Germans say that they are ready to receive Russian's Sputnik V as the European Union is facing falt for slow inoculation. The Berlin residents have said that they will take the Russian jab as they have to accept whatever has been offered. Russian Scientists have given Sputnik V the green light saying that it's 92% effective.

Germans demand Russian vaccine amid slow rollout

Their emotions alternating between burn-out and pride, nursing staff at Berlin's Havelhoehe hospital are buckling down for another shift as, almost a year after COVID-19 first struck, the second wave of Germany's epidemic rages on. German hospitals association DKG said on Tuesday (January 26) that about 4,600 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care, down from a peak of 5,781 on Jan 4.

Between burn-out and pride: Berlin hospital staff share COVID-19 experiences

Russian police detained people and used force to break up a rally in St Petersburg on Sunday (January 23) as protesters demanded the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, whose wife was among those detained.

Russia: Police detains over 200 protesters at pro-Navalny rally in St Petersburg

The United States has strongly condemned Russia's use of 'harsh tactics' against protesters and journalists demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

US, EU condemns Russia's crackdown on protesters & journalists

Belgian rising design star Tom Van Der Borght opened the Berlin Fashion Week on Sunday (January 18) with 18 flamboyant looks showing futuristic and very colourful designs.

Belgian rising design star opens Berlin Fashion Week amid strict restrictions

A Russian court has ordered opposition leader Alexey Navalny to be kept in custody until February 15. Meanwhile, after the court's orders, Navalny put out a video message and urged his supporters to hit the streets and not remain silent.

Opposition leader Navalny urges his supporters to hit the streets

Russia's poisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been detained for 30 days after his arrival from Berlin. WION's Palki Sharma tells you why Russian President Vladimir Putin feels so threatened by Navalny.

Gravitas: Russia detains Opposition leader Alexey Navalny

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been detained after landing in Moscow. The hearing to extend his detention was held at a Police station instead of a court. He has been denied access to legal representation.

WION Dispatch: Alexei Navalny has been denied access to legal representation

Russian Police detained prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on arrival in Moscow after he flew from Berlin, Germany for the first time since he was poisoned last summer.

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny detained on arrival from Berlin

Searching something on the internet is a daily occurrence for most people, most of them turn to Google for search results but one Berlin-based search engine company is planting trees.

Berlin-based search engine uses the money made to plant trees

Animals at Berlin Zoo enjoyed a belated Christmas feast on Thursday (7 JANUARY 2021). Elephants and bison at the German capital's famous zoo chomped down on discarded Christmas trees, donated from tree suppliers.

Animals at Berlin Zoo enjoy Christmas leftovers

Germany will be examining its security for its parliament as per the speaker of the house said Thursday. This move comes after angry protestors stormed into US Capitol on Wednesday.

ALSO READ:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/video-of-indian-flag-spotted-in-pro-trump-rally-at-us-capitol-goes-viral-355146" hreflang="en">Video of Indian flag spotted in pro-Trump rally at US Capitol goes viral</a>

During the summers last year, Germany witnessed similar sorts of the situation as the demonstrators, protesting against Merkel administration's restrictions due to COVID-19, tried to enter the Reichstag parliament building. However, they were repelled by police forces.

Following chaotic scenes overnight in the Capitol, German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble said he would examine "what conclusions should be drawn from this for the protection of the Bundestag", his office said in a statement.

ALSO SEE:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-tear-gas-explosives-and-gunfire-trump-supporters-storm-capitol-clash-with-police-354961" hreflang="en">In pics-Tear gas, explosives and gunfire: Trump supporters storm Capitol, clash with police</a>

The Bundestag is the lower house in Germany with lawmaker strength of 709, whereas, Reichstag is the building where the work is carried out.&nbsp;

The German embassy in the United States requested to provide a report on how the "violent excesses could have happened in the Capitol".

The federal interior ministry, security forces of the parliamentary groups, and the state of Berlin have been given the task to examine Bundestag's protection and whether it needs to be beefed up.&nbsp;

Many lawmakers of far-right AfD party were involved in the anti-virus restrictions march. They have also been accused of inviting into the parliament building protesters who went on to harass other MPs. However, leaders of the AfD released a statement Thursday denying any links to heated virus-sceptic protests in front of the Reichstag building last year.

