Germany

Angela Merkel will survive – but will the soul of post-war Germany?

29 October 2015 9:00 am

The migrant crisis is testing the country’s post-war idea of itself

From top left: Lucian Freud, Rudolf Bing, Stefan Zweig, Walter Gropius, Rudolf Laban, Max Born, Kurt Schwitters, Friedrich Hayek, Fritz Busch, Frank Auerbach, Emeric Pressburger, Oskar Kokoschka

German refugees transformed British cultural life - but at a price

3 October 2015 9:00 am

German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook

Margit Carstensen as Petra, downing gin and grovelling on her deep-pile carpet, in ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films verge on the incomprehensible — but that doesn’t stop him being a genius

3 October 2015 8:00 am

London’s Goethe-Institut has a two-month season of films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (whose 70th anniversary it’s celebrating), but only five…

The house that Alfred built

19 September 2015 9:00 am

This is a book about boundaries — and relationships. At its heart is the eponymous house by the lake, which…

Merkel’s grandstanding on Syrian refugees will lead to many more deaths at sea

12 September 2015 9:00 am

By making them more likely to attempt the perilous journey to Europe, the German chancellor is luring would-be migrants to their deaths

As with so many Strauss operas, Daphne's one redeeming feature is its end

29 August 2015 9:00 am

Richard Strauss’s Daphne is one of the operas he wrote during the excruciatingly long Indian summer of his composing life,…

The triumph of nuclear weapons – and the defeat of nuclear power

15 August 2015 9:00 am

‘I visited the black marble obelisk which marks the epicentre of the explosion, and I saw the plain domestic wall-clock…

The Alster: Hamburg’s centrepiece

Wealthy, cosmopolitan – and sometimes rough: the secrets of Hamburg (and my grandmother)

15 August 2015 9:00 am

‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he…

Some good came out of the negotiating chamber this week, but it concerned Iran rather than Greece

18 July 2015 9:00 am

As an occasional lecturer on the abstruse topic of the efficacy of sanctions in conflict resolution, I find myself much…

Greece’s secret weapon: Grexit would hurt Merkel most

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Grexit would be worse for Germany than for Greece

How very English: picnics at Glyndebourne

Country house picnics (with some ace opera attached)

20 June 2015 9:00 am

I stole a blanket last night. Rather a nice one, in fact. I feel bad about it, of course, but…

Why Viktor Orban could be David Cameron’s new best friend

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Hungary’s Viktor Orban could be the PM’s most influential ally in EU renegotiations. So what does he want – and what can he get?

What really happened in the Berlin Philharmonic election

23 May 2015 9:00 am

The morning after the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra failed to elect a music director, I took a call from Bild-Zeitung, Berlin’s…

The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good

9 May 2015 9:00 am

The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good

Hitler with the Goebbels family in the late 1930s

Joseph Goebbels: Hitler’s ‘little doctor’ was devoted unto death

9 May 2015 9:00 am

It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…

Spectator letters: England’s defining myth, and another forgotten genocide

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…

Detail from the great and strange Altar of the Holy Blood by Tilman Riemenschneider at the Jakobskirche, Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Is this the greatest sculpted version of the Easter story? It's certainly the strangest

4 April 2015 9:00 am

In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve…

Here’s what a real reform of business rates would look like

21 March 2015 9:00 am

Of all the measures talked up ahead of the Budget, the reannouncement of a ‘radical’ review of the business rates…

Miriam Gross’s diary: Why use Freud and Kurt Weill to promote Wagner?

7 March 2015 9:00 am

Last week I went to the exhilarating English National Opera production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers — five hours of wonderful…

Paul Mason’s diary: My Greek TV drama

28 February 2015 9:00 am

It’ll be a Skype interview, says the producer from Greek television, and not live. In TV-speak that usually means not…

Taki’s recipe for the survival of the Greek nation

7 February 2015 9:00 am

The good news is that a Greek suppository is about to relieve the EU’s economic constipation. The bad is that…

Europe’s crisis is Cameron’s opportunity

31 January 2015 9:00 am

For Angela Merkel, it’s a crisis. For David Cameron, it’s an opportunity

Confusion, snobbery and Pegida – a letter from Dresden

31 January 2015 9:00 am

Sachsenschweine — Saxon pigs — said the graffiti as my train moved out of Berlin on its way to Dresden.…

You realise how little you know of anybody when they die

31 January 2015 9:00 am

Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…

The eurozone is strong enough to kick out Greece if Syriza wins

10 January 2015 9:00 am

Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to…