Katja Hoyer

The murky history of Germany’s top family businesses

23 April 2022 9:00 am

It was a clear cold morning in January 1936 when Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler arrived at the luxurious Regina Palast Hotel…

Zelensky has snubbed Germany’s President

13 April 2022 9:00 pm

When Volodymyr Zelensky told the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday that he did not want to see him in Kyiv,…

Germany has rejected Merkel's military legacy

28 February 2022 11:30 pm

‘We are witnessing a turning point… the world is not the same anymore,’ said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday in…

Why Germany's decision to cut Russian banks from Swift matters

27 February 2022 8:08 pm

‘The Russian invasion marks a turning point,’ said Olaf Scholz on Saturday as he announced that Germany would break its…

Ukraine is paying the price for the sorry state of Germany's military

25 February 2022 6:37 pm

The Chief of the German Army is angry. Alfons Mais’s words were coloured by evident frustration when he said that…

Cracks are already showing in the EU's Russia response

23 February 2022 8:14 pm

‘The EU is united and acting fast,’ said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, as she condemned…

Is Germany finally standing up to Russia and China?

16 February 2022 9:43 pm

When German chancellor Olaf Scholz met Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday, the visuals said it all. As he had done…

Levelling up: don't copy the Germans

2 February 2022 11:05 pm

‘Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not,’ Boris Johnson claimed back in July last year, when talk…

Germany’s diplomatic game doesn’t make sense

30 January 2022 8:00 pm

Amidst the heavy criticism of Germany’s lack of commitment in the Ukraine crisis, the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock argued…

How can we keep the memory of the Holocaust alive?

27 January 2022 11:18 pm

‘If people like me do not proclaim their experiences for others to hear, then future generations will not learn the…

Germany's naval chief has paid the price for Berlin's pro Russia policy

25 January 2022 9:34 pm

Germany’s navy chief, vice admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, resigned over the weekend. His crime? Saying something out loud that many German politicians intrinsically…

Germany is toothless when it comes to facing down Russia

11 January 2022 11:30 pm

Ukraine’s list of demands towards Germany is straightforward: it wants Berlin to stand up to Russia. With tens of thousands of Russian…

Germany's China-friendly approach is continuing under Olaf Scholz

4 January 2022 8:11 pm

As Angela Merkel prepares to write her autobiography, ‘explaining her key decisions in her own words’, her successor has his…

Father Christmas battles through the Blitz

11 December 2021 9:00 am

When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…

Will Germany's compulsory vaccine plan backfire?

3 December 2021 11:30 pm

Covid was probably the last thing on Angela Merkel’s mind as she listened to the East German pop tunes of…

What explains Germany's vaccine scepticism?

24 November 2021 9:05 am

By the end of winter, Germans will be ‘vaccinated, recovered or dead,’ according to the country’s health minister Jens Spahn.…

Germany's 'day of fate' is a reminder of the country's troubled past

9 November 2021 6:23 pm

The 9 November is often called Germany’s Schicksalstag – Day of Fate. The date punctuates the fabric of the country’s calamitous…

Why did neo-Nazis patrol the German border?

30 October 2021 11:00 am

Just after midnight last Sunday, around 50 vigilantes gathered in east Germany to ‘patrol’ the country’s border with Poland. They…

The horror of tank warfare brought vividly to life

23 October 2021 9:00 am

If Joseph Stalin was right about one thing it was his assertion that ‘the death of one man is a…

German voters set for a tense night

27 September 2021 9:06 am

The German elections have turned out to be an unexpected nail-biter. Since the exit polls were released earlier this evening…

The sad circus of the German election

19 September 2021 5:00 pm

The German election campaign has been entirely lacking in substance. Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz: none seem to grip the public’s attention.…

Could a left-wing coalition end up running Germany?

3 September 2021 2:01 am

A spectre is haunting Germany — the spectre of the left. As Merkel’s Christian Democrats fall further behind in the…

The Prince of Prussia's Nazi problem

30 August 2021 1:47 pm

Perched on a mountain top overlooking the Swabian Alps, Hohenzollern Castle, with its picturesque towers, seems like something out of a…

Hungary, Poland and the EU’s ‘diversity’ problem

2 August 2021 11:59 pm

It is quite something when the self-proclaimed ‘illiberal’ prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, reminds Brussels of its liberal principles.…

How will Merkel cope with retirement?

26 July 2021 4:45 pm

Retirement sounds pretty nice. The ONS says that pensioners spend an average of seven hours and ten minutes a day on…