"Anyone who equates the unrest in Washington with the demonstrations that took place before the Reichstag building in Berlin, and who points to our party's sympathy for these events, is abusing the anarchist events for political purposes in Germany," they said in a statement.

Germany will be examining its security for its parliament as per the speaker of the house said Thursday. This move comes after angry protestors stormed into US Capitol on Wednesday.

Germany will be examining its security for its parliament as per the speaker of the house said Thursday. This move comes after angry protestors stormed into US Capitol on Wednesday. ALSO READ: Video of Indian flag spotted in pro-Trump rally at US Capitol goes viral During the summers last year, Germany witnessed similar sorts of the situation as the demonstrators, protesting against Merkel administration's restrictions due to COVID-19, tried to enter the Reichstag parliament building. However, they were repelled by police forces. Following chaotic scenes overnight in the Capitol, German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble said he would examine "what conclusions should be drawn from this for the protection of the Bundestag", his office said in a statement. ALSO SEE: In pics-Tear gas, explosives and gunfire: Trump supporters storm Capitol, clash with police The Bundestag is the lower house in Germany with lawmaker strength of 709, whereas, Reichstag is the building where the work is carried out. The German embassy in the United States requested to provide a report on how the "violent excesses could have happened in the Capitol". The federal interior ministry, security forces of the parliamentary groups, and the state of Berlin have been given the task to examine Bundestag's protection and whether it needs to be beefed up. Many lawmakers of far-right AfD party were involved in the anti-virus restrictions march. They have also been accused of inviting into the parliament building protesters who went on to harass other MPs. However, leaders of the AfD released a statement Thursday denying any links to heated virus-sceptic protests in front of the Reichstag building last year. "Anyone who equates the unrest in Washington with the demonstrations that took place before the Reichstag building in Berlin, and who points to our party's sympathy for these events, is abusing the anarchist events for political purposes in Germany," they said in a statement.

Berlin to examine parliament security after US Capitol violence

&nbsp;Berlin became the first of next year`s big European film festivals to bow to the coronavirus pandemic, announcing it would hold a reduced, online-only programme in March, a month later than usual, with an audience event in June. 
 
The festival, now in its 71st year, occupies a distinct position in the cinema calendar, with its trade component, the European Film Market (EMF), shaping how films and series are sold around the world and launching that year`s co-production as studio executives meet filmmakers. 
 
The organisers said on Friday that the film trading event would be held online, depriving Berlin of the traditional show of studio top brass snaking in limos between city centre hotels. The main film prizes would also be awarded at this time. 
 
Asked if the film market could hold its own in an era where giant streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple had the biggest commissioning budgets, artistic director Carlo Chatrian said the EMF still had a distinct European role. 
 
"Europe should go with its own system, which is different in the sense that it works more as a cooperation," he said. "We hope the EMF will really help that." 
 
An audience-focused film screening event will be held in the summer, targeting not pros and the press, but the general public. Alone among the major festivals, Berlin admits the public to its screenings. 
 
"We expect to invite the filmmakers and we`ll have one or two stars, but it will be an event for the public and not for the international professional visitors, or for the international press. So it will have a different character," said festival chief executive Mariette Wissenbeek. 
 
"What we need and what the festival can provide is a gathering moment," Chatrian added. "And of course, when the gathering is not possible, the festival has to find a different way to exist."

Berlin became the first of next year`s big European film festivals to bow to the coronavirus pandemic, announcing it would hold a reduced, online-only programme in March, a month later than usual, with an audience event in June.

Berlin became the first of next year`s big European film festivals to bow to the coronavirus pandemic, announcing it would hold a reduced, online-only programme in March, a month later than usual, with an audience event in June. The festival, now in its 71st year, occupies a distinct position in the cinema calendar, with its trade component, the European Film Market (EMF), shaping how films and series are sold around the world and launching that year`s co-production as studio executives meet filmmakers. The organisers said on Friday that the film trading event would be held online, depriving Berlin of the traditional show of studio top brass snaking in limos between city centre hotels. The main film prizes would also be awarded at this time. Asked if the film market could hold its own in an era where giant streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple had the biggest commissioning budgets, artistic director Carlo Chatrian said the EMF still had a distinct European role. "Europe should go with its own system, which is different in the sense that it works more as a cooperation," he said. "We hope the EMF will really help that." An audience-focused film screening event will be held in the summer, targeting not pros and the press, but the general public. Alone among the major festivals, Berlin admits the public to its screenings. "We expect to invite the filmmakers and we`ll have one or two stars, but it will be an event for the public and not for the international professional visitors, or for the international press. So it will have a different character," said festival chief executive Mariette Wissenbeek. "What we need and what the festival can provide is a gathering moment," Chatrian added. "And of course, when the gathering is not possible, the festival has to find a different way to exist."

