ALL TOGETHER NOW

In the late 1990s, Heinz Bude became a star German intellectual. The sociology professor wrote an essay published by a small publishing house on low-quality paper: “Generation Berlin” perfectly captured the Zeitgeist. Berlin was the nation’s new …

When the catastrophe began, the maritime rescue team on board the Iuventa wasn’t anywhere nearby. In early May, 3,000 people had set out from Africa in several boats and were now floundering helplessly in flimsy dinghies and worm-eaten wooden vessels …

Two sisters. Their father is a swimming coach; both started swimming at a very young age. They trained, they competed and their lives were like those of lots of children from ordinary middle-class families. Yet there is nothing ordinary about …

When Berlin takes time to celebrate its best chefs at the annual Berlin Master Chefs gala dinner, these prize-winning culinary artists are usually asked to do the very thing they’re being honored for: cook. In 2015, Lukas Mraz – head …

The man hit her. He hit her hard and it hurt like hell. But Sabine Müller* accepted the pain. She clung to the illusion that the man who beat her time and again loved her. It was only once he …

Celebrations in Washington marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO have ended with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the North Atlantic Alliance is growing and thriving, and its military might is still a decisive factor in global …

In his pursuit to impress the great physicist Albert Einstein, Konrad Wachsmann resolved to put on an extraordinary performance. As chief architect at the construction firm of Christoph & Unmack, which specialized in manufacturing timber buildings, Wachsmann borrowed the fancy …

A week ago, I set out on a subway for Charlottenburg, one of the swankier districts in Berlin and the birthplace of Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). My destination was the square named in honor of Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher and …

Since 2003, China and the European Union have been committed to what is called, rather grandiloquently, a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. In this framework, their trade relationship has flourished above all others. For 17 years now, the EU has been China’s …

You have to give Donald Trump credit for at least one thing: He never hid his feelings about China. One year before he was elected 45th president of the United States, he wrote in his manifesto Great Again: How to …

Is Brexit a wash? The question is not as absurd as it once might have been, not since the European Union heads of state agreed on April 10 to once more extend the date for the UK leaving the EU.…

A palpable spirit of optimism hung in the air at the last European elections five years ago. In 2014, many EU politicians and most voters were eager to finally leave behind the banking and euro crises that had shaken Europe …

Donald Trump is relentless. He continues to
believe that Germans are hoodwinking the United States. It’s not enough that they’re swindling everyone else to maintain their high export surplus, he complains; they’re also still making Americans pay for their geopolitical …

Several times a month, Anja Pfeiffer, the mayor of Weilerbach, drives to “her” construction site, she likes to say with a laugh. At the outer edge of her municipality, directly across from the US air base in Ramstein, the Americans …

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU’s brandnew chairwoman and a leading candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, has already started taking warm-up laps. At the recent “Denk ich an Deutschland” conference organized by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Alfred …