Looking Back at German Reunification Thirty Years Later
Germans have long contrasted the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 with the much more sober formal reunification of East and West Germany in October 1990. The fall …
The Berlin Republic at Thirty: Neither Bonn or Weimar
Rene Fritz Alleman, a Swiss journalist, wrote a book with a famous title at the beginning of West Germany’s history in 1956, Bonn ist nicht Weimar. As the Federal Republic …
Munich’s Lessons for U.S. Airports
Most airport travel in the United States is less than pleasant. A typical experience may include long waits in drab and uninviting corridors, a greasy pre-flight fast food meal, and …
We Could Schaffen Das, But We Won’t
EU migration policy reform still stalled five years after peak of crisis The crisis that hit Europe in 2015 has never gone away. This summer, Germans reflected on the fifth …
The Linke’s Search for Leadership – and Direction
Otto von Bismarck is once reported to have said “Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd.” So it is with any leader …
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QAnon Goes Global
“Please, Mr. President, make Germany great again.” It’s not every day that demonstrators in Germany plea for America’s president to come to their aid. But the August 29 anti-lockdown protest …
The Anticlimactic Opening of the Humboldt Forum
December will witness one of Germany’s (actually, Europe’s) biggest cultural events in at least a decade: the opening of a massive new museum and cultural complex in the heart of …
The SPD Goes Back to the Future
German politics today is fit for a Greek tragedy, which is particularly true for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The quest for new leadership less than a year ago brought …
#BlackLivesMatter: Social Unsettlement and Intersectional Justice in Pandemic Times
Notes From Black Berlin in the Summer of 2020 Seven years after the initiation of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi, we are again facing …
Like Sands Through an Hourglass, So Are Angela Merkel’s Approval Ratings
German chancellor Angela Merkel may be cementing her legacy in the pandemic as the most popular leader in the history of the Bundesrepublik. While Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, …
German Millennials, Their Weltanschauung, and the Transatlantic Relationship
Germany’s millennials are a growing force in politics, as the “Fridays for Future” protests demonstrate. Climate activist Carla Reemtsma called the September 2019 demonstrations “the biggest protest, at least since …
