Dear reader,

today I’m publishing a piece by Noelle Ponasik which she originally published in her excellent newsletter Germany is the Wurst. I hope you enjoy this essay. I burst out laughing several times when I first read it.

I’ll be publishing less frequently over the next few weeks…

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With Germany into the second round of the World Cup, the flags are popping up on cars and balconies.

The Deutschlandfahne has been through a lot.

The colours of the modern flag go back to resistance against French occupation in the early 19th century. During the Napoleonic Wars of 1813-1815 (that's “wars of liberation” for the Germans), students formed …

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Heute, am Samstag, feiere ich meinen Geburtstag bei einem Freund auf dem Land. Es wird ein brütend heißer Tag.

Das hat mich zum Nachdenken über das Wetter gebracht.

Es wird von Jahr zu Jahr heißer. Trockenperioden werden schlimmer, aber auch extreme Regenfälle und Überschwemmungen treten häufiger auf. Im vergangenen Winter gab es – so schien es zumindest …

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Today, Saturday, I’m celebrating my birthday at a friend’s house in the country. It’s going to be a scorcher.

It got me thinking about the weather.

It’s getting hotter year after year. Dry spells are getting worse but extreme rain and floods are also more frequent. Last winter we had more snow than in decades, it seemed.

And yet climate change and enviro…

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Bevor wir loslegen, möchte ich mich bei meinem Sponsor Get the Flat bedanken. Mehr dazu weiter unten….

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Before we get into it, I’d like to thank my sponsor, Get the Flat. More from them below…

New: this article auf Deutsch!

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When I was a German expat teenager growing up in the United States, my first car was an ancient VW. I spent hours tinkering around on the engine, following the How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive repair manual. It kept me busy and focused during a different period of my life. I never achieved any kind of technical excellence but …

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I’ll give the chancellor that, Germany is prone to “doom and gloom” talk. Merz’s own mediocre track record aside, he’s right: Maybe the negative vibes are not always helpful if you’re trying to…

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A couple of years ago, I urgently needed a Kitagutschein - a “daycare voucher” for my kids’ new kindergarten. I had emailed the Kitagutscheinstelle but hadn’t heard back.

So I called them.

They said I could come by the next day.

I showed up on time. My case worker found my email in her system, then disappeared into a back room. She returned five minutes…

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Berlin-based journalist Chris Reiter is co-author of the 2025 book Broken Republik: The Inside Story of Germany’s Descent into Crisis, which he penned with fellow journalist Will Wilkes.

A year later, a paperback edition has come out, with a new section on Merz’s first year as chancellor…

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This week, the economic institute IW sank its German growth forecast for 2026 from 0.9% to 0.4%.

“The war in Iran has stifled the tentative recovery of the German economy. Rising energy prices and supply disruptions are hitting a country that, …

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“2026 is a fateful German year. If Germany is unable to get out of this recession, there’s a feeling that democracy is at risk…. at least parliamentary democracy as we know it, where decisions are made by the political centre.”

That's journalist Robin Alexander on his …

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German energy policy is a mess.

Obviously, we’re not the only country scrambling to do something about rising fuel prices right now — but here policymakers have done a particularly bad job — for decades.

Both left and right have been guided by particular ideolo…

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In this issue of Update Germany, journalist Josh Axelrod explores one of the German government’s more thorny figures.

I’ll be back next weekend!

But if you’re in Berlin on Wednesday, April 15th why not stop by my 20% Berlin News Quiz (no Trump questions, promise)?

Mauri…

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Maurice

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In 2024, Collien Fernandes made a ZDF documentary about the scourge of deep fake porn. The German actress and TV moderator was directly affected by the repulsive trend. AI generated videos of somebody with her likeness performing all sorts of sexual acts were uploaded onto PornHub and then spread across the online porn ecosystem.

Who produced t…

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Sorry, I’m late with this Update. I’m in northern Sweden visiting my daughter, who’s doing an internship here.

Whenever I’m in Scandinavia, I have this sense that things just work better here than in Germany. Things feel more modern, more prosperous, more digitised and better organise…

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Last Sunday, in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, Green politician Cem Özdemir won the state election, with his party, Die Grünen scraping ahead of Friedrich Merz’s CDU. It looks like the Greens will be the senior partner in a coalition with the CDU, with Özdemir at the helm. The election was so close, the two parties w…

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Büttner accuses Peggy Lindemann, a member of the Schwedt city council, of sharing an Instagram reel with the following text:

“A painter from Austrian claims in his ‘propaganda’ that elite🧃drink the blood of our chil…

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As the father of three, I get emotional about this topic.

And impatient.

Ban social media for kids. Just like Australia. What the hell are you waiting for?

This week, Germany has finally been debating how to protect children from the harms of social media.

In an interview on the Machtwechsel podc…

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