Berlin rejigs film festival for pandemic times

Germany has announced strict lockdown over Christmas starting from Wednesday. The announcement made people to rush to finish their Christmas shopping in Berlin.

Germany announces strict lockdown over Christmas starting from Wednesday

Empty chairs and empty tables is a sorry sight in usually thriving downtown Schoeneberg district. But one Berlin shut down by a coronavirus lockdown since November has transformed itself into an atelier for painters who can be seen putting colour on canvas by curious pedestrians or art lovers via an online livestream.

Show me the painting: Berlin cafe opens doors to artists

Berlin aims to open six centres with the capacity to vaccinate up to 4,000 people per day with an approved COVID-19 vaccine by mid-December.

Berlin aims to open six vast COVID-19 vaccination centres

Berlin aims to open six centers with the capacity to vaccinate up to 4,000 people per day with an approved COVID-19 vaccine by mid-December

Germany: Berlin plans mega vaccination drive

A car crashed into the gate of the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Wednesday. Berlin Police has arrested a man who drove his car into the gates German chancellery.

Car crashes into gates of German chancellery, driver taken into custody

Germany's police dispersed people protesting against Coronavirus restrictions in Berlin's government district, after they ignored to wear masks and keep distance from each other on Wednesday.

Thousands protest in Berlin against Lockdown, anti-covid measures | DW-WION Partnership

Police have raided apartments across Berlin and detained three people on Tuesday suspected of involvement in a jewel heist at a museum housing one of Europe’s greatest collections of treasures, officers said.

Your Story: Three arrested over spectacular Dresden museum jewellery heist

A tongue-in-cheek video clip that urges young Germans to do their patriotic duty in the war against coronavirus by just staying at home and being couch potatoes has become an internet sensation, garnering more than one million clicks by Monday (November 16).

'Be lazy, save lives,' young Germans urged in comic COVID video

In his second leg of the three-nation European tour in Germany, India's foreign secretary Harsh Shringla met with top German Diplomats and interacted with think tanks. During his meetings, the foreign secretary highlighted the common interest New Delhi shares with Europe and Germany to combat terror and extremism and welcomed Berlin's strategy on Indo-Pacific.&nbsp;

During his meetings with German interlocutors in Berlin, Foreign Secretary told that India is "stunned by the recent terror attacks in France" and these are threats to "our common democratic values and freedom of expression". He said, that the terror attacks in France "vindicate our long term assertion that terror knows no boundaries."

France has seen a number of terror attacks in form of Knife attacks in the country after a teacher in the country had shown caricature of Prophet Muhammad. Last week, a terror attack in Nice, killed 3 people.&nbsp;

We should learn to call "a spade a spade" on terror front, India's FS told his German interlocutors pointing out to Pakistan that how some "countries" who are the fountainhead of terror are "claiming to be victims of terror to gain international sympathy.”

He called upon "like-minded countries" to work together and "there can be no justification for terror under any circumstances".

New Delhi also welcomed Germany’s foreign policy turn towards the Indo-Pacific. The German government earlier this year announced its Indo Pacific strategy, a move that shows greater interest in the concept that Beijing views suspicious.

FS highlighted how "India" is an important factor in the region and how it is "the most reliable partner to implement our shared vision for the region." On a broader point of discussion China's debt-trap diplomacy, need to diversify supply chains were other points of discussion.&nbsp;

In his last leg of the visit, FS will be in London and will meet permanent undersecretary of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Sir Philip Barton.

In his second leg of the three-nation European tour in Germany, India's foreign secretary Harsh Shringla met with top German Diplomats and interacted with think tanks.

