Category Archives: Germany

‘Germany looks like it’s still divided’: stark gaps persist 30 years after reunification

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Sobering studies for October anniversary show many in east feel like second-class citizens

Major differences between the lives and attitudes of Germans in the west and east of the country persist 30 years after reunification, a range of studies released for the October anniversary show.

From wages to childcare, trust in political leaders and state institutions, to the importance of an east or west identity, the gaps are stark, the government ombudsman for the former communist East Germany (GDR), and author of the main report, said. “I had hoped that in this, the 30th year after German reunification, we would be further along than we are,” Marco Wanderwitz admitted.

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‘Hi, this is Navalny’: poisoned Russian opposition leader posts hospital photo

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Alexei Navalny says he can breathe independently in Instagram post sent from hospital in Berlin

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said he is nowable to breathe without any external support, in his first public statement since he was poisoned last month.

Navalny, who German authorities said was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok, posted a photograph on Instagram of himself sitting up in a hospital bed surrounded by his wife and their two children.

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Alexei Navalny continues to improve, say German doctors

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Russian opposition leader taken off ventilator and can leave his bed, hospital reports

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken off a ventilator and is able to leave his bed for short periods of time, German doctors who have been treating him for novichok poisoning have said.

In a significant update, the Charité hospital in Berlin said Navalny’s condition “continues to improve” and hinted that he was able to talk. It said latest news of his health was made public after consultation with Navalny and his wife.

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German military mulls bringing in feminine form for army ranks

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Under current system a female captain, for example, is called Frau Hauptmann – Mrs Captain

Germany is considering introducing feminine forms for military ranks, according to reports, 20 years after women gained the right to join the Bundeswehr.

The army has resisted using the feminine form even after women gained the right to join in 2000. A female captain in the Bundeswehr is addressed as Frau Hauptmann, the equivalent of “Mrs Captain”.

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How a rush for Mediterranean gas threatens to push Greece and Turkey into war

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Deepening dispute between Nato allies has dragged in neighbours and is in danger of spiralling out of control

An increasingly fractious standoff over access to gas reserves has transformed a dispute between Turkey and Greece that was once primarily over Cyprus into one that now ensnares Libya, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and feeds into other political issues in the Mediterranean and has raised fears of a naval conflict between the two Nato allies in the Aegean Sea.

The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can no longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.

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UK, France and Germany agree to reject US demand for Iran snapback sanctions

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European ‘E3’ ministers reach consensus during Kent meeting hosted by UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab

Foreign ministers from the UK, France and Germany have agreed to hold out against US demands to snapback all UN sanctions on Iran, despite intensified pressure from the US specifically on the UK government to fall into line.

The US was left isolated at the UN security council last month when it said it wished to reimpose snapback sanctions, with the European nations – known collectively as the E3 – arguing that the US was no longer a participant in the deal and so unable to act unilaterally. The US, which left the deal in 2018, described the E3 position as crackers and pandering to terrorists. A further showdown on the issue at the UN is expected this month.

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Auf wiedersehen, techno: Berlin’s banging Berghain club reborn as a gallery

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With nightlife in limbo due to Covid-19, the legendary temple of techno has reinvented itself as art gallery – with works by Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Wolfgang Tillmans and more

Inside a disused power station in east Berlin, a red-and-white buoy is bobbing mid-air, swooping six metres up and six metres down in rhythm to imaginary waves. The artist who had the idea to hang it there, Julius von Bismarck, has connected an automated pulley system via sensors to a real buoy in the Atlantic Ocean, mirroring its movements.

Usually, the waves crashing over the heads of visitors to these halls are made of sound, pumped out of a custom-built PA that many dance music connoisseurs consider the finest in the world: this is Berghain, Berlin’s mythical temple of bassy industrial techno.

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Maria Kolesnikova: Germany and UK call for release of snatched Belarus opposition figure

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UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab says safe return of Maria Kolesnikova must be Lukashenko regime’s ‘highest priority’

Germany and Britain have demanded answers on the whereabouts of senior Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova, who was reportedly snatched off the streets in central Minsk.

Kolesnikova was taken along with members of the Coordination Council, which was set up to seek a peaceful transfer of power amid widespread rejection of elections that gave Alexander Lukashenko 80% of the vote.

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Alexei Navalny out of induced coma and is responsive, says Berlin hospital

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Condition of Russian opposition leader who was poisoned with novichok is improving

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken out of an induced coma and is responding to speech, the Germany hospital treating him has said.

The Charité hospital in Berlin, which has been treating Navalny since 22 August, said his condition was improving and that he was also being weaned off mechanical ventilation.

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German Greens well placed for share of power despite Covid setback

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Pandemic has stalled party’s momentum but it still has strong chance of entering government next year

In pandemic times, public health takes precedence over the wellbeing of the planet, as Germany’s Greens have had to learn the hard way. With Covid-19 shoring up electoral sympathies around a crisis-seasoned Angela Merkel, the buoyant upstarts in opposition have lost much of the momentum they had built up over the last 12 months.

