One of the low points of the trans-Atlantic relationship can be pinpointed precisely: June 19, 2018, 6:52AM EST. Presumably from his bedroom in the East Wing of the White House, US President Donald Trump clicked “send” in his Twitter app: “Crime in Germany is up 10% plus (officials do not want to report these crimes) since migrants were accepted.”

It sounds like a state conspiracy, one discovered by the American …

The townspeople of Weimar had never come across the likes of a Johannes Itten. The bald instructor at the Staatliches Bauhaus, or simply Bauhaus, often wore a monk’s habit of the Mazdaznan movement while exuding esoteric worldviews from literally his every pore – his philosophy included strict vegetarianism and, by all accounts, bounteous amounts of garlic. His unusual teaching methods quickly made the rounds in this once serene former ducal …

When William Bates first set foot in the factory belonging to the German auto supplier Bosch in northern Charleston, he could not have known that his life would soon change radically. He assumed it was going to be just one more in a series of joyless temporary jobs he’d been doing for years to keep himself afloat. He and his colleagues had been hired to paint the Bosch factory hall …

Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier speaks to The German Times on trade, Trump and taxing US companies in Europe

Minister Altmaier, economically speaking, Germany is on pretty firm footing. Economists call this the “strongest boom in two decades.” Growth is exceeding 2 percent; per-capita GDP is rising; unemployment is low; average wages and consumer spending are both growing. And yet, millions of people feel left behind. How …

Poverty and hunger are perennial threats to any political system. They are also the factors that in the 1970s prompted China’s Deng Xiaoping to seek a simple and effective way to restore his underdeveloped country. “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white,” the former leader noted, “as long as it catches mice.”

In other words, Deng had declared that communism would henceforth be permitted to engage in …

WHITHER WEST?

Joschka Fischer is afraid. As Fischer turns 70 this year, this one-time rebel who crusaded against capitalism and the state back in the late 1960s only to join the establishment as German Foreign Minister from 1998 until 2005 for the Green Party, now dons the mantle of Elder Statesman. It’s a role he assumes with such gravity that it borders on caricature.

His latest work, a geopolitical analysis …