For us, Theo Sommer was always Ted.

The invitation to call him Ted was both a sign of familiarity and an expression of generosity, magnanimity and the absence of any kind of conceit on his part. People who had the pleasure of working with him never found themselves speaking to Herr Sommer, that towering figure behind DIE ZEIT. Instead, they were always inevitably talking to Ted.

Theo …

The rapid tectonic shifts that are currently taking place in international politics are illustrated by the case of Afghanistan and the role of Qatar, a small country in terms of area but a big one in terms of diplomacy. Certainly, the Gulf state had to struggle with its image for a long time, not without its own doing. But now the emirate has achieved something that neither German foreign policy …

Religious hatred often begins in schools as seen most recently in the recent escalation of the Middle East conflict. This dangerous dimension has long been ignored, also by the EU.

One has to take a closer look, specifically at what is being taught to children and young people. A sad example from recent years is that Palestinian Authority textbooks encourage violence against Israelis and include antisemitic messages, this is according …

A letter to President Joe Biden from the publisher Detlef W. Prinz

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations! When today, at 12 noon Washington time, you swear your oath to the US Constitution and are officially inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, the world will breathe a collective and deep sigh of relief. The aberration is no more. America is back.

But let’s not kid ourselves – yours will …

No one looking back on the past decade can do so with satisfaction, let alone complacency. The world has become unstable. The international order created after World War II is breaking down; the global institutions established as part of that order are frail and ineffective. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned previously existing fault lines into frontlines. Troubles are piling up everywhere. In many places, cooperation is morphing into confrontation. US-China …

Putin has not yet chosen a course vis-à-vis Belarus, but all signs point to his continued support for Lukashenko

After the disputed presidential election in Belarus on Aug. 9, Vladimir Putin was one of the first to congratulate Alexander Lukashenko on his landslide win. Yet the Russian president was cautious at first, pursuing more of a wait-and-see approach as to which position the Kremlin should take.

“Putin congratulated Lukashenko on …

Her era will have to come to an end eventually. Angela Merkel has been German chancellor since 2005; you would have to look long and hard to find another politician holding a country’s top political position for so long, autocracies and banana republics excluded. But Merkel has unequivocally stated she will not run for office again in fall 2021, one year from now, in the Bundestag elections.

Her announcement in …

There are Russians who see German hospitals as a salvation, and there are Russians who see them as a curse. The family of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, arranged for him to be treated at Berlin’s Charité hospital after being subject to an apparent poison attack in August. The Russian government and its media empire have cast doubt upon the findings and diagnoses of his German doctors. The Navalny …

In most corners of the world, hopes are running high that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will win the upcoming US election and thus bring to a close this current dark chapter. These hopes, however, rest on less-than-sound footing, and for several reasons. The unrest in American cities, the possibility of a vaccine being introduced in advance of the election, a rebound in the US economy and, last but not …

The idea of selling the European Green Deal as Europe’s “man on the moon moment” was no doubt very much to the liking of Ursula von der Leyen. She is an expert at setting the perfect stage for introducing policies with an emotive tone and professional glow. Last December, less than 14 days after being elected president of the European Commission, von der Leyen stepped up to the microphone to …