WorldcrunchStay updated on Germany with Worldcrunch. Comprehensive articles on German politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural highlights with translations from leading international sources. Focus on Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, German engineering, philosophy, modern art, and events like Oktoberfest and Art Basel.
If we had been sitting on a stage instead of his home, I’d have had to block my credit card – because mentalist Christoph Kuch just told me what my PIN number is – and that it’s a MasterCard. All he had asked me to do was to think about the number as I answered […]
They appear out of the darkness, men and women moving across a field carrying flaming torches, white hoods covering their heads. After forming a circle, in broken English they swear allegiance to “white power” – to the white race and the nation. Then they light a cross as high as a man. This is a […]
The German publishing giant has completed a mega merger of its Random House publisher with Penguin books. And it isn’t done yet.
A new study finds plastic debris on the floor of the once pristine Arctic Ocean, the latest sign of environmental damage of global waste.
A real-life experiment is playing out in front of computer screens all over the world, as millions of people regularly consume porn. Scientists, who have begun to study the potential consequences, are divided. One person to have addressed the issue very openly is advertising maven Cindy Gallop. In 2009, during a TED conference in Monterrey, […]
ROSENHEIM – German authorities don’t believe his parents are dead, nor do they buy the stories about living on the streets as a child. And so Mohamed Kamara, an 18-year-old asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, is now due to be deported. His integration in Germany has been exemplary, and his therapist is convinced that he […]
BONN – “You have to use violence to defend Islamic values?” asks the judge. “Yes, of course,” Murat K. replies. Five months after he attacked police officers with a knife, the 26-year-old Salafist came clean in the courtroom: it was his duty, he said, to wound the police officers. The officers in question are veterans, […]
BERLIN – This truck has been shipped from China, where it was bought from the country’s biggest truck maker, CIMC. It looks just like the kind of truck a child would draw: bright red, very long, very high, with massive wheels. Everything about it is just a tad too big for German roads. The truck […]
FRANKFURT – Even before the world’s biggest book fair opened this week in Frankfurt, figures from a study conducted by the PwC consulting firm added more worry for printed book dealers about the uncertain future of their trade. According to the study, released Tuesday, demand for e-books is getting ever-larger in Germany. By 2015, the […]
MUNICH – In central Munich an Arbeiterstrich is a crossroads where day laborers from southeastern Europe hang around waiting for low-paid work. Some say they are modern-day slaves, ready to take whatever job comes along, even at the risk of not getting paid. All Ilya* has to offer is his physical strength. “I don’t give […]
GELSENKIRCHEN – It was just a few days before summer break that nine-year-old Lisa Bahlhaus (not her real name) came home in tears. The teacher had announced that after the school holidays the whole class would be presenting a play, and she’d assigned roles. Of all the kids, only Lisa didn’t get a role. The […]
BERLIN – Despite considerable efforts, the economic gap between eastern and western Germany is not shrinking fast enough. While the East is indeed becoming more dynamic, it still lags far behind the West, according to the 2012 statistics compiled by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), which ranks German states for dynamism […]
Cruise lovers come in all shapes, sizes and inclinations. Some climb aboard for the pleasure of getting decked out in their sharpest evening wear. Others like to keep it as casual as they can. Dress codes, indeed, vary from ship to ship. UK-owned Cunard Cruises may still require tuxedos and evening gowns on its ocean […]
Viruses have become world travelers, thanks mainly to the growing mobility of humankind – and of insects. Climate change is also a source of the exotic infections currently spreading in Europe. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government institution responsible for disease control and prevention, we will increasingly have to deal with […]
The former East Germany is still considered to be a hotbed of neo-Nazism. Still, the movement to oppose the extremists is growing even stronger – to the point that leaders in the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) know that when they stage their public gatherings and marches more opponents will be in attendance […]
-OpEd- BERLIN – In a recent appearance on German TV, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt repeated something he had already said earlier about Germans bearing more responsibility for Europe than other nations because of the “”industrial” killing of “six million Jewish fellow citizens.” Bulls**t. And on three counts. First of all, the overwhelming majority of Holocaust […]
At the very mention of the words “male jewelry,” scary images come to mind: super loaded pizzeria owner, rings gleaming on fat fingers, shirt open down to here, gold chain nestling in a dense forest of dark chest hair. But you could also imagine a turbo-tanned pimp on Hamburg’s red-light district, or German reality-show star […]
-Analysis- MUNICH – Last month, for a moment, crisis-plagued European nations seemed to have reason to rejoice: Germany’s Constitutional Court had cleared the way for the European Stability Mechanism, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced its plan for potentially unlimited purchases of government bonds in crisis countries, and the EU Commission laid out a new […]
BERLIN – Everybody should have a car like KITT — the black 1982 Pontiac Trans Am that David Hasselhoff, in the TV series Knight Rider, fought crime with. Hasselhoff’s character couldn’t believe what happened the first time he drove the car. As he was driving 140 miles an hour on the highway, a truck appeared […]
BERLIN – The issue is as old as Christianity: who belongs to a church? Some Catholic scholars in Germany defend the position that it is possible to be Catholic without paying church tax – but the country’s bishops don’t agree, and after months of negotiations they have voted a law that makes further discussion moot […]
