In 1977, a group of journalists boarded a train in Paris, bound for Reims. There was no concert and no press conference waiting at the other end. The train itself was the venue. Over the journey, they were played the band's new album, Trans-Europe Express, a record about trains, launched on a train. It was a typical move for Kraftwerk, the … [Read more...]

Around the year 1141, a nun in her early forties sat in a monastery above the Rhine and began to write down what she described as visions. She had experienced them, by her own account, since childhood, and had kept them secret for most of her life. Within a decade, she had produced a visionary book, a cycle of sacred songs, and the first of the … [Read more...]

In the summer of 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was safe. He was in New York, a respected young German theologian with friends and a standing invitation to stay. War in Europe was only weeks away. He could have waited it out. Instead, after a few weeks he booked a passage home, explaining to his American colleagues that he would have no right to help … [Read more...]

Before sunrise on 5 August 1888, a woman quietly pushed a strange three-wheeled machine out of a workshop in Mannheim. She had two teenage sons with her, a note for her husband on the kitchen table, and no permission from the authorities. By the time her husband read the note, she was already on the road. Her name was Bertha Benz, and the … [Read more...]

On 7 December 1970, in a Warsaw street, a German chancellor knelt down. He had come to Poland to sign a treaty, and before the ceremony he laid a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Then, without warning and without a word, Willy Brandt dropped to his knees and stayed there in silence. No speech could have said what that … [Read more...]

In February 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, he traveled to Cologne for an election rally. The city's mayor, a stern Catholic lawyer named Konrad Adenauer, refused to receive him. It was a small act of defiance in a year when most officials were deciding how far to bend, and it cost him his job within weeks. Sixteen years … [Read more...]

On the morning of 18 February 1943, a few minutes before eleven o'clock, two students walked through the main building of the University of Munich carrying a suitcase full of paper. They placed stacks of leaflets outside the lecture halls, and when they had a few left over, one of them let the pages drift down into the central atrium. It was a … [Read more...]

On 22 November 2005, a scientist who grew up behind the Iron Curtain walked into the Chancellery in Berlin and took over the government of Europe's largest economy. Angela Merkel was the first woman to lead Germany, the first chancellor from the former East, and the first born after the Second World War. She would stay for 16 years, through four … [Read more...]