In his second leg of the three-nation European tour in Germany, India's foreign secretary Harsh Shringla met with top German Diplomats and interacted with think tanks. During his meetings, the foreign secretary highlighted the common interest New Delhi shares with Europe and Germany to combat terror and extremism and welcomed Berlin's strategy on Indo-Pacific. During his meetings with German interlocutors in Berlin, Foreign Secretary told that India is "stunned by the recent terror attacks in France" and these are threats to "our common democratic values and freedom of expression". He said, that the terror attacks in France "vindicate our long term assertion that terror knows no boundaries." France has seen a number of terror attacks in form of Knife attacks in the country after a teacher in the country had shown caricature of Prophet Muhammad. Last week, a terror attack in Nice, killed 3 people. We should learn to call "a spade a spade" on terror front, India's FS told his German interlocutors pointing out to Pakistan that how some "countries" who are the fountainhead of terror are "claiming to be victims of terror to gain international sympathy.” He called upon "like-minded countries" to work together and "there can be no justification for terror under any circumstances". New Delhi also welcomed Germany’s foreign policy turn towards the Indo-Pacific. The German government earlier this year announced its Indo Pacific strategy, a move that shows greater interest in the concept that Beijing views suspicious. FS highlighted how "India" is an important factor in the region and how it is "the most reliable partner to implement our shared vision for the region." On a broader point of discussion China's debt-trap diplomacy, need to diversify supply chains were other points of discussion. In his last leg of the visit, FS will be in London and will meet permanent undersecretary of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Sir Philip Barton.

In Berlin, Foreign Secretary highlights common fight against terror, joint strategy on Indo-pacific

Berlin's Madame Tussauds museum removes waxwork of US current President Donald Trump & places it in a garbage container.

Berlin's Madame Tussauds removes waxwork of Donald Trump before US election

BERLIN — They called him the “Führer of Berlin.”

Ingo Hasselbach had been a clandestine neo-Nazi in communist East Berlin, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought him out of the shadows. He connected with western extremists in the unified city, organized far-right workshops, fought street battles with leftists and celebrated Hitler’s birthday. He dreamed of a far-right party in the parliament of a reunified Germany.

Today, the far-right party Alternative for Germany, known by its German initials AfD, is the main opposition in parliament. Its leaders march side by side with far-right extremists in street protests. And its power base is the former communist East.

“Reunification was a huge boost for the far right,” said Hasselbach, who left the neo-Nazi scene years ago and now helps others to do the same. “The neo-Nazis were the first ones to be reunified. We laid the foundation for a party like the AfD. There are things we used to say that have become mainstream today.”

As it marks the 30th anniversary of reunification on Saturday, Germany can rightly celebrate being an economic powerhouse and thriving liberal democracy. But reunification has another, rarely mentioned legacy — of unifying, empowering and bringing into the open a far-right movement that has evolved into a disruptive political force and a terrorist threat, not least inside key state institutions like the military and police.

“Today’s far-right extremism in Germany cannot be understood without reunification,” said Matthias Quent, a far-right extremism expert and director of an institute that studies democracy and civil society in the eastern state of Thuringia. “It liberated the neo-Nazis in the East from their underground existence, and it gave the far-right in the West access to a pool of new recruits and whole swathes of territory in which to move without too much oversight.”

For years, German officials trusted that a far-right party could never again be elected into parliament and dismissed the idea of far-right terrorist networks. But some now worry that the far-right structures established in the years after reunification laid the groundwork for a resurgence that has burst into view over the past 15 months.

Far-right terrorists killed a regional politician on his front porch near the central city of Kassel, attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle and shot dead nine people of immigrant descent in the western city of Hanau.

This summer the government took the drastic step of disbanding an entire military company in the special forces after explosives, a machine gun and SS paraphernalia were found on the property of a sergeant major in the eastern state of Saxony. A disproportionate number — about half — of those suspected of far-right extremism inside that unit, the KSK, were from the former East, its commander said.

Nationalism and xenophobia are more ingrained in the former East, where the murderous history of World War II was never confronted as deeply on a societal level as it was in the former West. The AfD’s vote share is twice as high in the eastern states, where the number of far-right hate crimes is higher than in western ones.

Officially, there were no Nazis in old East Germany. The regime defined itself in the tradition of communists who had resisted fascism, giving rise to a state doctrine of remembrance that effectively exculpated it from wartime atrocities. Far-right mobs who beat up foreign workers from fellow socialist states like Cuba or Angola were classified as “rowdies” led astray by western propaganda.

But a potent neo-Nazi movement was growing underground. In 1987, Bernd Wagner, a young police officer in East Berlin, estimated that there were 15,000 “homegrown” violent neo-Nazis, of whom 1,000 were repeat offenders. His report was swiftly locked away.

