Category Archives: Germany

From a picnic to the Berlin Wall: my 1989 summer of revolution

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An award-winning foreign correspondent looks back on the human stories that helped bring down the Berlin Wall and East Germany’s regime

It should have been a normal family chat in late midsummer in Berlin. Kerstin Falkner, 22, and her new partner, Andreas, eight years her elder, were sitting in the back of Metzer Eck, the corner bar run by her mother, Bärbel, discussing where they might go for their holidays.

Only one thing was out of key: instead of joining in, Bärbel was sitting in the corner next to me, trying to keep back her tears. She simultaneously feared and hoped for the same thing: that they might not be coming home.

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Murder of Chechen dissident: suspect linked to Russian security services

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Research by Der Spiegel, Bellingcat and The Insider found suspect’s passport could be linked to Russian military

A suspect arrested last week over the killing of a Chechen dissident in Berlin was carrying a passport whose number linked him to Russian security services, news magazine Der Spiegel and others reported on Friday.

Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who fought against Russia during the second Chechen war in the early 2000s, was shot twice in the head at close range in the Kleiner Tiergarten park in central Berlin just before midday last Friday.

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AfD candidate was at 2007 Greek neo-Nazi rally, says leaked report

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Andreas Kalbitz is vying to become rightwing German party’s first state premier

A German olitician vying to become the first state premier for the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland in elections this Sunday took part in a neo-Nazi rally in Athens in 2007, documents leaked to the media show.

Andreas Kalbitz, 46, is the AfD’s lead candidate for Brandenburg, where polls suggest the party is competing with the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) in the race to become the state’s strongest political force.

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Germany citizenship rules for descendants of Nazi victims eased

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Move could help some Britons seeking EU passports who were rejected after the referendum

The German government has said it will ease the process for descendants of people persecuted by the Nazis to regain citizenship, after a campaign by a British-based group.

The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said on Thursday he had issued a decree that would overturn the rejections of those previously considered ineligible. These are most commonly descendants of women who fled Nazi Germany and who lost their citizenship after marrying non-German men.

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Macron tells Johnson Brexit backstop is indispensable

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French president tells Boris Johnson he must present concrete proposals for UK exit

Emmanuel Macron has described the Irish backstop as “indispensable” to a Brexit deal and urged Boris Johnson to set out his proposed alternatives as soon as possible, as he met the British prime minister in Paris.

The French president told Johnson on Thursday that the EU would like “visibility” on London’s concrete proposals for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU within a month, echoing language used by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Wednesday.

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Syrian man jailed for killing that sparked far-right riots in Germany

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Asylum seeker Alaa Sheikhi guilty of manslaughter of Daniel Hillig in Chemnitz

A Syrian asylum seeker accused of a killing that sparked a week of far-right street violence in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in 2018 has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Alaa Sheikhi, 24, was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison by the Chemnitz higher regional court on Thursday.

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‘Just wanted to drive a little’: eight-year-old German boy takes car for 87mph spin

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Child reaches high speeds during night-time motorway adventure before pulling over and putting his hazard lights on

An eight-year-old boy has been found safe after taking his parents’ car for an 87mph (140km/h) night-time spin down a motorway in Germany.

He tearfully told police he “just wanted to drive a little bit”.

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‘Unelected PM … gambling with peace’ – Irish EU commissioner launches attack on Boris Johnson – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

From Bloomberg’s Jess Shankleman

The pound slipped to the day's low after we reported France now sees a no-deal Brexit as the most likely outcome #gbp https://t.co/Xmvg4Lpvkf pic.twitter.com/AQcwazbBaf

This is from Jenny Hill, the BBC’s Berlin correspondent.

Sat outside German Chancellery. Slovakian president’s motorcade has just whisked her away following her first meeting with Angela Merkel. Next on the guest list, Boris Johnson in just over an hour.....

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Germany likely to head into recession, central bank warns

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Bundesbank says summer’s slump in exports is expected to continue into the autumn

Germany’s economy is heading into recession after the country’s central bank warned that a slump in exports during the summer was likely to continue into the autumn.

The Bundesbank said a downturn in orders for cars and industrial equipment in the second quarter of the year was likely to continue in the third quarter, leaving the economy on the brink of a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

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How a pan-European picnic brought down the Iron Curtain

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On 19 August 1989, Hungarians and Austrians gathered in friendship at the border, paving the way to unification

When the end finally came for the Iron Curtain, it was not bulldozers or hammers that struck one of the first decisive blows, but a picnic.

