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Wishing you a pleasant summer from the only rainy place in Europe (northwest Scotland).

Jörg Luyken

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Unless you’ve been hiding out in a news cave, it’s hard to have missed one of the standout measures in the coalition’s 34-point reform package, agreed upon just shy of summer recess. The coalition wants employees to obtain an Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung, or AU, covering the very first day of illness, and to abolish the telephone sick notes introduced during the pandemic. Currently, no certificate is required until the fourth day of illness.

That prospect has alarmed doctors, who warn that routine certification appointments will crowd out patients with more urgent medical needs. Patients with an ordinary one or two-day illness could have little recourse other than hobbling to a Hausarzt, or…

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But this, according to Lithuanian foreign-policy analyst Linas Kojala, is exactly what is happening in cafés in his country’s capital, Vilnius.

“People are welcoming [the Bundeswehr] with open arms,” Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center, told The German Review.

The gesture stands out precisely because it remains unusual at home. In Germany, support for the Bundeswehr has grown since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but spontaneous displays of gratitude toward soldiers remain rare.

In Lithuania, by contrast, German troops are arriving in a country where the threat feels immediate -- and where Berlin is turning what began as a rotational NATO presence in 2017 into a long-term brigade of around 4,800 soldiers and 200 civilian personnel by 2027, the first German combat brigade stationed abroad since the Second World War.

Lithuan…

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“Was your granddad in the SS?” asks the headline on the homepage of Der Spiegel. “What did your family do under Hitler?”

Want to find out whether Opa had a dirty secret that he never admitted to? Pay for a subscription and you can now find out!

But you don’t have to pay for Der Spiegel if that’s not your thing. The Süddeutsche Zeitung is also offering you the truth that your family never dared to admit. “War jemand in Ihrer Familie NSDAP-Mitglied?” the Munich-based newspaper asks.

Or you can go to Die Zeit, which asks more sheepishly: “Was he in the SS?” Well, who is “he”? Obviously, it’s not your neighbour’s dog.

All three of Germany’s major liberal news outlets are currently making money by preying on Germans’ darkest fear — that their parents and grandparents may secretly have been Nazis and covered it up the whole time. After a US-based archive digitised all eight million Nazi Party membership cards, Germany’s establishment media entered a race to be the first to monetise …

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The window is now shut.

Friedrich Merz’s government spoke at the beginning of the year about a Reformfenster – a window of opportunity that would allow the government to pass its long-heralded economic reforms — that would close this week.

Why was the timeline so tight? Because the Bundestag went into recess on Friday, meaning that no new laws can be passed until the second week of September. By that stage, events may already have overtaken the federal government.

On Sunday, September 6th — the day before Bundestag MPs return from their holidays — state elections will be held in Saxony-Anhalt. The result of that election could make further compromise difficult, if not impossible.

If current polling is to be believed, the AfD is on course for a comprehensive victory. The populists are expected to win 40 per cent or more. The CDU, which has governed the eastern state since 2002, is lagging well behind on just 23 per cent. That is nothing compare…

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Only Friedrich Merz could turn Germany’s World Cup exit into a communications crisis for the Chancellery.

Despite pre-tournament optimism (and attempts to summon the Lord to support Germany’s cause), the national team were knocked out of the World Cup by lowly Paraguay after limping through the group stage.

It was a slight improvement on the previous two tournaments, when the Nationalelf failed even to reach the knockout rounds. Even so, it confirmed that one of world football’s great powers has been reduced to the ranks of the also-rans, to be taken about as seriously as a mid-sized Caribbean island.

And yet, the real debacle came an hour or so later.

After a 10pm kick-off Central European time, the match went to extra time and then penalties. It was close to 2am on Tuesday by the time Germany’s fate was sealed. Most of us were long in bed. The Chancellor, however, appeared to be glued to the television, cheering on his team from across the Atlantic.

Shortly after the final wh…

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It is time for the constitutional court to rule on whether the AfD should be banned.

Evidence of why came from Erfurt at the weekend, where the AfD were holding their party conference.

Inside the conference hall, party delegates were handed tasteless stickers suggesting that advocating for “remigration” is sexy. Outside, thousands of protesters tried to prevent the conference from taking place by blockading the streets.

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Has Friedrich Merz finally found his mojo?

After 13 months of grand promises but little delivery; after a now-infamous retreat with his coalition partners at a Berlin villa that was supposed to produce a breakthrough but descended into rancour; after polls so disastrous that they sparked rumours of an inner-party coup… at last, the chancellor seems to have found his stride.

