Valerie Hamilton

1 week ago | theworld.org | Valerie Hamilton

The legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer seemed straightforward: The anti-Nazi theologian and pastor executed in 1945 for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler was a man of faith who took action against injustice in the real world.

Nov 22, 2024 | theworld.org | Valerie Hamilton

The memorial to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald is one of Germany’s darkest reminders of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime that executed it. The historians who oversee the site and other memorials to victims and survivors are determined to use them to make sure their history remains in the past.

Nov 14, 2024 | theworld.org | Valerie Hamilton

In 1989, the East German band Karat had it all: black leather blazers, feathered mullets and gold records, some even across the border in West Germany. Then suddenly, everything changed for socialist East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic. Massive protests brought down the Berlin Wall, along with the GDR regime. Within a year, there was just one unified Germany — and in it, no one wanted to listen to Karat, according to the band’s guitarist Bernd Römer.

Oct 8, 2024 | theworld.org | Valerie Hamilton

Germany doesn’t have a national animal, but if it did, it might well be the dachshund. When Germany hosted its first Olympics after World War II, it chose a dachshund named Waldi as its mascot. Today, dachshunds’ long, skinny silhouettes are a kitschy adornment to Germany-themed swag from T-shirts to coffee mugs, often wearing the black, red and gold of the German flag.

Aug 25, 2024 | theworld.org | Valerie Hamilton

Munich and its surrounding state of Bavaria are home to more than 600 breweries, and a beer shortage there is indeed rare. But when Augustiner-Bräu, a traditional Munich brewery in business for nearly seven centuries, launched its new beer this spring, it broke the market. As the beer sold out in stores, scalpers hawked cases on the internet for 10 times the sticker price. Enterprising consumers staked out Augustiner’s loading docks to tail delivery trucks.