Two years later, as tens of thousands took to the streets in anti-communist protests that eventually brought down the regime, the pro-democracy activists were not the only marchers.

“The skinheads were marching, too,” Wagner recalled.

The battle cry of those anti-communist protests — “We are the people” — later became the battle cry for the far right at anti-Muslim Pegida marches during the 2015 refugee crisis, far-right riots in Chemnitz in 2018, and again at the current protests against coronavirus protocols.

Before reunification, the far-right scene in West Germany was small and aging, but now western neo-Nazis flocked east to offer “reconstruction aid” and unexpectedly found a refuge. Behind the wall, the East had been frozen in time, a largely homogeneous white country where nationalism was allowed to live on.

“The leaders of the western scene thought they were in paradise,” Hasselbach recalled.

Since then the East has become the home of choice for several prominent western extremists. Götz Kubitschek, a leading far-right intellectual from Swabia who wants to preserve the “ethno-cultural identity” of Germany, bought a rural manor house in the East, which serves as the headquarters for his far-right publishing house and research institute.

So did Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz, two westerners who became leaders of the most radical factions of the AfD in the former East.

“The East has become a sort of retreat for the far right,” Quent said, “a place where Germany is still Germany and where men are still men.”

But the infatuation with the East is also strategic, he said. “There is a sense among far-right extremists: ‘We can’t win in the West, but we can win in the East and then, from a position of strength, we will take on the West.’”

Reunification also provided a physical space in which far-right members could move and train. Secret neo-Nazi training camps were held at abandoned Soviet military bases. At one of them, on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, Hasselbach took part in workshops on forging identity papers, bomb making, guerrilla warfare and “silent killing.”

The initial years after reunification were so tumultuous that security services were incapable of controlling this coalescing extremist movement.

“In the eastern states there was no mature structure for a domestic intelligence service,” Thomas Haldenwang, president of the domestic intelligence office, said in an interview. “The agencies in the new states had to be built from nothing.”

During the early 1990s, a wave of racist violence swept through Germany, much of it in the East. Foreigners were chased, beaten up and sometimes killed. Asylum homes were firebombed. Buses of immigrants were attacked. Sometimes eastern onlookers would watch, clap or join in.

“You could see that something was shifting and not just on the fringes,” said Volkhard Knigge, a historian. “Otherwise the AfD would not be so strong today.”

In the early 1990s, Knigge moved east to run the memorial at the former concentration camp in Buchenwald. He was startled by the abundance of Nazi memorabilia like Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for sale at flea markets and by the mob of angry young neo-Nazis who would gather on the historic theater square, shouting xenophobic slogans.

“We thought democracy had won,” Knigge said. “The West thought this was the end of history. But for nationalists, this was a revision of history.”

Reunification brought two strains of nationalism together, said Anetta Kahane, a Jewish anti-racism activist — western-style nationalist conservatism and a more radical eastern social-revolutionary variety. On their own, neither had been powerful enough to stir a political movement.

“It was the marriage of the two that made the AfD possible,” said Kahane, who runs the Amadeu-Antonio Foundation, named after a Black Angolan who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by neo-Nazis less than two months after reunification.

For most Germans, the new century was defined by progress. Chancellor Angela Merkel, an easterner, has personified western liberal values. When the country was host to the soccer World Cup in 2006, a confidently multicultural Germany was on display, in what many at the time called “a summer fairy tale.”

“I wanted to believe that that’s who we are as a country — and I did believe it,” said Tanjev Schultz, an author and journalism professor. “But it wasn’t true.”

That summer, the National Socialist Underground, a far-right terrorist group that had come out of the extremist networks formed in East Germany, was engaged in an immigrant killing spree that police would not discover until 2011.

From 2000 to 2007, the group killed nine immigrants and a police officer, even as paid informers of the intelligence agency helped hide its leaders and build up its network.

Hasselbach said he was not surprised to see the recent revelations of far-right infiltration of security services. When he was still a neo-Nazi, he said, friendly police officers would warn them before raids or hand them files of leftist enemies.

It was the deadly violence in the early 1990s that made Hasselbach leave the neo-Nazi scene in 1992. An arson attack on the home of a Turkish family killed two girls and their grandmother. He spent years underground to escape threats from his former far-right compatriots. Then, with Wagner, the former eastern police officer, he co-founded Exit Germany, an organization that helps extremists leave their networks.

