WorldcrunchDie Welt (“The World”) is a German daily founded in Hamburg in 1946, and currently owned by the Axel Springer AG company, Europe’s largest publishing house. Now based in Berlin, Die Welt is sold in more than 130 countries. A Sunday edition called Welt am Sonntag has been published since 1948.
MUNICH – In his Munich art gallery, Daniel Blau has an exhibition called Death and Disaster, which features German and American war photographs. Whether to view these photographs as documents or art depends on one’s perspective. The pictures bear witness not only to death and destruction but also to the power of imagery as a […]
-OpEd- BERLIN – The resignation of David Petraeus as head of the CIA means that we can once again play that great political guessing game that measures the gap between what’s being said and the real reasons behind what’s happened. It is apparent yet again that moving out of public office is almost as difficult […]
BERLIN – Drivers have been communicating with each other for 125 years with brake lights, turn signals and horns. But a new era is beginning: Car-to-X Communication (C2X). This is connectivity between vehicles making it possible for them to exchange information and warn of dangers. In early 2007, with about 40 million euros of taxpayer […]
BERLIN – Two of the world’s economic superpowers have spent the past days picking their leaders for the future. Barack Obama and the Democrats are now ensconced in the U.S. while China’s big political show began with this week’s opening of the National Congress of the Communist Party, where over 2,000 delegates will decide on […]
On November 1, under the nave of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem, an archeological park called “Durch die Zeiten” (Through Time) opened. It provides the answer to a question that has long eluded researchers: just where Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected, is really located. Planned and built […]
BERLIN – It is a scientific theory of longevity that has the whiff of homemade pie: people live longer thanks to the grandmothers who help raise them. Though first put forth more than a half-century ago, the “grandmother hypothesis” has gotten renewed attention with a recent study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society […]
BERLIN – The Tannhof, a wellness hotel in Germany’s Black Forest, is for adults only. So is the Ringhotel Dolce Vita in the Bavarian Forest. According to the Adults-Only-Holidays website, there are five hotels in Germany where children are not welcome. There are five such establishments in Austria, the UK and Turkey; four each in […]
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 […]
BELGRADE – “Go to Republic Square first, and then walk along Knez Mihailova Street, that’s Belgrade at its most beautiful…” With the counsel of the young woman at Reception, a rickety Dacia taxi gets me from the residential neighborhood of Senjak – pretty, but with some parts in urgent need of a facelift – past […]
KABUL – There was a day when executions took place in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium, and until 11 years ago it was a place where the Taliban punished renegades with public amputations. But for the past few weeks all you could hear in this part of the Afghan capital was the sound of chatter, dancing, celebration […]
RAMALLAH – The smiling receptionist indicates that I should take a seat, so I settle into one of the lobby’s leather chairs. On a glass table, there’s the latest issue of an American business magazine and a day-old local paper. Flowery wall art contrasts with the space’s cool modernism. But this high tech company is […]
The Luxemburg-based European Court of Justice ruled this week a product the Czechs call butter is not butter, which means that the beloved spread known as “pomazankove maslo” (“spreadable butter”) can no longer be labeled as such. Non-Czechs would never have called it butter, which it bears no resemblance to – it doesn’t even really […]
Tanja Nijmeijer joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) when she was barely out of her teens. Now, at 34, the Dutch woman is negotiating for the Marxist rebels in the peace talks with the Colombian government that began this week in Oslo. With her long, dark-blonde hair, brown doe-eyes and engaging smile, Nijmeijer […]
AMSTERDAM – A filthy hotel room and food poisoning are definitely up there on the list of things that can ruin a trip. But for the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam, they are part of the sales pitch — proud to be dubbed the “worst hotel in the world.” The low-cost establishment has enjoyed […]
A Die Welt exclusive explores declassified German documents 50 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Contemporary French historian Henri Rousso’s seminal book Syndrome de Vichy (The Vichy Syndrome) came out in 1987. Its subject was the way the French dealt with the Nazi occupation, and it in Rousso coined an iconic phrase: “The past that does not pass…” Now, however, Rousso says, “The past is past. It’s not forgotten, but […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A Tel Aviv Tale Of Manners
-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 […]
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 […]
ISTANBUL – Mornings around nine, when shop owners on Galip Dede Street open their doors, dozens of cats appear out of nowhere. They know it’s breakfast time. Not right away: the men first have to unpack new merchandise, stock the shelves, and check the till. But then they put out bowls of water for the […]
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 […]
For months, free smartphone instant messaging service WhatsApp has been topping the download charts. It is a favorite application for both iPhone and Android users. To the annoyance of cell phone providers, WhatsApp has become a kind of quasi replacement for the old fee-based SMS. According to WhatsApp developers, their servers handle over 10 billion […]
Women are just sex objects! Making a classic male sexist comment like that has long been taboo in Western societies. Yet two studies, one Belgian, the other American, actually go a long way in proving that women really are perceived that way. A team working with psychologist Philippe Bernard at the Université Libre in Brussels […]
-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 […]
The news out of Afghanistan is that the Taliban beheaded 17 men and women who had gathered for a mixed-gender social event with music and dancing. This, of course, is not the first time the excesses of Muslim jihadists have included beheadings. Dozens of headless bodies were found in the Tigris River years ago in […]
-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 […]