Meticulous coroner Dr Martin Gansewein leads a quiet life. That is, until the day the spirit of Pascha, a small-time criminal who dealt in stolen cars and whose body is now lying on the slab in front of him, insists on striking up a conversation. Pascha is in one hell of a bad mood - his ...

The only existing document of its kind

Former Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth Movement) member Franz Albrecht Schall's early diaries show how he became caught up in the maelstrom of National Socialism as a young man. Rallies, parades, political lectures and publicity tours are ...

Art as a million dollar project

In our capitalist society, works of art represent the ultimate status symbol. The art market is booming, prices are rocketing. Why is it that people are willing to spend millions of dollars on works by van Gogh, Klimt, Keith Haring or Gerhard Richter ...

Many members of the older generation remember how the Nazis determined the course of their childhood without having understood it at the time. What did the sons and daughters of Jewish parents go through?

Inge Deutschkron grew up in Berlin and personally experienced the consequences of ...

A summer’s day that starts out all bright and sunny and by its end nothing is ever the same again – that is the day when Annika's cousin Ginie disappears. Just a short while ago the two of them had been sunbathing by the water’s edge with Annika's friends Steffi, Rüdiger and ...

A girl named Johnny

Early on, Joana Wolkenzin knows that she is different. She spends hours reading and learns song lyrics by heart. As she grows older, she falls in love with both boys and girls. In the No Man's Land of Western Pomerania in the 1990s, she gives herself a new name: ...

Jochen, Oliver, Bill - almost half of the human race is composed of men. They still set the tone for many issues, even though their facade started to crack a long time ago. Enough of a reason to look more closely. What facets characterize the other gender? With a woman's eyes, Johanna Adorján ...

What is freedom, are we born free or is freedom conveyed to us by others? Can it be taken away? Is freedom only an absence of fear and constraint or does it not rather imply the need to take part in the political and social discourse? Th is essay by Hannah Arendt was fi rst published in German by ...

It's autumn and the landlord of number 13, the only unrenovated house left on Hebelstrasse, has been vacating the building of its tenants for the past two years. 55-year-old janitor Karl Kramer, 72-year-old Elisabeth Buttkies, a retired German teacher, and Marina, a 28-year-old part-time student ...

"If you look your enemy in the eye, he's no longer your enemy."

Five men in their middle years: convicted former terrorists Muhammad, Suleiman and Jamil from the occupied territories and Israeli refuseniks Chen and Amil. Five former prisoners who founded the Peace Movement after ...

What is it we're looking for-in ourselves, in others, in faraway places?

Berlin, summer 2013: Clara, a young doctor, quite literally runs into Amal when their bicycles are involved in a minor collision. Amal, a 21-year old Iraqi student, has fled Baghdad and is applying for asylum ...

Hatred is an emotion, but peace is a conscious decision

A hotel in Rome. There's a knock at Lizzie Doron's door; when she opens it, she thinks she finds herself confronted by an Arab suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt. In fact Nadim has merely stuck his travel documents to ...