The fortunes of the AfD have ebbed and flowed in recent years. Polls show voter support has dipped to around 10% during the pandemic. But the fringes are radicalizing, intelligence officers say.

It worries Hasselbach and Wagner.

“The readiness to commit violence today is greater than it’s ever been,” Hasselbach said.

“Westerners have no feel for how fragile things are,” Wagner said. “The elites don’t see the post-democratic decline. Easterners have seen a system collapse before.”

BERLIN — They called him the “Führer of Berlin.” Ingo Hasselbach had been a clandestine neo-Nazi in communist East Berlin, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought him out of the shadows.

BERLIN — They called him the “Führer of Berlin.” Ingo Hasselbach had been a clandestine neo-Nazi in communist East Berlin, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought him out of the shadows. He connected with western extremists in the unified city, organized far-right workshops, fought street battles with leftists and celebrated Hitler’s birthday. He dreamed of a far-right party in the parliament of a reunified Germany. Today, the far-right party Alternative for Germany, known by its German initials AfD, is the main opposition in parliament. Its leaders march side by side with far-right extremists in street protests. And its power base is the former communist East. “Reunification was a huge boost for the far right,” said Hasselbach, who left the neo-Nazi scene years ago and now helps others to do the same. “The neo-Nazis were the first ones to be reunified. We laid the foundation for a party like the AfD. There are things we used to say that have become mainstream today.” As it marks the 30th anniversary of reunification on Saturday, Germany can rightly celebrate being an economic powerhouse and thriving liberal democracy. But reunification has another, rarely mentioned legacy — of unifying, empowering and bringing into the open a far-right movement that has evolved into a disruptive political force and a terrorist threat, not least inside key state institutions like the military and police. “Today’s far-right extremism in Germany cannot be understood without reunification,” said Matthias Quent, a far-right extremism expert and director of an institute that studies democracy and civil society in the eastern state of Thuringia. “It liberated the neo-Nazis in the East from their underground existence, and it gave the far-right in the West access to a pool of new recruits and whole swathes of territory in which to move without too much oversight.” For years, German officials trusted that a far-right party could never again be elected into parliament and dismissed the idea of far-right terrorist networks. But some now worry that the far-right structures established in the years after reunification laid the groundwork for a resurgence that has burst into view over the past 15 months. Far-right terrorists killed a regional politician on his front porch near the central city of Kassel, attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle and shot dead nine people of immigrant descent in the western city of Hanau. This summer the government took the drastic step of disbanding an entire military company in the special forces after explosives, a machine gun and SS paraphernalia were found on the property of a sergeant major in the eastern state of Saxony. A disproportionate number — about half — of those suspected of far-right extremism inside that unit, the KSK, were from the former East, its commander said. Nationalism and xenophobia are more ingrained in the former East, where the murderous history of World War II was never confronted as deeply on a societal level as it was in the former West. The AfD’s vote share is twice as high in the eastern states, where the number of far-right hate crimes is higher than in western ones. Officially, there were no Nazis in old East Germany. The regime defined itself in the tradition of communists who had resisted fascism, giving rise to a state doctrine of remembrance that effectively exculpated it from wartime atrocities. Far-right mobs who beat up foreign workers from fellow socialist states like Cuba or Angola were classified as “rowdies” led astray by western propaganda. But a potent neo-Nazi movement was growing underground. In 1987, Bernd Wagner, a young police officer in East Berlin, estimated that there were 15,000 “homegrown” violent neo-Nazis, of whom 1,000 were repeat offenders. His report was swiftly locked away. Two years later, as tens of thousands took to the streets in anti-communist protests that eventually brought down the regime, the pro-democracy activists were not the only marchers. “The skinheads were marching, too,” Wagner recalled. The battle cry of those anti-communist protests — “We are the people” — later became the battle cry for the far right at anti-Muslim Pegida marches during the 2015 refugee crisis, far-right riots in Chemnitz in 2018, and again at the current protests against coronavirus protocols. Before reunification, the far-right scene in West Germany was small and aging, but now western neo-Nazis flocked east to offer “reconstruction aid” and unexpectedly found a refuge. Behind the wall, the East had been frozen in time, a largely homogeneous white country where nationalism was allowed to live on. “The leaders of the western scene thought they were in paradise,” Hasselbach recalled. Since then the East has become the home of choice for several prominent western extremists. Götz Kubitschek, a leading far-right