The German Times Online

This is the front page of our current issue, hot off the press! For a week after publication you can find its main articles here online. Thereafter, all articles from the issue’s Politics, Business and Life sections are added.

A beacon of hope

The world expects a great deal from Barack Obama – By Peter H. Koepf

Europe is over the moon. The U.S. has a new president and Europe’s candidate won the contest. Habemus Obama.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was one of the first to congratulate the man who just became the most powerful politician in the world: “At a time when all of us must face huge challenges together, your election raises great hope in France, in Europe and elsewhere in the world.” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso also chimed in: “This is a time for a renewed commitment between Europe and the United States of America. We need to change the current crisis into a new opportunity. We need a new deal for a new world.”

Searching for a global New Deal

The bull market is dead: To revive it the world needs new global financial rules.

Markets need not just an invisible hand but also a visible heart – By Theo Sommer

The state of the world’s financial markets demonstrates that turbo capitalism really does make global crises more likely. Millions of people face the prospect of falling back into the poverty they have only recently escaped.

What started as a storm in America’s subprime mortgage crisis last year, has unleashed a global tsunami that is devastating far-off financial shores. All over the world, banks are faltering; several big ones have already collapsed. The stock market is in turmoil. Currencies are tumbling, growth rates slowing, commodity prices plunging. The expectation that Europe, the Asian trade giants and the developing world might escape unscathed has proved illusory. Globalization, we learn, works both ways: upwards and downwards. Nobody can “decouple” from a major slump.

The eye of the ‘roaring twenties’

As Bremen celebrates Jeanne Mammen, Berlin seems to have forgotten her – By Jochen Thies

The Paula Modersohn-Becker-Museum in Bremen is showing works by the great illustrator and painter Jeanne Mammen. The fact that her studio in Berlin has been preserved in its original state has so far been ignored by the cultural officials of the capital. Old friends of the artist are maintaining the treasure and are hoping to get help soon.

From noisy, busy Kurfürstendamm, near the corner where the well-known Hotel Kempinski is located, it is only a few steps into a different world. Through the bare rear courtyard of a manorly building and via some steep steps, one manages a leap in time of rare vividness as the door opens to illustrator and painter Jeanne Mammen’s former studio.

A dream no longer deferred

“Sometimes monumental change is compressed into a single moment.” Obama supporters between joy and incredulity.

Now that Barack Obama won the election, he is facing tough challenges ahead – By Tom Buhrow

The world cheered alongside a majority of Americans when the election results were announced. But will Barack Obama be able to live up to the high expectations?

Sometimes monumental change is compressed into a single moment. When that happens, we are often taken off guard as to its suddenness, even though it took some time to develop. The last time America really had a conversation on race relations as clearly as this month was in 1994. The OJ Simpson trial had come to its close. The retired black football player was accused of murdering his white, blonde wife in a case that drew international attention. We had been covering it for months and as the verdict neared, a camera crew and I went to a coffee shop in a poor black part of Los Angeles. What was expected was anything from a guilty verdict to a hung jury but not what followed.