There’s a new buzzterm in Western politics, culture and media, and it should come to no one’s surprise that it’s also a trigger for both sides of the ever-hardening left-right ideological divide. “Cancel culture” – or sometimes “call-out culture” – is a new term for the ancient phenomenon of ostracizing a person or group for behavior that a certain number of others (not always a majority of others) find to …

One way to look at the 2019–2020 UEFA Champions League season – which recently came to an end with Bayern Munich winning the final 1:0 against Paris Saint-Germain – is to see it as a battle among German coaches in which Hansi Flick ultimately triumphed over Thomas Tuchel and Julian Nagelsmann. Yet another German coach, Jürgen Klopp, had won the Champions League with his FC Liverpool team the previous season, …

This summer, two German news stories made global headlines. One was an animalistic crime story, an attempted robbery; the other was a tale of protest, aimed at the increasing commercialization of world soccer. They had one thing in common – their protagonists were naked.

In the first week of August, a nude sunbather at Teufelssee lake in southwest Berlin was the target of an attempted “snout and run” when a …

If someone found a one-thousand-pound unexploded bomb in downtown Manhattan or along the banks of the Potomac in Washington, there’s no doubt it would make international headlines. News outlets would race to cover the evacuation process, and journalists would park their mobile-broadcast vans on site, hoping to get the first footage of a possible detonation.

In Germany, however, such discoveries are made on an almost daily basis – often in …

When adults behave like children, the first victims are often children themselves. In these ugly times, it would do us good to recall that we have the power to make the world a better place. We can reject the Hobbesian notion that “man is wolf to man,” and instead seek to be good Samaritans. We can acknowledge the fact that hate only breeds hate, that violence only breeds violence, and …

Two years after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the painter Anton von Werner completed his epic battlefield portrait of Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff. High on his steed atop a hill, the field marshal is depicted looking across the valley where, in the distance, he can behold Paris, the seat of the French government. As Moltke surveys the terrain, his soldiers are erecting a telegraph …

Many streets in Germany bear the names of individuals who served the common good in one way or the other. In Berlin, this honor is often bestowed upon people whose names are unfamiliar to the broader public and whose merit and deeds are equally unknown. Yet there are also plenty of individuals who have had a huge impact on the city but go entirely neglected when it comes to street …

There’s an almost palpable sense of relief in the air at the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) these days. After a year plagued by a series of crises, including accusations of anti-Semitism and hostility toward Israel lobbed at the museum and the affiliated Blumenthal Academy, the unanimous appointment of Hetty Berg and the museum’s new permanent exhibition have been met with a positive response from all sides.

Berg, who was born …

As Berlin’s erstwhile vibrant art and theater scene continues its coronavirus-induced slumber, urban dwellers are increasingly being forced to get their cultural kicks in the countryside. Especially on those warm late-summer days, there’s nothing better than trading in the hot city life for a refreshingly cool lake, a shady spot under the trees and a delicious drink with a breathtaking view. And just imagine if you could do all those …

If at all, most non-Berliners are familiar with the Anhalter Bahnhof train station from reading the works of Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan and Erich Kästner. And Berliners themselves most likely assume that the small yet monumental portal next to the soccer field near Askanischer Platz in Kreuzberg is some kind of decorative addendum to the park rather than a remnant of what once was a major railroad terminal.

This state …