And yet, paradoxically, the environmental party’s chances of entering government in 2021 have never looked greater.

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Slowly does it: chord changes in John Cage’s 639-year-long organ piece

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Fans gather in a German church to hear the first new sound in composition, Organ/ASLSP, for six years

Hundreds of fans have attended a special kind of musical happening at a church in Germany: a chord change in an organ piece that is supposed to last for an entirety of 639 years.

The performance of the Organ/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) composition began in September 2001 at the St Burchardi church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 — if all goes well.

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Donald Trump claims US has not seen any proof of Alexei Navalny poisoning – video

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The US president declined to accept the German government's assessment that the Russian opposition leader was attacked with a nerve agent. This week the chancellor, Angela Merkel, revealed that tests at a military laboratory had identified unequivocally that the Kremlin critic had been poisoned with novichok

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Donald Trump says US ‘hasn’t had any proof’ of Navalny poisoning

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President says US must look seriously at case but suggests media should be looking into China

President Donald Trump said the United States must look “very seriously” into the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that his administration had not yet seen any proof.

“I think we have to look at it very seriously, if it’s the case,” he said, before talking at length about his diplomatic efforts in North Korea and nuclear non-proliferation in Russia. “I don’t know exactly what happened. It’s tragic. It’s terrible, it shouldn’t happen. We haven’t had any proof yet, but I will take a look.

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Woman in Germany to be charged with murder after death of her five children

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Children aged between one and eight were found dead in beds in case that has shocked country

German prosecutors have said they will charge a 27-year-old woman with murder after five of her young children were found dead at their home in the western city of Solingen.

Heribert Kaune-Gebhardt, a prosecutor in nearby Wuppertal, told reporters that postmortem examinations on the dead children between the ages of one and eight showed signs of sedation and suffocation, but it was still unclear how exactly they died.

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Police suspect mother as five children’s bodies found in German flat

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Three girls and two boys aged between 18 months and eight years discovered in Solingen

The bodies of five children have been discovered in a flat in western Germany with their mother the main suspect in their killings, police have said.

The bodies were found on the third floor of a building in the city of Solingen by the children’s grandmother, who alerted emergency services at 1.45pm local time on Thursday.

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Merkel pressured to end Nord Stream 2 support after Navalny poisoning

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German opposition calls on chancellor to use gas pipeline project to pressurise Kremlin

Angela Merkel is under growing domestic pressure to end her support for the joint German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline project over the confirmed poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The German Green party called on the chancellor to use the nearly completed infrastructure project to pressure the Kremlin into answering allegations over what Merkel called the “silencing” of Navalny with a novichok nerve reagent.

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Alexei Navalny novichok finding prompts calls for answers from Moscow

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Angela Merkel says poisoning was attempted murder and White House calls it ‘reprehensible’

World leaders are demanding answers from the Kremlin after toxicological examinations indicated that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent from the novichok family.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, revealed that tests carried out at a military laboratory had “identified unequivocally” the Soviet era nerve agent. She referred to the case as an “attempted murder” and said the findings raised “very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and has to answer.”

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Using novichok against Navalny is a Russian message of menace

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World leaders can be in little doubt: the evidence leads directly to Moscow and Putin

The debate over what precisely happened to Alexei Navalny has raged for almost two weeks. Some facts are agreed. The Russian opposition leader drank a cup of tea at Tomsk airport and then collapsed on a flight back to Moscow. After cursory treatment in a Russian hospital, he was flown to Berlin. Since then German doctors have been treating him in the Charité hospital, where he remains in a medically induced coma.

Far murkier is the question of who poisoned Navalny and why. On Wednesday the German government provided a pretty big clue when it revealed Navalny was poisoned with novichok. This is the substance used in 2018 against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. It was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s Salisbury home. Novichok also killed Dawn Sturgess, a Wiltshire woman who unknowingly sprayed it on her wrists.

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Angela Merkel: ‘unequivocal proof’ Alexei Navalny was poisoned with novichok – video

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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said in a personal statement that testing by a special military laboratory had shown proof that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a novichok nerve agent. 'It is now clear: Alexei Navalny is the victim of a crime,' Merkel said. 'He was meant to be silenced. This raises very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and has to answer'

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European tour tests Chinese foreign minister’s pulling power

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The reassessment of China highlighted by Wang Yi’s trip has political, economic and security implications

The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi did not exactly end his week-long European tour with his tail between his legs but he may have been chastened if he ever believed Beijing could simply win over Europe by pointing to the extremist cold war rhetoric of Europe’s natural ally America.

The five-nation tour surely marked the end of an era where China can any longer get away with simple homilies on win-win solutions, multilateralism and non-interference in another’s internal affairs. Pointing to Donald Trump is also no longer enough to win European friends.

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