Last week, he was able to announce a planned pension reform that will raise the age of retirement and start investing a slice of workers’ salaries on the stock market. His coalition partners in the SPD, long resistant to changes that would hit their blue-collar base, had to nod along to plans to abolish early retirement for manual workers.

This week, the chancellor had another trick up his sleeve. He called the capital’s media to a surprise press conference just hours after meeting coalition bigwigs to find a final compromise on his big reform agenda.

The coalition committee (Koalitionsausschuss) is a term…

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Last autumn I moved to a part of the country that I’ve heard locals variously describe as “Germany’s California” and “Germany’s Tuscany.” Home to rolling Riesling vineyards – the largest in the world, I’m told – the Palatinate is one of Germany’s most beautiful regions.

Its location in the Rhine Valley, far from the coast, also makes it one of Germany’s hottest regions.

As temperatures soared to 40°C last week, I was glad to live on the ground floor of an early 20th-century house with thick sandstone walls. Our apartment is a man-made cave. In May, we often left in thick jumpers only to realise it was spring outside. Now we have the payoff. It offers precious relief from the baking heat outside.

Not everyone has been so lucky, though.

Our top-floor neighbours resorted to ad hoc measures to keep the heat at bay. They shuttered their living room window with a piece of plywood, with a hole cut for the exhaust hose of a mobile air conditioner. For two weeks, they took refuge in a …

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Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defence Minister Boris Pistorius both took centre stage to thank them and emphasise the importance of their service at home and abroad.

When a small group of pacifist protesters interrupted Pistorius’ speech, he carried on: “A motto of the Bundeswehr is: we fight so that you can be against us.” The audience broke into applause.

Such public displays of military recognition remain unusual in postwar Germany. In countries such as the US or UK, veterans’ commemoration is embedded in public life; in Germany, respect for the Bundeswehr has often been more restrained and less visible.

That shift…

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Good news from Berlin at last.

A few weeks ago, I argued that Germany should stop obsessing over the ever-expanding fortune of the super-rich and start asking how ordinary workers could benefit from the same forces that have made them so wealthy. My answer was a Swedish-style pension system that allows workers to build wealth through the stock market.

Now, unexpectedly, Germany seems set to do just that.

On Tuesday, a government-appointed commission tasked with drawing up a plan to overhaul the pension system unveiled its recommendations. At the heart of them is a proposal for a mandatory funded model based explicitly on Sweden’s example.

The idea might just save a system that has been dragging Germany into economic ignominy.

The current model remains overwhelmingly dependent on an arrangement developed in the nineteenth century. Workers and employers pay contributions into a common pot, which is then used to finance current retirees.

This transfer-based system worked when a la…

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Two stories from two different cities. Both illustrate the danger that public funds intended for worthy causes such as democracy promotion and anti-racism can end up being diverted into political patronage networks when oversight breaks down.

In Hannover, prosecutors are investigating allegations that more than €1 million in public grants were misused by a prominent local Social Democrat and members of her family.

Hülya Iri was a leading figure in SPD circles in the capital of Lower Saxony. She served as deputy leader of the SPD group on the city council and was well connected within the state’s famously influential party machine. When she founded an NGO in 2018 with the stated aim of helping young migrants enter the workforce, she received public backing from Doris Schröder-Köpf, the former wife of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and, at the time, Lower Saxony’s migration commissioner.

A single mother from a Turkish immigrant family, Iri appeared to embody a successful in…

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It has become something of a German tradition. Every major international football tournament seems to produce a fresh argument about what Germany’s national team represents.

Ahead of the 2018 World Cup, we had the notorious meeting between two of Germany’s star players, both of whom had Turkish roots, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “To my president, with respect,” midfielder Ilkay Gündogan wrote on a signed Manchester City shirt. Photos of the players smiling alongside Erdoğan were published by the Turkish strongman’s political party ahead of his re-election campaign.

The incident came at a time when Erdoğan was imprisoning critics — including a German journalist — and had recently attempted to prosecute a German comedian who had written an unflattering poem about him. The meeting caused indignation across the political spectrum. The AfD demanded that these “passport Germans” should go and play for Turkey, since that was where their loyalty lay.

The entire build-up to the tourname…

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The most jaw-dropping of all, however, was that students didn’t pay tuition. Instead, they forked over twice-yearly administrative fees that probably cost less than three textbooks at a US university. On top of that came a world of student perks, from low-priced Mensa meals to a heavily subsidised semester ticket for public transport.

