upset established German literary scholars with the claim, first aired in a book he wrote in 2003. Goethe (1749-1832) is regarded as Germany's greatest poet and wrote about romantic love.

Frankfurt  - Despite high fuels costs and growing economic uncertainty, luxury German carmaker Audi said Friday it expects to report an improved business performance this year.

Munich - Infineon Technologies AG announced Friday plans to slash its workforce by 10 per cent after Europe's second biggest semiconductor group posted a third-quarter net loss of 592 million euros (930 million dollars) amid fierce market competition.

The chipmaker's further loss came the group was forced to announce further writedowns of 411 million euros for its memory chip offshoot Qimonda.

After initially falling by about 2.7 per cent following the release of Infineon's latest results, the group's shares rebounded by
3.3 per cent to 5 euros in mid-morning trading in Frankfurt.

Berlin - Barack Obama's call for a renewed transatlantic partnership drew a positive response from German politicians Friday, as the Democrat senator prepared to travel on to France on the next leg of his foreign tour.

Eckart von Klaeden, foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian CDU/CSU, said the speech had been in the best tradition of US foreign policy.

Speaking to German media, Von Klaeden said the speech could as well have been made by Obama's rival for the US presidency, Republican Senator John McCain.