Germany’s authoritarian turn

Just five years ago, the 70th anniversary of the birth of the post-war German democratic state was accompanied by euphoric celebrations across the country. This week, by contrast, few Germans were in the mood to party. Aside from the Federal …

The key to Germany’s survival

For all the bedlam (that’s das Durcheinander to you), modern Germany isn’t so bad. Bismarck’s Second Reich lasted 47 years and ended in the Great War. The 14-year Weimar Republic was easily dissolved by the Nazis, while the Third Reich …

Will East Germans ever feel at home?

In May 1949, something extraordinary happened: exactly four years after Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, a new Germany was born. A democratic constitution was signed, which turned three of the country’s four occupation zones into the West German state. …

A View of Kant from the East

My wife and I are in Kaliningrad, Russia – in what the Russians call ‘Little Russia’ as opposed to ‘Big Russia’ – where the ‘Kant 300’ conference (commemorating the 300th birthday of this great thinker) has just ended. As philosophers would know, Enlightenment …