Category Archives: Germany

Germans undecided on whether Merkel’s CDU heir can fill her shoes

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Christian Democrat continuity candidate Armin Laschet is struggling to live up to his brief

Angela Merkel’s shoe size is 38, she revealed to a rain-sodden, momentarily confused audience at an election rally on the Baltic coast on Tuesday night. That is relatively small – 5.5 in UK sizes – which means her shoes should not be too hard to fill. “That’s manageable,” Merkel said.

As the German chancellor chuckled mischievously, she gestured towards the man on her left, a 33-year-old tax auditor who is running to inherit the north-eastern constituency she has held since it was created in 1990. But her comment also applied to the man on her right, Armin Laschet, who is meant to lead the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) into the post-Merkel era as her designated continuity candidate at Sunday’s national election.

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Brexit made an unlikely hero of Angela Merkel for Britain’s remainers | Rafael Behr

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The German chancellor’s record is mixed, but her exit brings home how adrift Europhiles in the UK now are

Angela Merkel is used to being unimpressed by British prime ministers. She was appalled by David Cameron’s casual surrender of influence in Europe, all to placate fringe elements in his party. She was stunned, on first sitting down with Theresa May, to discover that there was no plan and no substance behind the “Brexit means Brexit” platitudes.

With Boris Johnson there was no danger of disappointment. His style and methods were known in advance to be everything Merkel is not. He is a bumptious improviser; she is a systematic problem-solver. She sifts evidence and builds consensus. He tells lies and divides to rule.

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How the refugee crisis created two myths of Angela Merkel | Daniel Trilling

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The right says the German chancellor undermined EU security; Liberals say it was a triumph. But her legacy is far more mixed

When Angela Merkel steps down as chancellor after Germany’s elections later this month, the tributes will centre on her role as the figurehead of western liberalism; an island of stability, caution and openness in an era marked by turbulence and far-right reaction. She will be remembered “for serious work, stable leadership and having a gift for political compromise”, wrote Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post last week. When she faced off against Donald Trump after his inauguration in 2017, some newspapers dubbed her the new “leader of the free world”.

Fundamental to this image is the intervention she made in late summer 2015, at the height of Europe’s refugee crisis. “Wir schaffen das” – we’ll manage this – was Merkel’s public statement as thousands of people, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were making their way through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to western Europe. By declaring Germany – and, by extension, Europe – open to refugees, she was making a bold, pragmatic statement of intent.

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Electric vehicles divide opinion as car-loving Germany goes to polls

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Election has framed future of automobility as showdown between petrolheads and green zealots

The second Steve Dumke spots a gap in the traffic on the road from Eggersdorf to Strausberg, his white Hyundai Ioniq lurches forward and nestles between two fast-moving Volkswagens in the right-hand lane. “A tap on the accelerator and the gap is mine,” he howls with glee.

Dumke, a 37-year-old former chef, is less a speed freak than, in his own words, “a vehicle eroticist”. “I love cars with curves and the growl of an eight-cylinder piston engine,” he says. But for the last four years the vehicular object of his desires has run on megawatts rather than litres.

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Climate top of the agenda as knife-edge race to lead Germany enters final stage

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Cheers and jeers greet political rivals trying to succeed Merkel, as they chase green votes in the former DDR

As Annalena Baerbock steps on to the stage, the downpour that minutes before had soaked those gathered on Chemnitz’s Theater Platz ceases. The Green party candidate is quick to use the opportunity to stress that everything is still possible. “Minutes ago it was raining, now the sun has come out – it can happen,” she says with a huge grin, hinting that the change in the weather is a good omen for her party’s fortunes.

There are both chuckles and jeers from those gathered. With a week to go before one of the most open and tension-filled German elections in years, Baerbock is in the last stages of a campaign that weeks ago saw her heading for the top job, as successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, but in which she is now fighting for second or third place.

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Dragons, Nazis and Putin: children put German candidates through wringer

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Armin Laschet and Olaf Scholz face their toughest grilling of campaign at the hands of two 11-year-olds

When Germany elects a new government on 26 September the average voter age may be over 50, but a week and a half before polling day it is children who are asking the hard questions of the candidates who want to fill Angela Merkel’s shoes.

Armin Laschet, of the outgoing chancellor’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Olaf Scholz, of the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), were both left shifting in their seats in what has been hailed as their toughest grilling of the campaign trail – at the hands of two 11-year-olds.

