Sonny and Cher are among the best-known duos in pop history. Their 1965 1965 single “I Got You Babe” is a must in any “best of” oldies-but-goodies compilation. On YouTube, the song has been viewed more than 14 million times. After the couple divorced, Cher embarked on a fulminant career...
Since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in August, debates in Germany have flared up whether the country should grant access to more Afghan refugees. In the run-up to the general election in September, German politicians faced a dilemma. How should they address this contentious issue among...
On September 26, German voters will go to the polls to elect a new Bundestag. The election marks the end of the Merkel era. It is supposed to ring in a new beginning, an Aufbruch, as they say in German. What is largely missing, however, is Aufbruchsstimmung — a certain positive mood fueled by...
Angela Merkel has become a symbol of women's success and self-assertion in a political arena still dominated by men, both in Germany and globally. Until a few months ago, the prospect of a female successor seemed very likely. But the initial euphoria, shortly after the Green Party named Annalena...
The frigate Bayernset sail for the Indo-Pacific at the beginning of August, as a German contribution to upholding the "rules-based international order." Germany increasingly views the rules-based international order as under threat, not least through China's vast territorial claims, including...
In the years before the civil war broke out in 2011, Syrian families where women were the main income providers and oversaw family affairs remained the exception. At the time, about 15% of women were in the labor force, a large proportion of them in agriculture. Women occupying jobs in...
In 2015, the European refugee crisis awoke Germans from a long and comforting slumber that Angela Merkel had lulled them into with her political style. The term “asymmetric demobilization” came to be known as a way of describing the German chancellor’s shrewd strategy of sitting on the fence...
There is an unwritten rule in politics: If you are incompetent, at least you should not be corrupt. It seems nobody ever informed the German Christian Democrats that this was the way of things. How else to explain why Christian Democratic MPs thought it was perfectly fine to take advantage of...
If not for the familiar awkwardness of social distancing rules, the scene at the digital party conference of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would have been fit for a daytime game show. With the theme from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” playing in the background and the CDU's...
