Category Archives: Germany

Instability grips a weakened Europe as global predators smell blood

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Threats from Russia and China, a weaker US security alliance and internal discord expose fundamental strategic weaknesses

Is Europe entering a dangerous new age of instability? Not since the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union has it looked so vulnerable to hostile forces.

Accumulating external threats and internal divisions, coupled with a weakening US security alliance, relentless Russian subversion, and power-hungry China’s war on western values are exposing fundamental strategic weaknesses.

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‘Storm clouds’ over Europe – but UK Covid rates remain high

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Analysis: likes of Slovakia and Austria have worse figures but UK’s have topped EU average for months

As Covid infection rates surged again across Europe, Boris Johnson spoke this week of “storm clouds gathering” over parts of the continent and said it was unclear when or how badly the latest wave would “wash up on our shores”.

The situation in some EU member states, particularly those with low vaccination rates, is indeed dramatic. In central and eastern Europe in particular, but also Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, case numbers are rocketing.

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German health chief urges Covid crackdown to avert ‘very bad Christmas’

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Country facing ‘extremely dismal days’ as it set ninth consecutive record for daily case numbers

The head of Germany’s disease control agency has said the country is heading for a “very bad Christmas season” if drastic measures are not taken to dampen the spread of coronavirus.

Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said that even if measures were taken Germany faced a period of “extremely dismal days” during which hundreds of people would die out of those currently infected.

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Support for populist sentiment falls across Europe, survey finds

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YouGov/Guardian poll finds ‘clear pattern of decreasing support for populism’ in European countries

Support for populist sentiment in Europe has fallen sharply over the past three years, according to a major YouGov survey, with markedly fewer people agreeing with key statements designed to measure it.

The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project’s annual populism tracker, produced with the Guardian, found populist beliefs in broadly sustained decline in 10 European countries, prompting its authors to suggest the wider electoral appeal of some may have peaked.

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Lukashenko has got the ear of the EU at last – but it won’t help him

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The Belarusian leader may have won phone talks with Angela Merkel but Europe remains united against him

As migrants camped out in the woods prepared for another night of sub-zero temperatures, the Estonian foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, on Tuesday revealed to an evening news programme the gist of what Alexander Lukashenko demanded of Angela Merkel in the first call between a European leader and Belarus’s dictator in more than a year.

“He wants the sanctions to be halted, [and] to be recognised as head of state so he can continue,” she said he told Merkel.

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Nazis based their elite schools on top British private schools

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Eton and Harrow among those whose ‘character-building’ qualities were admired by German educators in 1930s and 1940s

Nazi Germany’s elite schools, which were set up to train future leaders of the Third Reich, used British private schools such as Eton and Harrow as their models, a new book reveals.

The historian Helen Roche has written the first comprehensive history of Nazi elite schools, known as Napolas. Drawing on research undertaken in 80 archives in six countries as well as testimonies from more than 100 former pupils, Roche discovered just how keen the Nazis were to learn from the “character-forming” example of the British system.

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Germany suspends approval for Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

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Move follows mounting politcal pressure to scrap project in setback to Kremlin-backed project

Germany has suspended its approval process for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would double its reliance on Russian gas following growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project.

Energy markets across Europe surged after the German energy regulator suspended its certification process, in a big setback to Kremlin-backed Gazprom’s plans to extend Russian gas dominance via a new pipeline across the Baltic Sea.

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Why is Europe returning to the dark days of Covid?

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The continent is now the centre of the global epidemic – again. As countries from the Baltic to the Med brace for harsher winter measures, we look at what’s driving the fourth wave

It was almost as if the pandemic had never happened. In Cologne, thousands of revellers in fancy-dress jostled side by side in a tightly packed throng as they counted down to the start of the annual carnival season at 11am on 11 November.

In Paris, the bars and clubs were open late and filled to bursting on Wednesday, with Armistice Day a national holiday. In Amsterdam, it was business as usual in the overflowing cafes and coffee shops around the Leidseplein.

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Scholz pushes new measures to tackle Germany’s rising Covid cases

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Chancellor-in-waiting sticks with plan to lift nationwide state of emergency

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz has pushed ahead with a plan to phase out a state of national emergency by the end of the month, despite the country recording the highest coronavirus case numbers since the start of the pandemic.

“The virus is still here and threatening the health of our citizens,” Scholz said in a parliamentary debate on Thursday, as he called on MPs to support a catalogue of new measures to curb the spread of Covid that would replace the state of emergency. “Therefore it is very, very important that we take all measures to ensure we can protect their health.”

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German Christmas markets face second year of closures as Covid rates soar

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Many markets have already announced they will not be going ahead amid record case numbers

Soaring coronavirus rates in Germany are threatening plans for a rollout of the country’s famous Christmas markets, due to open in about a week’s time.

There had been considerable fanfare over municipalities’ plans to stage the markets this year after they were called off a year ago.

