Sunday, April 28, 2024

Union Berlin is a soccer club of underdogs, but only the well-behaved, honest and open-minded kind

By Annett Gröschner

It’s a Saturday afternoon in late March. Our destination is a home game at the Alte Försterei stadium, deep in the east of Berlin. The further the S-Bahn takes us in the direction of Köpenick, the more crowded it gets, …

A company is founded every 20 minutes in Berlin

A company is founded every 20 minutes in Berlin
By Magdalena Thiele

Daniel Stammler and Janosch Sadowksi came to Berlin by way of Karlsruhe, the city in southwest Germany where they founded Kolibri, their gaming startup. Stammler and Sadowski see the town as having been an ideal springboard for their business, especially …

Time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Berlin’s Young Euro Classic festival – as well as a number of former participants who’ve made it big

By Peter Uehling

One of the most successful concepts in classical music is turning 20 this year. Back in 2000, the youth orchestra festival known as the Young Euro Classic (YEC) took place for the first time ever in Berlin. From that first …

The Big Apfel: From New York to Berlin – my first 100 days in the German capital

The Big Apfel: From New York to Berlin – my first 100 days in the German capital
By Keenan Brill

“Sorry sir, I asked for an iced coffee, not an ice-cream coffee.” My cup had a huge vanilla scoop in it. “Yes, this is a German *Eiskaffee.* You can have a coffee with ice cubes, but that would be one …

EU elections could become an unlikely battleground for the future of the liberal world order

By Mark Leonard

The Munich Security Conference has grown accustomed to ranking the security threats to the West: Islamist terrorists, Russian revisionism or the global ambitions of China’s big data dictatorship. But today, the most critical challenges come not from outside the West …

“What’s wrong with America First?”

By Anne-Marie Slaughter

As of the beginning of February, nine Democratic candidates had announced a bid for the US presidency; The New York Times estimates that a tenth candidate is “all but certain to run” and identifies three more as “likely to run” …

Authoritarian advantage: The struggle for a liberal world order is occuring not just outside the West but also within it

By Robert Kagan

A character in the Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises, asked how he went bankrupt, responds, “gradually and then suddenly.” That is a fair description of how the world order collapsed before the two world wars. Unfortunately, Americans and Europeans …

Europeans must forge a new social consensus on foreign policy

Europeans must forge a new social consensus on foreign policy
By Volker Stanzel

A look at Western Europe’s postwar history helps illuminate what served as its foreign policy’s point of departure in the past, and the foundation that undergirds its foreign policy moving forward. We can view the outcome of World War II …

The scramble for Europe

By Stephen Smith

A growing security threat at Europe’s southern borders has remained unacknowledged for almost a century. It has never been conceived in military terms and, I believe, rightfully so. But it has been depoliticized as merely a matter of economic expediency …

The real cyber threat is your likes

By P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking

All through December 2018, a hacker by the online handle “Orbit” teased and tantalized his followers, releasing a new heap of hacked emails, chatlogs and home addresses each day. At first, German comedians, YouTube stars, rappers and TV stars were …

Angela Merkel in Munich: “Only together can the West survive!”

By Theo Sommer

This year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC) – the security and foreign policy twin of the Davos World Economic Forum – convened under dark clouds of doom and gloom. The over 800 participants – among them 19 presidents, 13 heads of …

Germany is going to promote and protect industrial champions.

Germany is going to promote and protect industrial champions.
By Nikolaus Piper

In late 2018, one of Germany’s most venerated and long-standing companies stopped being German. Linde AG was founded in 1879 by Carl Linde, the inventor of the refrigerator, and rose to become the world’s largest supplier of industrial gases, including …

Hereditary friends: From Élysée to Aachen, the bond between Germany and France is holding firm

Hereditary friends: From Élysée to Aachen, the bond between Germany and France is holding firm
By Cécile Calla

Will France and Germany be able to revive the European machine in these troubled times? On the eve of crucial European elections, the two countries sought to reaffirm their unfailing bond and renew their relationship by signing a new treaty …

Why modern wars never end. Violence has morphed from a political instrument into an economic resource, but this is only one of five reasons for today’s never-ending conflicts

Why modern wars never end. Violence has morphed from a political instrument into an economic resource, but this is only one of five reasons for today’s never-ending conflicts
By Herfried Münkler

In the grand scheme of European history, the 19th century stands out as an era of peace. However, this characterization of the epoch – defined by historians as spanning the Congress of Vienna and the start of World War …

Daring more social democracy: The Left in Europe and America must find the way back to their roots

By Nils Heisterhagen

Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) was never a revolutionary force but had always been party of reformers able to adapt to new social realities with legislation designed to improve people’s lives. That kind of SPD has not been seen for …