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In Germany’s election, the fate of the EU is at stake | Timothy Garton Ash

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After Merkel, the incoming coalition will have to prove that democracy can meet Europe’s great challenges


In Brussels last week, I found everyone waiting for Berlin. In Berlin, I found everyone electrified by an unexpectedly wide-open election. One thing, however, is clear: the new German government will be a coalition, and almost certainly of three, rather than two, parties.

That points to the deepest question underlying this pivotal European event: can democracy deliver? More precisely: can the European model of change through democratic consensus, of which Germany is a prime example, produce the actions Europe badly needs if it is to hold its own in the 21st century?

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‘Wine is our livelihood’: locals still recovering from German floods

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Estimated €50m worth of wine has been lost in the Ahr valley since the floods

Tanja Lingen barely dares to think about the night her two sons went into the family vineyard cellar to salvage what they could of the supplies and equipment as waters from the nearby river Ahr rose to dangerous levels.

“They removed the fermentation airlocks on the oak barrels and replaced them with tight plastic stoppers just in the nick of time,” she says. They even had the presence of mind to film the dramatic scene, by chance capturing the fast disappearing chalk markings on the barrels which meant it was possible to identify what was in them.

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‘Time to take sides’: post-Merkel era needs radical new direction, says study

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German chancellor’s consensus-building approach no longer sustainable in crisis-hit Europe, report says

After 15 years of “Merkelism” the German chancellor’s neutral, consensus-building approach means many Europeans accept her country as the EU’s leader – but post-Angela Merkel Berlin will have to radically change tack, according to a study.

“Angela Merkel has come to embody a strong and stable Germany, positioning herself as Europe’s anchor though more than a decade of crises,” said Piotr Buras, the co-author of the report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

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Berlin’s bizarre new museum: a Prussian palace rebuilt for €680m

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A cross between a Disneyland castle and a chilling concrete block, the Humboldt Forum is set to teach visitors about Germany’s colonial era. But is the past being examined – or exalted?

A museum gift shop has never been such an ideological battleground. At one end of the store in Berlin’s new Humboldt Forum is a display of souvenirs adorned with the gilded silhouette of the Stadtschloss, the city’s former royal palace, which was bombed to pieces in the second world war. Racks of silk scarves and Christmas baubles hang above rows of candles in regal colours, emblazoned with an image of the stately Prussian pile.

At the other end of the shop is a rival range of merchandise, themed around the former East German parliament and leisure centre, the Palast der Republik, which was triumphantly built on top of the ruins of the palace in the 1970s. With its sharp white marble walls, bronze-mirrored windows and space-age chandeliers, it was designed to showcase the wonders of socialism. You can buy keyrings and enamel mugs in a retro Soviet style, as well as a model kit of the building in Formo, the East German version of Lego, for €250.

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German Covid super-spreader event driven by poor ventilation, study finds

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Low-grade ventilation system at indoor carnival in Gangelt leading factor in outbreak among partygoers

Airborne viruses recycled through a low-grade ventilation system likely created Germany’s first super-spreader event of the Covid-19 pandemic, a CSI-style analysis of a carnival celebration has found.

The event at the town hall of Gangelt, a municipality on the border with the Netherlands, was labelled “Germany’s Wuhan” after it was found to be the driver of a major outbreak in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia last year.

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Olaf Scholz: ‘Merit in society must not be limited to top-earners’

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Exclusive: Germany’s possible next chancellor on his plans for Europe, tackling inequality and how to revive the centre-left

The new frontrunner to win Germany’s national vote at the end of this month says he believes he can reawaken Europe’s centre-left from its decade-long slumber with a two-fold promise: to guarantee his country’s continued economic success, while at the same time putting an end to the myth that individual success is always self-made.

Germany’s vice-chancellor and finance minister, Olaf Scholz, has this summer surprisingly lifted his Social Democratic party (SPD) above Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in opinion polls, in large part due to a reputation for rational decision-making and fiscal prudence that mirrors that of the outgoing chancellor.

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US-led meeting to set out framework for Taliban cooperation

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Talks involving up to 20 nations come as militants ignore calls to form inclusive government in Afghanistan

The US is convening an expanded group of western nations to set a framework for cooperation with the new Taliban government, amid fears that isolating the militant group could backfire.

The meeting on Wednesday, chaired by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, faces an all-male, Pashtun-dominated caretaker government that has ignored calls to form an inclusive administration.

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German Greens receive more large donations than Angela Merkel’s party

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Environmental party given highest one-off sum in its history by Dutch tech entrepreneur

Germany’s Greens have so far received more large donations ahead of this September’s federal elections than the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, after a Dutch tech entrepreneur gave the environmental party the highest one-off sum of cash in its history.

