Germany

‘The Wagner family has never let Bayreuth and the festival out if its grip — today it is still run by two of Richard’s great-granddaughters’

The attempt by Gunter Grass, who has died at the age of 87, to hide his past as a member of the Waffen SS was a shameful betrayal of his countrymen, and invalidates his life’s work

‘While between 1895 and 1945 the German debate over how to be modern resulted in a global killing-field, a group of artists in Worpswede set down their visions for a 20th century of artistic sensibility and material living’

‘The problem is not austerity versus growth. The problem is that our social model — whether in France or Greece or elsewhere in Europe — no longer works’

‘One solution to the unexpurgated second-hand versions of Mein Kampf available online is for the Bavarians to publish a scholarly edition’

‘The intelligentsia ignored the irruption of religious fanaticism into domestic British politics. In the face of these foes of civilisation, silence is the worst form of cowardice’

‘I was fond of my father’s old friend Günter Grass. I’d like to think he knew better’

In 1953 Thomas Mann called “not for a German Europe, but a European Germany”. Now we have both—and neither is happy

‘Their grandparents fled the Nazis, their parents boycotted all things German, but their children are flocking to Berlin’