MUNICH – The shelving is pink. The armchairs are pink. The bath salts are of course pink too. The air is heavy with a strawberry scent, and in front of the mirror sits Luisa, 11, having her long blonde hair combed. It must look a little like this at Barbie’s house. Kerstin Kobus, decked out […]
BERLIN – In grandpa’s time, somebody would call out “End of the work day!” – as a signal in many companies for workers to pack it up and go home. It’s not so easy today, says Wolfgang Panter, the president of the Association of German Business and Company Doctors (VDBW): “Boundaries between work and free […]
BERLIN – Till Roenneberg, a professor at the Institute for Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, is a chronobiologist – which means that he specializes in the study of how biological rhythms affect our physiology and behavior. Over the course of his career, he has gathered statistics on people from 166 countries. The human […]
-Essay- When I receive an invitation to brunch or afternoon tea, before committing myself I always ask the hosts if any parents are going to be there with their children. If the answer is yes, I thank them for inviting me, say I’m otherwise engaged – and stay home. I know how things are going […]
BERLIN – She was an icon of glamour and beauty. But Marilyn Monroe also knew how to appreciate the timeless value of compressed carbon. When she sang “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” she was offering a not-so-subtle investor tip to bank on the precious stones. These days, with the euro crisis, investors are increasingly […]
– Analysis – BERLIN – The invitation came from the top ranks — Council Chairman Nikolaus Schneider and Synod President Katrin Göring-Eckardt — of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), which is comprised of 22 Lutheran, Reformed and United regional churches. Most of the regional bishops, former Council chairs Margot Käßmann and Wolfgang Huber, along […]
RAVENSBURG – Otto Oberländer calls out a friendly “Hello!” as he enters the production hall where a dozen men work at a long table putting garden sprinklers together. The men, who all wear blue boiler suits, give a friendly acknowledgement of the boss’s greeting and then get back to work. The fact that the door […]
BERLIN – Even the ever competent European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi stumbled when he was asked how he was dealing with the fact that the Germans had reservations about his latest moves. That’s because the journalist at last week’s press conference didn’t address him as “President Draghi,” but as “Herr Weidmann.” Of course, […]
In the face of the European debt and financial crisis, Hamburg-based economist Dirk Meyer has a “third way”: a system of parallel currencies. A professor at the Helmut Schmidt University of the armed forces, Meyer is convinced that in its present form the euro zone is simply not sustainable in the long term. He used […]
-Analysis- FRANKFURT – Are Hamas and Hezbollah part of “the global left?” A few years ago, during the discussion following a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, American philosopher Judith Butler claimed they were. And now the remark is coming back to haunt her. The Central Council of Jews in Germany has strongly criticized […]
BERLIN – Six years ago, shortly after Daniel Alter became one of the first Jews to be made a rabbi in Germany after the Holocaust, he said that he thought for a long time about how to explain to his daughter why there were relatively few Jews in Germany. He told Die Welt: “To tell […]
HAMBURG – Jan Heusinger’s day was always the same: wake up, shower, have breakfast – and then spend the rest of his hours playing computer games. Four years ago, when he was 14, he’d bought World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game. By 2011, he’d stopped attending school to spend his days as an Orc […]
-Essay- BERLIN – Some people live with the past. Others prefer to throw the past away like it’s smelly trash. In present-day Germany, where the goody-two-shoes live, the second has been the preferred option for a long time now. Take for instance street names: Germany’s streets and squares are routinely re-baptized. When the Nazis came […]
-Essay- BERLIN – On Wednesday morning, at Berlin Zoo, Bao Bao the giant panda died in his sleep at the age of 34 — which for a panda is a ripe old age. Berlin mourns him, the zoo mourns him … but all the attention will quickly fade away. The truth is that Bao Bao’s […]
BERLIN – In the debate in Germany over circumcision, you often hear people say jokingly that if cutting the foreskin off a baby boy’s penis for religious reasons is outlawed then piercing little girls’ earlobes shouldn’t be allowed either. But that’s just the scenario that may be shaping up. After a Cologne court ruled in […]
BERLIN – After the initial euphoria, it’s back to earth for Germans. The decision to exit nuclear power was initially quite popular, but today many are having second thoughts. Their main issue with the decision is its resulting cost, which is paid for by households and small businesses but has spared big industrial consumers. When […]
Deutsche Bank may have done business to the tune of billions with Iran and other countries, violating U.S. sanctions. Sanctions were imposed on Iran by the international community because of its nuclear weapons program. British bank Standard Chartered, which is said to have violated Iran sanctions, now faces payment of a $340 million settlement after […]
BERLIN – In the posh, lush Pankow neighborhood of East Berlin, nothing indicates that people are squatting the Kunterbunt house. Everything is orderly in the small brownish building, a legacy of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). There are flower bouquets on the tables and water paintings of landscapes hanging on the walls. Yet Doris, […]
OP-ED – A German newspaper recently published a list of the “ten most dangerous politicians in Europe.” When something bad happens we immediately start looking for someone or something to pin the blame on. It makes no difference if the “bad” thing was the capsizing of a cruise liner, a war that ended in a […]
In just three weeks, the final stage of the EU phase-out of incandescent light bulbs will start. The EU campaign began in December 2008 with the EU Commission’s Ecodesign Directive stating that the manufacturing and sale of “light bulbs with low energy efficiency” would be forbidden in member states after a gradual phase-out. The directive […]