Society

At the end of the Year of Germany in the USA, the Goethe-Instituts in the United States have strengthened their network with three completely updated institutes in Boston, Washington and Los Angeles. This is a signal of how important it is to continue the cultural and civil society dialogue between North America and Germany.

Coffee houses – you think of Vienna, of hours buried in thought in the midst of great minds. But in Greece, the coffee house, there called “kafenio”, was a place for not only intellectual encounters but also a hairdressing salon, post office and greengrocer.

In all German cities, it takes money to live anywhere close to downtown, quite a lot of money in fact. Those who cannot afford the rising rents in cities are pushed out to the periphery. We asked an expert how urban planning could address this widening gap between rich and poor.

The border that once divided the two Germanys - the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic – has been transformed into the German Green Belt. The biotope provides a new home for flora and fauna while testifying to its conflict-laden history.

Every year thousands of people drown in a bid to find the freedom they hope for in Europe. Time and again, those who argue in favour of recusing those in distress at sea are criticised.  From a legal standpoint though, what are our responsibilities towards those in trouble at sea? 

The crypto currency Bitcoin turned many into millionaires overnight and was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, especially once it reached an all-time high in 2017.  Public interest in Bitcoin and the technology behind it, the blockchain, dropped in keeping with currency’s abrupt fall. So what is going on with the technology today?

James Bond’s champagne brand bears the name of a German: when Jacob Bollinger settled down in Champagne, he could not suspect that his wine would one day be imbibed by the Queen and her secret agent. A Franco-British-German cooperation of a very special kind. 

What does being a man mean these days? We have asked a few people in Germany what masculinity means to them.

Plastic bans, disposable dinnerware made of bioplastics, and streets made of plastic waste: countries, companies and private citizens are all pursuing initiatives that show what the world would be like without plastic.

Algorithms that reward or penalise the citizens of a country on the basis of collated data – in places like China and India, “algorithmic governance” has long been a reality. But even in Germany, computer software already takes decisions that have consequences for many people’s lives.

Contracts, love letters, school essays – ink blots have ruined many a written document over the years. Happily though, in Europe the simple quill pen developed into a sophisticated writing instrument: the fountain pen.

Scheduled to open in 2019, the Humboldt Forum with its collection of objects of non-European origin was conceived as a space of cultural encounter and understanding. But serious questions have arisen about how German and European cultural institutions are responding to critical questions about the restitution of artefacts brought in by colonialism.

University teaching has become increasingly specialised over the centuries. But the topics addressed in research today increasingly require an interdisciplinary approach.  Leibniz Association president Matthias Kleiner sees a renaissance of universal research. 

We explain the most important terms used in the creative industry, including defining a start-up, what innovation means, and how an incubator differs from an accelerator. 

In September 2019, the German research vessel Polarstern will depart for the Arctic to drift with the sea ice for a year. 600 scientists from 17 nations on board will study the dwindling, not-so-permanent ice pack.

Sustainability and climate protection start in daily life, and they are something children can learn. Educational establishments all over Germany are involved in UNESCO’s Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development – and schools are foremost among them.

Carbon offset schemes promise to compensate for the emissions caused by private individuals – as air travellers, for instance – with donations to climate projects. But are they not just a way of salving guilty consciences?  

Unfamiliar views of the land of opportunity: “Typical America” is far from the coastal cities. Detroit even has a special connection to Berlin. The Year of Germany in the USA presents the longstanding friendship from forgotten perspectives.

If you’ve ever wondered who coined famous phrases like “my belly belongs to me” or founded the first feminist newspapers, you now have the answers at your fingertips. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the history of the German women’s movement is available online for the first time in the Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv (Digital German Women’s Archive). 

At the beginning of 2019, population registers in Germany were amended to include a third gender category. The option box is headed ‘divers’, which translates as ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘other’, and it was introduced for a dual purpose: to remove the burden from parents faced with deciding an intersex child’s future and to show that being different can also be normal.

Artificial intelligence is now an integral part of our everyday lives. It makes our smartphones smarter and can diagnose disease and write screenplays. Are there any limits, and might it soon surpass us in creativity and empathy – and perhaps even help us achieve immortality one day?

The “Deutschland spricht” (Germany Talks) project brings people with opposing political convictions to the table. Can discussion unite a society? For Zeit Online editor-in-chief and project co-initiator Jochen Wegner, the campaign was an experiment that garnered a great response.

How can and should reality be defined in these days of virtual and alternative realities, of VR goggles and fake news?

Politics has always played out on stages: from the popular assemblies of antiquity and to the live-feed public parliamentary debates of today, politicians have performed for their voters. Social media have both expanded and fundamentally changed this political stage.

German cities are full of memorial sites. However, memorial culture has undergone fundamental changes in western Germany since the Second World War, and even more since the reunification.

Many Syrian refugees are trying to find a new home in Berlin. Meanwhile, they are discovering places that remind them of their city, and allow them to map Berlin in a new way.

80 years on, Germany is looking back at 1938, a year marked by National Socialist persecution and violence against the Jews and the failed Evian Conference on refugees. Historian Stefanie Schüler-Springorum explains the current significance of these events.

Futuristic worlds are often shaped by Western visions of humankind’s destiny. Afrofuturism offers an alternative that emphasizes how entrenched mainstream science fiction genre has become. This African-inspired vision is gathering ground in film, literature and music, and is about so much more than just launching Black protagonists into space.

While many European countries struggle with high youth unemployment, Germany is experiencing lower rates than seldom before. There is more to these promising figures than just the country’s strong economy.

Germany is celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage, but political power is still unevenly distributed. In terms of numbers, women have never been equally represented in any German Bundestag. Initiatives like the Helene Weber Kolleg are pushing for change. 

More and more people are choosing sustainable options when they travel. Germany is ideal for the environmentally conscious holiday.

To present themselves as an attractive place to live, Germany’s urban centres are embracing innovative concepts for tomorrow's world of work.

Is the online Airbnb flat sharing platform making Berlin’s housing shortage worse? Three students analysed the data to help answer this question. And reached some surprising conclusions.

More and more start-up founders are creating companies that combine earning money with working towards social and ecological goals. Social start-ups are also gaining ground in Germany.

Multilingual skills provide pervasive opportunities, particularly as successful careers require international communication, which is essential for our children to compete in the workplace.

For minorities, multilingualism and a multicultural identity can provide a wealth of resources and point the way forward. Videos from the Schaufenster Enkelgeneration project highlight the benefits that young adults in Germany’s ethnic minorities believe that their multilingualism gives them.
 

The German rent control law known as the “Mietpreisbremse” or literally the “rent brake” was designed to slow rising housing costs, but has not really solved the problem. In an interview, economic researcher Claus Michelsen talks about some other approaches that might rein in soaring rents.