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Antihero to zero: VW rises from ‘dieselgate’ to lead charge on electric vehicles

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Volkswagen embraces the future with €35bn investment, including in its Zwickau plant

Two bronze statues that guard the entrance to Zwickau train station in Saxony tell the tale of Germany’s struggle to wean itself off fossil fuels.

A crouching miner cradles a lamp in a nod to the lignite, a particularly dirty form of coal, that was dug from this part of former East Germany, fuelling its factories and power stations. His companion, an engineer, represents the car industry that dominates Germany’s industrial heartland.

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Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds

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Exclusive: poll of 10 countries including US, UK, France and Germany finds people prioritising measures that are already habits

Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.

“The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act,” the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.

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Berlin honours couple who helped Jewish families flee Nazi Germany

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Plaque for Malwine and Max Schindler is installed at Pariser Strasse 54 outside couple’s former Berlin home

A Berlin couple who dedicated themselves to spiriting Jewish families and political dissidents out of Nazi Germany via a clandestine network disguised as an English-language tutoring service have been honoured in the German capital for the first time since their story fell into obscurity half a century ago.

A commemorative plaque was installed on Thursday by Berlin authorities at Pariser Strasse 54 in the Wilmersdorf district, outside the former home of Max and Malwine Schindler. Their legacy was rediscovered two years ago through a cache of letters and photographs found in a garden shed in Australia.

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Covid: Germany enveloped in ‘massive’ pandemic of the unvaccinated

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Health minister says wave ‘far from over’ as vaccination rate flatlines and clinics report rising numbers of Covid-19 patients

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, has warned that his country is going through a “massive” pandemic of the unvaccinated.

“The pandemic is far from over,” said Spahn, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “We are currently experiencing a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which is massive. There would be fewer coronavirus patients on intensive care units if more people would let themselves be vaccinated.”

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Franz Kafka drawings reveal ‘sunny’ side to bleak Bohemian novelist

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Surreal drawings by author of The Trial – which he demanded be burnt after his death – to be published

Stricken with self-doubt, paranoia and existential despair, the writings of Franz Kafka have taken generations of readers on what the author called “the descent into the cold abyss of oneself”.

A trove of 150 drawings, retrieved from a Swiss bank vault in 2019 after years of legal wrangling and presented to the public for the first time on Thursday, offers a more cheerful interpretation of the term “Kafkaesque”, however.

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Rightwing Chilean newspaper accused of ‘apology for Nazism’ over Göring article

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Germany embassy condemns El Mercurio for Sunday piece and says ‘no room to justify or minimise his horrific role’

Chile’s main conservative daily newspaper has been accused of publishing “an apology for Nazism” after running an illustrated article commemorating the life of the German war criminal Hermann Göring.

After El Mercurio published the article on Sunday, the German embassy in Santiago expressed its concern, highlighting Göring’s many crimes.

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Experts frustrated as German footballer says he has not had Covid jab

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Immunologists say Bayern Munich’s Joshua Kimmich is mistaken and vaccine misunderstandings persist

German immunologists have warned that fundamental misunderstandings about the way vaccines work persist among the population, after the Bayern Munich and Germany footballer Joshua Kimmich confirmed over the weekend that he had declined to receive a Covid jab due to concerns over long-term side-effects.

“I have concerns about the lack of long-term studies,” the 26-year-old told Sky Sport. “I am of course aware of my responsibility. I follow all hygiene measures and get tested every two to three days. Everyone should make the decision for themselves.”

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Learning the ropes: why Germany is building risk into its playgrounds

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Lofty climbing towers are part of trend away from total safety and towards teaching children to navigate difficult situations

Towering over a woodland playground on the northernmost outskirts of Berlin, the Triitopia climbing frame is the kind to cause worry in any anxious parent.

Children aged six and upwards wind their way through four stacked steel-wire buckyballs and scramble up dangling rope ladders until they reach a platform about 10 metres above the forest floor. Parents can try to keep up with their young mountaineers as they ascend through the rope spiderweb, but they might get left behind in the tightly woven mesh.

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German police halt armed far-right vigilantes on Polish border

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Weapons seized after call from far-right party for members to prevent migrants from entering country

German police say they have stopped more than 50 far-right vigilantes armed with pepper spray, a bayonet, a machete and batons who were trying to patrol the Polish border to stop migrants entering the country.

The vigilantes were following a call by the Third Way, a far-right party with suspected links to neo-Nazi groups, for its members to stop illegal crossings near the town of Guben.

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‘A role model’: Obama pays tribute to Angela Merkel – video

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The former US president Barack Obama has paid tribute to Angela Merkel in a farewell video during what was expected to be the outgoing chancellor of Germany’s final meeting in Brussels. 'Thanks to you, the centre has held through many storms,' Obama said in the video aired in the summit room in the Europa building. 'So many people, girls and boys, men and women, have had a role model who they could look up to through challenging times. I know because I am one of them. Danke schön'

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