Steven Schuurman, co-founder of software company Elastic, whose net worth is listed by Forbes magazine as 2bn US dollars (£1.45bn), on Tuesday transferred to the German Greens (Die Grünen) a donation of 1.25m euros (£1m).

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Hitler’s favourite artists: why do Nazi statues still stand in Germany?

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A shocking new exhibition reveals the thriving postwar careers of artists the Führer endorsed as ‘divinely gifted’. Many made public works that remain on show today

A photograph from 1940 shows three conquering Nazis in Paris against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. Within a few years one of these men, Adolf Hitler, was dead by his own hand; another, Albert Speer, was writing his memoirs in Spandau prison, having eluded a death sentence at the Nuremberg trials. But the third, Arno Breker, was alive and free, making sculptures in the new West Germany that in their bombast and iconography echoed those he had made during the Third Reich.

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Merkel urges Germans to back her party’s choice of successor

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Outgoing chancellor implores public to pick Armin Laschet over his surging centre-left rival

Angela Merkel has used what is likely to be her last speech in the German parliament to make her most impassioned intervention in the electoral race so far, urging the public to vote for her party’s beleaguered candidate over his surging centre-left rival.

The chancellor, who will stand down after federal elections on 26 September, warned of the possibility of the Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Greens governing the country in a coalition with the far-left Die Linke.

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Newly discovered Napoleon hat with his DNA up for auction

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Buyer at small German auction house did not know bicorne had belonged to the French emperor

A newly discovered hat with DNA evidence proving it belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte has gone on display at auction house Bonhams in Hong Kong.

Described by Bonhams as the “first hat to bear the emperor’s DNA“, it is being previewed in Hong Kong before it moves to Paris and then London, where it will be auctioned on 27 October.

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‘Scholz will sort it’ – the catchphrase winning the hearts of German voters

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A savvy electoral campaign against two lacklustre opponents has put the SPD leader ahead in the polls to succeed Angela Merkel

Of all the political posters and billboards that line the streets of German towns and cities this late summer, the ones most likely to stop commuters in their tracks are those bathed in traffic-light red.

Using a stark colour scheme usually exclusive to the Marxist-Leninist parties on the fringe of the German left, the posters are surprising in more ways than one: in the centre of the picture sits a bald, suited man who looks less like a leftwing rabble-rouser promising you radical change than a middle manager at a regional building society scrutinising your loan application.

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The Guardian view on Germany’s election: struggling to move on from Merkel | Editorial

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The shadow of the departing chancellor looms over a contest too close to call

In September 1998, when a relatively youthful Gerhard Schröder defeated Helmut Kohl and ended his 16-year reign as German chancellor, the victorious leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) told supporters that the country had opted for “a change of generation”. Mr Schröder’s triumph turned a page on the cold war era, aligning Germany with a fresh-faced centre-left resurgence in western democracies led by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. It was, in the political vernacular, a quintessential “change” election.

Almost a quarter of a century later, Angela Merkel will stand down of her own accord later this month – the first chancellor to do so – after equalling Mr Kohl’s longevity in office. But this time, ahead of a 26 September election, German voters seem to be somewhat reluctant to move on. None of Ms Merkel’s prospective replacements come close to matching her popularity. Fewer than one in five see the chancellor’s own preferred successor, the CDU/CSU candidate, Armin Laschet, as the best option to replace her. Caught on camera laughing during a visit to a town devastated by floods, Mr Laschet has fought a lacklustre campaign and has become a liability for his party. A poll last week found that from highs of around 35% at the start of the year, the CDU/CSU’s ratings have plunged on Mr Laschet’s watch to the low twenties and fallen just behind the SPD for the first time since 2006. The Greens electrified the contest by topping polls in the spring. Their extraordinary surge seemed to embody a widespread desire for a more environmentally driven politics to meet net zero pledges. But they too have lost their mojo as the party’s candidate for chancellor, the inexperienced Annalena Baerbock, struggles to recover from allegations of plagiarism and financial mismanagement.

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Merkel rejects deputy’s claim he is continuity candidate for chancellor

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Outgoing leader wades into election fray as Olaf Scholz says his party is more likely to uphold Merkel’s legacy

Angela Merkel has waded into the fray of Germany’s election campaign by dismissing her centre-left vice-chancellor’s attempt to model himself as her continuity candidate, as her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tries to revive its flagging fortunes with warnings of “chaos” under a leftwing coalition government.

The intervention comes as the Social Democratic party’s (SPD) candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s deputy in her fourth and final cabinet, is doing an increasingly effective job of convincing voters he is more likely to continue the chancellor’s centrist and rational legacy than the candidate representing her own party.

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