Katja Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian. Her latest book is Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
Retirement sounds pretty nice. The ONS says that pensioners spend an average of seven hours and ten minutes a day on leisure activities. Over seven hours. That’s a lot of time for nice things. Yet the prospect of retirement can bring a certain dread. According to a YouGov survey, only around half of people about to retire
The gloves are off in Germany’s electoral race. As personal insults are traded and skeletons dragged from their closets, even the German president — a figurehead who normally stays above politics — has urged all parties not to let the campaign descend into ‘mud-slinging’. In a rare political intervention, Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that ‘measure and
War analogies are a cherished football tradition. From chants of ‘Stand up if you won the war’ to the Daily Mirror’s infamous 1996 headline ‘Achtung! Surrender – For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over!’ But the Euro 2020 tournament has been marked by restraint from the British tabloid media. It’s as if someone
Angela Merkel visited the UK yesterday for the last time as German chancellor – the 22nd visit she has paid in her 16 years at the helm of German politics. Such an auspicious occasion however did not stop Boris Johnson from starting their joint press statement with a humorous jibe. A wry smile on his face,
‘Oh please… not the letters I sent to my mum,’ sighed the East German pastor Gernot Friedrich as he randomly pulled pages out of the 3,000-page file. Since January 1992, Germany has attempted a unique experiment in addressing its own past: anyone can request to view their Stasi file. Founded in 1950 as the Socialist
A spectre is haunting Germany — the spectre of the AfD. Having come to prominence on a wave of anti-migrant sentiment, most German commentators believed that the Alternative für Deutschland was now a spent force. The party had been able to attract centre-right voters following the 2015 migrant crisis, many of whom may not have
Cracks are beginning to appear in the shiny veneer of the German Green’s professionalism, a feature that was supposed to mark out the insurgent centrist party and contrast them against the spluttering greyness of the outgoing Merkel regime. If indeed the Greens are to win a quarter of votes in September’s German elections— as their
Everything about the video seemed wrong. ‘It’s likely his nose is broken because the shape of it has changed and there’s a lot of powder on it. All of the left side of his face has powder,’ said the father of Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich. The details of the story are now known: the exiled
On 2 June 2019, a German politician was found lying in a pool of blood outside his home in Hesse. He had been shot in the head at close range with a .38 Rossi revolver. Walter Lübcke, the 65-year-old leader of Kassel city council, who had been a vocal supporter of Germany’s immigration policy, had
‘The world’s changed quite a bit,’ was Domic Raab’s fitting, if somewhat understated, opening remark at the G7 meeting of foreign secretaries this week. The first in-person meeting of the alliance in two years saw masked dignitaries, elbow bumps and distanced discussions behind plexiglass screens. But two members of the Indian delegation still ended up
‘One’s enemies one can count on — but one’s friends!’ Otto von Bismarck quotes have mostly gone out of fashion since the middle of the last century. But perhaps not as far as Dominic Cummings is concerned. Cummings describes Germany’s first chancellor — and the man responsible for the country’s unification in 1871 — as
17 min listen
On this week’s episode, broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby reads his diary (00:55), journalist Katja Hoyer reports on the German Greens and their poll surge (06:25) and Melissa Kite on why she’s perfectly happy to stay in the country this summer (12:05).
Angela Merkel never quite managed to appoint a successor. Her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s largest democracy has seen every potential challenger either annihilated or neutered. For all her motherly charms, Mutti Merkel is a merciless political operator. The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union, seem to have
‘The die is cast,’ said Markus Söder in a press conference yesterday as he stepped back to allow his rival Armin Laschet to run as the chancellor candidate for the conservatives in Germany’s upcoming election. This ominous phrase was carefully chosen by a man who thought a disastrously wrong decision had been made by the
The run-up to the German federal elections in September was supposed to be dull and predictable. Merkel would name a successor and the German public would grudgingly vote for the chosen one as there was nowhere else to go. If this predictable drudge meant disaffecting voters further and losing another couple of percentage points here
Munich has had enough of the vaccine chaos in Berlin and Brussels. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Bavaria’s minister president Markus Söder stated that he would sign a preliminary purchase agreement for the Russian Sputnik vaccine. The leader of the Bavarian Free State explained that he would pre-order two and a half million doses
18 min listen
On this episode, Katja Hoyer looks at Ursula von der Leyen past mistakes. (00:45) Then, Fraser Nelson says the Defence Review could be a sign that Britain is learning from its foreign policy failings. (04:10) Finally, Toby Young explains the downsides to owning a small dog. (13:05)
Ursula von der Leyen looks every inch the modern European stateswoman. Her tailored trouser suits, no-fuss hair and assured speeches: what’s not to like? When she was put forward by the European Council for President of the European Commission, her fellow Germans knew precisely what to expect. A poll found that only a third said
On Sunday, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) suffered a historic election defeat in their former heartlands of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. ‘The state elections struck deep at the heart of the union of the CDU and CSU,’ said Markus Söder, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. To an
Young, polished and confident, Germany’s health minister became the country’s most popular politician in 2020. A darling of the conservative right, Jens Spahn, was even tipped as a candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. At the peak of his popularity last November, surveys indicated approval from nearly two-thirds of all Germans. He seemed to
