The world is completely out of joint and most of us haven't even noticed. However there are some people who are only too well aware of this predicament: terrorists and heads of state. They are taking advantage of the cracks in failing states for their own gain-and the number of failed and ...

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 ...

This series on the philosophy of passions is a search for a free time in the truest sense of the word, when the everyday ego takes "time out" and loses itself in the passionate pursuit of sports, hobbies or tricks. The authors describe their passions subjectively, likably and self-ironically, even ...

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 ...

Contents:

Eastern philosophy (Upanishades, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism) - Antiquity (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicure) - Patristic - Scholasticism - Arab philosophy - The Enlightenment (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu) - Idealism (Kant, Fichte, ...

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 ...

Johann, Nick, Florian and Mark are best friends. They have been inseparable for nearly ten years. But somewhere along the line, something has subtly changed. They have all begun to notice how different they are, and realise that each of them needs to grow up in their own way. But what is the ...

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: ...

Tegel airport, Berlin, 2015: a woman who has just arrived from Munich hails a taxi. Nico, the driver, soon realises that he recognises the passenger in his rearview mirror. Back in 1991 Nico and Jule spent a short but intensely passionate night together in the wake of a demonstration against the ...

"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 ...

Just how free are we?

A bizarre murder: the body of a prostitute is discovered in the garden of a Free Church parish hall. There's a note in her skull bearing the religious epigram: "the truth will set you free".

When Detective Anton Glauberg returns home ...