So to me, it seemed like a fairly innocuous remark when Research Minister Dorothee Bär of the centre-right CSU recently described German students as “very privileged.” From the perspective of someone raised in a country where higher education often means graduating with five-figure debt, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

Yet Bär’s comments struck a nerve for many Germans…

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When Berlin failed to open its new airport on time, Germans shrugged and said “typisch Berlin”.

The capital has always been treated as Germany’s exception. It is the city of delayed infrastructure projects, overwhelmed bureaucracy and permanently strained finances. If a Berlin infrastructure project opens ten years late and billions over budget, it may be embarrassing, but it is hardly a cause to question the very fundamentals of the German model.

When the same thing happens in Stuttgart, however, it is harder to laugh. Long associated with the Schwabian virtues of thrift, ingenuity and hard work, the state capital of Baden-Württemberg has made a name for itself across the globe for engineering excellence.

Yet this week, the opening of Stuttgart 21 — the city’s long-awaited underground railway station — was pushed back yet again. When cons…

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Marla-Svenja Liebich, a neo-Nazi agitator from eastern Germany, was appearing before a judge after being arrested while on the run from a prison sentence for hate crimes.

Pending the outcome of an appeal, Liebich will be extradited back to Germany, where a place reportedly awaits in the women’s wing of Saxony’s prison system.

But who exactly is Marla-Svenja Liebich?

The answer depends on whom you ask.

Liebich, who spent decades living as Sven Liebich, insists she is a woman. The German state agrees. Shortly after Germany’s Self-Determination Act came into force in 2024, she changed her name from Sven to Marla-Svenja and obtained identity documents listing her sex as female.

The courts and public auth…

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When the Boston Consulting Group released its annual Global Wealth Report last week, it set off a familiar debate in Germany about taxing the rich.

Across the political spectrum, newspapers focused on a single figure: there are now more than 5,000 “super rich” people living in Germany, defined as those with financial assets worth more than $100 million, up from 4,000 a year ago.

The German left seized upon the report as proof of the avarice of the upper classes. For Die Linke, which wants to abolish billionaires, it showed that the wealthy elite are “a danger to democracy”. Left-wing daily taz grumbled that the super rich were “siphoning off wealth from society” and deserved “our deep contempt”.

There may be good reasons for levying a wealth tax. But these displays of resentment and cheap moralising did not provide any.

Curious whether a s…

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Both, aged 9 and 12, are now homeschooled — permitted in Denmark but effectively banned in most cases in Germany.

“In Germany, you’re treated like a potential offender when it comes to homeschooling — someone who needs to be monitored, who needs to be patronised, who doesn’t know any better,” Kalis, who moved three years ago, told us.

“In Denmark, parents — we’ve experienced this firsthand — are seen as co-creators. From local schools we get books, we get websites. They ask: What do you need? How can we support you?”

Her move reflects a small but visible group of German families testing the limits of the country’s compulsory school-attendance system by leaving it. Their reasons vary: childre…

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Europe has grown accustomed to foreign autocrats settling their feuds on its streets.

In 2019, a Russian hitman cycled into Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park and shot a former Chechen rebel in broad daylight. The German government later handed him back to Moscow as part of a deal to free a US journalist whom the Kremlin had taken captive.

Iran has long harassed dissidents across Europe. China operates networks that monitor regime critics abroad. Turkey uses biker gangs to intimidate and assault opponents. Even Vietnam was so unconcerned about the potential diplomatic blowback that it kidnapped an exiled businessman from a Berlin park in 2017 and smuggled him out of the country.

These cases all shared one characteristic: the targets were exiles, dissidents or figures directly tied to conflicts in their countries of origin.

Last week, however…

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Where would you go if there was a war tomorrow and the sirens started to wail?

Does this question sound overly dramatic — hysterical even?

This week, the residents of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, received an air raid alert on their phones instructing them to “Go immediately to a shelter or a safe place, take care of your family members and wait for further instructions.”

This was no test. The alert was sent out after a drone crossing from Belarus into Lithuanian airspace was spotted over the capital. Government ministers took cover in a bunker. Schoolchildren were taken to designated shelters.

This week, an increasingly embattled and paranoid Kremlin also claimed that the Baltic states were cooperating with Ukraine in sending attack drones into Russian territory, warning that NATO membership “won’t protect you from retaliation”.

A Russian attack on Lithuania would, however, trigger a wider European war.

Germany’s intelligence services have repeatedly warned that Russia is …

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