An August evening on Sonnenallee, Berlin-Neukölln: Tires screech as police vans come to a sudden stop. Officers enter hookah bars and cafes. Men sitting at tables look surprised. The officers are accompanied by tax investigators and employees of the public order office. They’re controlling whether bar owners are following industrial codes, whether their accounting checks out, whether they’ve installed more slot machines than are permitted. What’s happening here is what’s …

Germans used to be undisputed leaders in the global export of goods, and they’ve been world champions several times in soccer. In each case, whenever they noticed that their own skills weren’t going to be enough, they simply procured foreign muscle to get the job done. In the 20th century, they brought in “guest workers” from Italy, Greece and Turkey to accomplish their “economic miracle,” and in the 21st century, …

Berlin was an eminent spot in the world of academia in the Roaring Twenties and is again becoming the place to be for young talent and top-notch scientists. One in three newly enrolled students at our universities and colleges comes from abroad, and the percentage of international faculty in the city is on the rise. From artificial intelligence and cutting-edge medicine to the worlds of literature and ancient civilizations – …

I love New York,” gushes Katharine Mehrling. The top star of Berlin’s musical stage is coming to Manhattan on Oct. 5, hoping to conquer the Big Apple with her enchanting sound. The award-winning singer and actor will perform her “Streets of Berlin” act at Joe’s Pub – a bow to her chosen hometown from the American metropolis that’s stolen her heart.

“Over the course of the evening, I say a …

People will judge you by your actions, not your intentions.” So goes the adage that even well-meant behavior may result in unforeseen condemnation. Or, in other words: It’s not enough just to want to do the right thing. In this sense, the last few months must have been rather painful for Peter Schäfer, the highly esteemed German scholar of ancient religious studies. Indeed, the former director of Europe’s largest Jewish …

Berlin is – famously – poor but sexy, yet the city is now booming. Its tens of thousands of new arrivals could renew the German capital, but Berlin’s older established residents see it all as a plague.

There are few places in Berlin where one can simultaneously experience prosperity and misery better than around the Schönleinstrasse subway station. Anyone exiting a subway train at this stop on the German …

PROGRESSIVES

West Germany’s “Economic Miracle” in the 1950s was more or less driven by the coal and steel industries in the Ruhr Valley. The myth of the Federal Republic climbing its way out of the fiscal hole left by the war through backbreaking, honest work is based on the media imagery of the time: toilers and machines in meaningful harmony, hard-earned transformation leading inevitably to pervasive middle class prosperity. One …

This is Berlin, that pulsating cosmopolis: parties and clubs, the fables and follies of dating life, a bustling startup scene with new technologies bringing riches to self-made entrepreneurs, female empowerment and culture wars where big-city liberal lifestyles clash with right-wing populism.

But this is not the Berlin of 2019. No, indeed. It is the thematic outline of life in the city between 1878 and 1948. It is the Berlin of …

I remember the feeling well – a mixture of frustration and disappointment. It was the morning after we’d shot what we thought was going to be some incredibly exciting and spectacular footage of the opening of the Berlin Wall. November 9, 1989, marked the climax and the grand finale of a peaceful German revolution – and it had been a Thursday. But the Spiegel TV news magazine I was working …

November 9, 1989, was the day the world first experienced sympathy for the Germans. In fact, the international community was surprised to find out that that the Germans were even capable of experiencing deep human emotions. And it seems to me that East and West Berliners had never – neither before this day, nor after – been so truly happy for each other.

East Germany disappeared within a matter of …