Thirty years ago this Monday, on 19 August 1989, thousands of Hungarians and Austrians gathered at the border fence between the two countries, which also marked the dividing line between the Communist bloc and the west. They had come for a “pan-European picnic” of solidarity and friendship across the Iron Curtain, as momentum for political change increased and the Eastern bloc regimes struggled to keep up with rising popular discontent.

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Norway halts Amazon fund donation in dispute with Brazil

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International concerns grow over deforestation surge since Jair Bolsonaro took power

Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.

Related: Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label as data shows deforestation 'exploded'

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German MP sparks row after proposing an end to first-class rail travel

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Co-chair of leftwing Die Linke party says move would reduce overcrowding and save energy

A leading leftwing politician has sparked a row in Germany by proposing the rail operator Deutsche Bahn scraps first-class carriages to reduce overcrowding and improve energy efficiency.

Bernd Riexinger, the co-leader of Die Linke party, said having two classes of travel in regional trains in particular made no sense when the emphasis should be on energy efficiency and making rail travel more accessible.

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Polar cruise boom harming the Arctic, explorer warns

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German adventurer Arved Fuchs says he has seen Inuit villages flooded with gawping tourists – ‘Party ships have no place here’

One of the world’s leading polar explorers has warned against the explosive growth in cruise ship tourism in the Arctic, calling it damaging to both the local environment and its inhabitants.

Arved Fuchs, a German adventurer and the first person to reach both the north and south poles on foot in a year, said: “The number of cruise ships is rising, that’s the crux. And the bigger the ship, the more problematic this is. Party ships have no place in the Arctic,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in an interview.

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Berlin police force embarrassed by arrest of fake policewoman

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‘K’ has repeatedly posed as an officer and claims to have helped apprehend criminals

Berlin’s police force is facing considerable embarrassment over the arrest of a woman who has repeatedly posed as a police officer and claims to have helped them apprehend criminals.

The woman, identified only as ‘K’, was arrested a week ago wearing an authentic uniform and carrying equipment apparently belonging to the police.

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Greta Thunberg takes climate fight to Germany’s threatened Hambach Forest

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The felling of ancient woodland to make way for a giant coal mine brings together two linked battles for the activist

Greta Thunberg started her long journey to climate summits in the Americas by joining a treetop protest in Germany’s Hambach forest, where environmentalists have been fighting for years to stop the ancient woodland being torn up for open-cast coal mining.

The battle to save the last remaining oak and hornbeam trees reflects the young activist’s entwined fights to protect the natural world from human exploitation and to halt carbon emissions.

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Berlin choir accused of gender discrimination by nine-year-old girl

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German capital’s oldest musical institution violated constitution by refusing girl’s application, court to hear

A nine-year-old girl is taking Berlin’s oldest boys’ choir to court, claiming the state-run institution’s admissions criteria are gender-biased and violate Germany’s constitution.

Next week, Berlin’s administrative court will hear that the decision of the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin (SDB) to reject the girl after an audition in April this year was discriminatory because it infringed on her right to equal opportunities in state support.

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Berlin’s bumbling beekeepers leave swarms without homes

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Inexperienced hobbyists force bees to search often in vain for suitable habitats across the city

Humans are not the only ones in Berlin struggling to find accommodation. A beekeeping boom has led to swarms of bees forming novel new hives using anything from motorbikes to balconies in the German capital.

Germany’s beekeeping association has been forced to dispatch a growing band of swarm-catchers – or schwarmfänger – reachable via telephone hotlines, to deal with a deluge of incidents in which thousands of bees cluster round objects while scout bees go in search of suitable homes, such as a tree hollow, more often than not in vain.

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Far-right AfD criticised for exploiting death of boy at Frankfurt station

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German MPs condemn comments on Eritrean-born man accused of pushing boy in front of train

Germany’s interior minister has called for restraint after far-right politicians sought to exploit for political gain the death of an eight-year-old boy who was pushed in front of a train at Frankfurt station this week.

An Eritrean-born man who lives in Switzerland is accused of pushing the boy and his mother onto the tracks. The mother was able to roll to safety under the platform seconds before a high-speed train hit her son, killing him instantly.

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UK calls meeting with US and France to discuss Hormuz plan

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Aim is to create international mission to safeguard shipping through strait near Iran

The UK has invited military representatives of the US, France and other European countries to a meeting in Bahrain on Wednesday in an attempt to create an international mission to safeguard shipping through the strait of Hormuz.

Britain hopes it can act as bridge between the US – which has the largest military presence of a western nation in the region – and countries such as Germany, which is reluctant to getting involved in any mission led by Washington.

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