intellectual from Swabia who wants to preserve the “ethno-cultural identity” of Germany, bought a rural manor house in the East, which serves as the headquarters for his far-right publishing house and research institute. So did Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz, two westerners who became leaders of the most radical factions of the AfD in the former East. “The East has become a sort of retreat for the far right,” Quent said, “a place where Germany is still Germany and where men are still men.” But the infatuation with the East is also strategic, he said. “There is a sense among far-right extremists: ‘We can’t win in the West, but we can win in the East and then, from a position of strength, we will take on the West.’” Reunification also provided a physical space in which far-right members could move and train. Secret neo-Nazi training camps were held at abandoned Soviet military bases. At one of them, on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, Hasselbach took part in workshops on forging identity papers, bomb making, guerrilla warfare and “silent killing.” The initial years after reunification were so tumultuous that security services were incapable of controlling this coalescing extremist movement. “In the eastern states there was no mature structure for a domestic intelligence service,” Thomas Haldenwang, president of the domestic intelligence office, said in an interview. “The agencies in the new states had to be built from nothing.” During the early 1990s, a wave of racist violence swept through Germany, much of it in the East. Foreigners were chased, beaten up and sometimes killed. Asylum homes were firebombed. Buses of immigrants were attacked. Sometimes eastern onlookers would watch, clap or join in. “You could see that something was shifting and not just on the fringes,” said Volkhard Knigge, a historian. “Otherwise the AfD would not be so strong today.” In the early 1990s, Knigge moved east to run the memorial at the former concentration camp in Buchenwald. He was startled by the abundance of Nazi memorabilia like Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for sale at flea markets and by the mob of angry young neo-Nazis who would gather on the historic theater square, shouting xenophobic slogans. “We thought democracy had won,” Knigge said. “The West thought this was the end of history. But for nationalists, this was a revision of history.” Reunification brought two strains of nationalism together, said Anetta Kahane, a Jewish anti-racism activist — western-style nationalist conservatism and a more radical eastern social-revolutionary variety. On their own, neither had been powerful enough to stir a political movement. “It was the marriage of the two that made the AfD possible,” said Kahane, who runs the Amadeu-Antonio Foundation, named after a Black Angolan who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by neo-Nazis less than two months after reunification. For most Germans, the new century was defined by progress. Chancellor Angela Merkel, an easterner, has personified western liberal values. When the country was host to the soccer World Cup in 2006, a confidently multicultural Germany was on display, in what many at the time called “a summer fairy tale.” “I wanted to believe that that’s who we are as a country — and I did believe it,” said Tanjev Schultz, an author and journalism professor. “But it wasn’t true.” That summer, the National Socialist Underground, a far-right terrorist group that had come out of the extremist networks formed in East Germany, was engaged in an immigrant killing spree that police would not discover until 2011. From 2000 to 2007, the group killed nine immigrants and a police officer, even as paid informers of the intelligence agency helped hide its leaders and build up its network. Hasselbach said he was not surprised to see the recent revelations of far-right infiltration of security services. When he was still a neo-Nazi, he said, friendly police officers would warn them before raids or hand them files of leftist enemies. It was the deadly violence in the early 1990s that made Hasselbach leave the neo-Nazi scene in 1992. An arson attack on the home of a Turkish family killed two girls and their grandmother. He spent years underground to escape threats from his former far-right compatriots. Then, with Wagner, the former eastern police officer, he co-founded Exit Germany, an organization that helps extremists leave their networks. The fortunes of the AfD have ebbed and flowed in recent years. Polls show voter support has dipped to around 10% during the pandemic. But the fringes are radicalizing, intelligence officers say. It worries Hasselbach and Wagner. “The readiness to commit violence today is greater than it’s ever been,” Hasselbach said. “Westerners have no feel for how fragile things are,” Wagner said. “The elites don’t see the post-democratic decline. Easterners have seen a system collapse before.”

Germany’s far right reunified, too, making it much stronger

Landmarks all around Berlin lit up during the annual Festival of Lights on Friday (September 18).

Berlin landmarks light up for Festival of Lights

A team of paleontologists have discovered what they believe is the world's oldest animal sperm, frozen inside a tiny crustacean in a blob of tree resin in Myanmar 100 million years ago.

The oldest known examples of fossilised animal sperm were previously a mere 17 million years old, according to the team of experts led by Wang He of the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing.

