As Scotland debates splitting from the UK, some of its islands are now demanding the right to their own independence vote. Where will it all end? Alex Salmond should always have expected it. Once you stir the nationalist pot, you can never know where it will lead. Residents of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are petitioning the Scottish parliament at Holyrood for the right to hold their own...
Justice ministry's edict that state institutions must use 'gender-neutral' language is forcing the country to confront change Der , die or das ? For centuries, the seemingly arbitrary allocation of masculine, feminine and neutral gender articles in German has driven non-native speakers to despair. "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has," the American writer Mark Twain once complained....
Package sent to the Vatican from a South American country contained 14 condoms filled with €40,000 of liquid cocaine German customs officials have intercepted a package addressed to the Vatican containing 14 condoms filled with cocaine. A government spokesman said a box packed with 340 grammes of the drug, valued at 40,000 euros, was seized in January at the international airport in the eastern city...
The Führer finds himself reborn in the 21st century in a comic novel by Timur Vermes, which has sold 1.4m copies in Germany. Its success suggests Germans now look at their former leader in the same way as the rest of the world does If Hitler were alive today, would he become a standup comic? Incredible though that may sound to anyone who lived through the second world war, that is the scenario sketched...
Brussels drafts tougher sanctions for new battle plan against Moscow should Putin expand territorial claims in Ukraine Europe began to prepare for a possible trade war with Russia over Ukraine on Friday, with the EU executive in Brussels ordered to draft plans for much more substantive sanctions against Moscow if Vladimir Putin presses ahead with Russian territorial expansion. But the bigger EU countries...
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, tells German MPs that members of G7 will take economic sanctions against Russia during the EU summit ...
Life does begin at 40 – but it can get pretty tedious before things start picking up ...
White House calls on Russia to open dialogue with Ukraine on military base standoff and blames Moscow for casualties An EU summit in Brussels on Thursday is likely to extend a blacklist of Russian and Crimean figures subject to travel bans and asset freezes, senior officials and diplomats say, but is unlikely to embark on moves which could spiral into a full-blown trade war between Europe and Russia....
Scholars already knew the German philosopher signed up to the Nazi party. But that doesn't mean nothing can be learned from his thinking The scandal provoked by the publication of Martin Heidegger's notes and reflections between 1931 and 1941, currently underway in Germany, is truly stupefying. The philosopher's "black notebooks" (schwarze hefte) were so-named after the colour of their covers; and...
German discounters are no longer a quirky sideshow in the UK market – they're giving supermarkets a run for their money For years the German discounters Aldi and Lidl were dismissed as a quirky sideshow in the UK's £170bn grocery market, but as legions of middle class families head there for their weekly shop they are giving the big four supermarkets a run for their money. Ronny Gottschlich, Lidl's...
My colleague, the artist Peter Kalkhof, who has died aged 80, lived for more than 50 years in London but his abstract work was firmly rooted in his native Germany. Peter was born in Stassfurt, Saxony-Anhalt, but during his childhood his family were forced to flee westwards to escape the advance of Soviet forces in the second world war. The upheaval and trauma of this period had a profound effect on...
Companies and individuals can now register web addresses ending in .berlin, with other world cities set to follow Berlin has become the world's first city to have its own internet domain name. Companies and individuals in the German capital can now request web addresses ending in .berlin as alternatives to the more traditional options of .com, .org or the German national suffix .de. Addresses will...
93-year-old held on charges of aiding and abetting mass murder of prisoners at Nazi death camp German police have arrested a former Nazi medic who served at the Auschwitz death camp on multiple charges of aiding and abetting murder. The 93-year-old, who was arrested at his home near Neubrandenburg, north of Berlin, underwent a medical checkup before he faced a judge and was then taken into pre-trial...
Leila project, billed as a 'library of things', has proved so popular it has spawned similar initiatives across the country The most popular items in Berlin's first "borrowing shop" are the electric drills. At least one of the local people who have registered with Leila – a little shop on Fehrbelliner Strasse, north-east of the city centre – seems to be continually fixing shelves or hanging pictures....
Marie Jalowicz Simon was one of 1,700 'U-boats', German Jews who survived the war submerged below the surface of daily life. Now she has told all in a book On 22 June 1942, Marie Jalowicz Simon woke to find a Gestapo officer standing by her bedside. "Get dressed. We need to interrogate you." In a moment of inspired improvisation, the 20-year-old Berliner managed to distract first the Nazi official...
• Bayern Munich president to step down at club • Likely to begin his jail term in a week's time • Raphael Honigstein says tricky era awaits Bayern Uli Hoeness has said he will accept his three-and-a-half-year prison term for tax evasion and will step down as president of Bayern Munich and chairman of the business behind it. It means he is likely to begin his sentence in around a week's time. Hoeness,...
Neue Galerie, New York City This exhibition revisits not only Germany's 'Degenerate Art' show that destroyed so many artistic careers, but the Nazi rhetoric that made the exhibition possible Before entering politics Adolf Hitler was a painter. Twice rejected for a place at Vienna's Akademie der bildenden Künste (academy of fine arts), he had strident views on the nature of art and its role in society...
The Bundesliga and European champions made no contingencies to replace their president before his predictable conviction and face a tricky new era without him The game for "Ulrich H" is not quite over. The official court documents and orientation signs for the trial observers in Munich's Justizpalast court house had persisted with the charade of granting anonymity to the accused until the very end....
Ukraine prime minister accuses Russia of carrying out a 'military aggression' as Crimea crisis deepens Ukraine's prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has accused Russia of demonstrating unacceptable "military aggression" which has "no reason and no grounds". Moscow has deployed 10,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, deepening the crisis in Crimea ahead of a last desperate effort by the US secretary...
German chancellor warns Putin that his actions could lead to 'catastrophe' for Ukraine and harm Russia Angela Merkel has warned Moscow it risks "massive" political and economic damage if it refuses to change course on Ukraine, saying western leaders are united in their readiness to impose sanctions on Russia if necessary. The German chancellor, using her strongest language since the start of the crisis...