Germany’s World Cup dreams ended abruptly, taking @FreddyLA7 along with them. The pseudonymous soccer fan with “the everymensch image” gained a viral following by posting “about the beauty of big-box chain stores and gas stations, projecting an infectious enthusiasm for American mass culture.” (The Boston Globe, 6/26/26; Forbes, 6/30/26; The Atlantic, 7/1/26)
Germany began extending citizenship at birth to an expanded group of immigrants’ children in 2000. Research shows that children born after the cutoff integrated better with their peers, had greater academic success, and committed 70 percent fewer crimes. (The New York Times, 6/2/26)
“Friedrich Merz has achieved something almost mythical in just under a year as a chancellor: he has united the Germans. East and West, North and South, city and countryside – no trace of polarization. Almost everyone agrees on one thing: they don’t like Merz, and that he’s somehow impossible as chancellor.” (The Guardian, 5/6/26; The Economist, 5/6/26; Der Spiegel – The German View, 5/9/26)
“No breakup is easy, but the bitterness and disillusionment over Trump’s disdain for Europe is especially sharp in Germany.” (The Washington Post, 1/26/26; EL PAÍS, 1/30/26)
“In Germany, ‘How are you?’ is anything but simple. . . . Who is fine, really?” (The Guardian, 12/16/25)
“In 1943, two artist friends who fled the Nazis and landed in New York City decided to host a weekly meeting with other refugees.” What became the Oskar Maria Graf Stammtisch lasted for 82 years, disbanding only after the death of 102-year-old Marion House, “the last group member who remembered life under the Third Reich.” (The New York Times, 12/20/25)
“Mainstream German parties refuse to work with the AfD because of its nationalist, anti-immigration agenda”—but its embrace from the Trump administration has been “warm, at times seemingly unconditional.” (The Washington Post, 12/11/25)
Fatma Aydemir explains that, in Germany, her “name provokes assumptions that don’t necessarily play out in my favor. Fatma is not very likely to get a reservation for an outside table at a fancy restaurant. Fatma’s email regarding the apartment rental will not even get an answer if she doesn’t happen to be rich. . . . Fatma’s used couch might look just as awesome and well-kept as Anja’s—but it will probably be worth half the price.” (The Guardian, 1/12/24)
Tens of thousands of protestors and Chancellor Olaf Scholz are sounding an alarm: The far-right AfD is currently polling at 22 percent nationwide, and at more than 30 percent in some eastern states. It “actively courts militants, trades in antisemitic tropes, and toys with the proposition of Germany exiting NATO and the European Union.” (The New York Times, 1/20/24; Foreign Policy, 1/26/24; Bloomberg, 1/27/24)
“At times, as someone of African heritage”—writes Musa Okwonga, who moved to Berlin in 2014—”it is hard to avoid a very specific despair: the knowledge that, as wonderful as life in Europe can be, its joys were not intended for us.” Okwonga detects a frightening increase in racist sentiment over the past several months. (Zeit Online, 10/13/23)
A “steady drumbeat” of canceled cultural events threatens Germany’s “reputation as a haven for free expression and risks isolating international artists whose views on Israel don’t line up with Germany’s unqualified support.” (The New York Review of Books, 10/19/23; The New York Times, 12/7/23)
Berlin’s best indoor swimming pools “are veritable cathedrals of late 19th- and early 20th-century design.” (BBC, 11/17/23)
Bratwurst on the grill, energy in the air: A U.S. sportswriter has an unforgettable experience at a FC Union game at the Stadion an der alten Försterei in Berlin-Köpenick. (The Virginian-Pilot, 11/23/23)
“People are coming because they’re looking for an island of peace.” Berlin’s Israeli-Palestinian restaurant Kanaan reopened its doors six days after the Hamas attacks on Israel. (The Guardian, 11/8/23)
Eight years ago, Ryyan Alshebl “was part of the historic influx of refugees who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by dinghy and trekked the continent on foot . . . Now he is the new mayor of Ostelsheim, a village of 2,700 people and tidily kept streets nestled in the rolling hills near the Black Forest in southwestern Germany.” (The New York Times, 5/28/23)
“On days I don’t spend fretting over the soul of both German and my native tongue,” (Wahlberliner) Alexander Wells writes, “I can find great pleasure in Denglish—in seeing, that is, my own language made camp. . . . It can even be re-enchanting.” (The European Review of Books, 4/19/23)
“For a region of 8 million people that is widely mocked for being boring, Lower Saxony has over the past three decades generated power networks that play a central role in German politics.” (Foreign Policy, 1/29/23)
No longer the “roadblock at the heart of Europe”: After much hand-wringing and delay, Germany has finally agreed to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. (The New Statesman, 1/25/23)