The sperms were found inside an ostracod, a kind of crustacean that has existed for 500 million years and can be found in many oceans today, they said in a paper published Wednesday in the prestigious Royal Society's Proceedings journal.

They were found in the body of a female specimen, indicating that she must have been fertilised shortly before being trapped in amber, the experts said.

To make the find even more special, the sperms were also described as "giants", measuring up to 4.6 times the size of the body of the male.

"This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them," Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, co-author of the study, told AFP.

The ostracod was also a new species that the scientists have named "Myanmarcypris hui".

Quality over quantity

Fossilised shells of ostracods are common but finding a specimen with "soft parts" is rare, the experts said.

During the Cretaceous period (around 145 to 66 million years ago), the ostracods in question probably lived in the coastal waters of present-day Myanmar where they became trapped in a blob of tree resin.

Most males in the animal world (including humans) generally produce tens of millions of tiny sperm cells, but for ostracods, it's all about quality over quantity. 
There are several conflicting theories about the evolutionary value of such giant sperms.

"For example, experiments have shown that in one group, a high degree of competition between males can lead to a longer sperm life, while in another group, a low degree of competition also led to a longer sperm life," said Matzke-Karasz.

This discovery shows "that reproduction with giant sperm is not an evolutionary extravagance on the brink of extinction, but a serious long-term advantage for the survival of a species," Matzke-Karasz concluded.

A team of paleontologists have discovered what they believe is the world's oldest animal sperm, frozen inside a tiny crustacean in a blob of tree resin in Myanmar 100 million years ago.

A team of paleontologists have discovered what they believe is the world's oldest animal sperm, frozen inside a tiny crustacean in a blob of tree resin in Myanmar 100 million years ago. The oldest known examples of fossilised animal sperm were previously a mere 17 million years old, according to the team of experts led by Wang He of the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing. The sperms were found inside an ostracod, a kind of crustacean that has existed for 500 million years and can be found in many oceans today, they said in a paper published Wednesday in the prestigious Royal Society's Proceedings journal. They were found in the body of a female specimen, indicating that she must have been fertilised shortly before being trapped in amber, the experts said. To make the find even more special, the sperms were also described as "giants", measuring up to 4.6 times the size of the body of the male. "This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them," Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, co-author of the study, told AFP. The ostracod was also a new species that the scientists have named "Myanmarcypris hui". Quality over quantity Fossilised shells of ostracods are common but finding a specimen with "soft parts" is rare, the experts said. During the Cretaceous period (around 145 to 66 million years ago), the ostracods in question probably lived in the coastal waters of present-day Myanmar where they became trapped in a blob of tree resin. Most males in the animal world (including humans) generally produce tens of millions of tiny sperm cells, but for ostracods, it's all about quality over quantity. There are several conflicting theories about the evolutionary value of such giant sperms. "For example, experiments have shown that in one group, a high degree of competition between males can lead to a longer sperm life, while in another group, a low degree of competition also led to a longer sperm life," said Matzke-Karasz. This discovery shows "that reproduction with giant sperm is not an evolutionary extravagance on the brink of extinction, but a serious long-term advantage for the survival of a species," Matzke-Karasz concluded.

Scientists find world's oldest sperm in Myanmar amber

Berlin's Waldbuehne open-air concert hall hosted its first performance in six months on Thursday night (September 3) but due to coronavirus restrictions, only 5,000 people were allowed access to the site which can hold up to 22,000.

Social distancing allows for one of Germany's first open-air concerts in months

It's a proud day for the Berlin zoo panda family. Twins Pit and Paule have turned one! And like all birthday celebrations, it's all about the cake. One year on and the cubs have made excellent progress, they now weigh a combined total of 28 kilos, significantly up from their 200 g birth weight.

Berlin Panda twin cubs celebrate first birthday

Far-right extremists tried to storm the German parliament building during a protest against the Coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Extremists were intercepted by police and forcibly removed.

Berlin: 'Anti-Corona' protests snowball into far-right protests

Berlin: 'Anti-Corona' protests snowball into far-right protests, extremists try to storm govt. building

Over 38,000 of people have protested in the German capital Berlin against Coronavirus restrictions. Protesters said that they are defending their democratic freedom, Berlin police arrested hundreds of them.

Berlin: Thousands march to protest against COVID-19 restrictions

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