Timeline Germany 1991-2012
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1991 Feb 11,
Oscar Nitzchke (90), German architect, died in Paris. His buildings
included the UN headquarters in New York, the Los Angeles Opera
House.
(http://tinyurl.com/7kx39)
1991 Feb 13, Arno Breker (90),
German sculptor (Third Reich), died in Dusseldorf.
(www.meaus.com/arno-breker-biography.htm)
1991 Mar 16, Americans Kristi
Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan swept the World Figure
Skating Championships in Munich, Germany.
(AP, 3/16/99)
1991 May, German spy Juergen
Mohamed Gietler was sentenced to a 5-year jail term after a brief
trial that was largely held in secret.
(SFC,11/18/97, p.B1)
1991 Jun 20, German lawmakers
voted to move the seat of the national government from Bonn back to
Berlin.
(SFEC, 6/27/99, p.A24)(AP, 6/20/01)
1991 Aug, Karlheinz Schreiber,
an arms dealer, allegedly gave $530,000 to Walther Leisler Kiep, the
treasurer of the Christian Democratic Party, at a Swiss shopping
center. The issue was investigated in 1999 and associated to a later
government approved sale of tanks to Saudi Arabia.
(SFC, 11/23/99, p.A14)(SFC, 12/3/99, p.D2)
1991 Sep 1, The government
announced the creation of the Central Investigative Office for
Government Unification Crimes (ZERV). The agency was closed at the
end of 2000.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A10)
1991 Nov 23, Klaus Kinski (65),
German actor (Android, Nosferatu, Little Drummer Girl), died in
California.
(http://www.filmbug.com/db/1457)
1991 Dec 14, Former East German
leader Erich Honecker, facing extradition to Germany and trial on
manslaughter charges, was offered asylum in North Korea.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1991 Germany passed an ordnance
shifting responsibility for the entire life cycle of packaging to
producers.
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.24)
1991 Germany adopted a
renewable energy law, which became known as EEG.
(Econ, 4/5/08, p.67)
1991 In Germany the Inter-City
Express (ICE) high-speed trains began running.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1991 Hasso Plattner, a former
IBM consultant, unveiled the SAP (Systems, Analysis and Program
Development) R/3 enterprise management software. The company grew
12-fold from 1990 to 15,000 employees in 1998. Plattner founded the
company with Dietmar Hopp.
(WSJ, 7/2/98, p.A1,14)
1991 The last Trabant
automobile was manufactured in East Germany.
(SFC, 2/15/99, p.A10)
1992 Jan 19, German government
and Jewish officials dedicated a Holocaust memorial at the villa
where the notorious Wannsee Conference had taken place.
(AP, 1/19/02)
1992 Jan 20, A German court
convicted two former East German border guards of the last killing
at the Berlin Wall.
(AP, 1/20/02)
1992 Mar 5, In Copenhagen the
Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany,
Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, in the
presence of the representative from the European Commission, opened
a 2-day meeting and decided to establish a Council of the Baltic Sea
States to serve as a forum for guidance and overall coordination
among the participating states. Iceland joined the CBSS in 1995
(Econ, 6/7/08,
p.63)(www.bmwi.de/English/Navigation/European-policy/baltic-market.html)
1992 Mar 27, German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl met with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in Munich, a
meeting denounced by Jewish groups because of Waldheim's alleged
involvement with Nazi persecution during World War II.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1992 Apr 13, An earthquake
rocked Germany and the Netherlands.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/sig_1992.html)
1992 May 6, Actress Marlene
Dietrich (b.1901), film star and singer, died at her Paris home at
age 90. She was buried in Germany on May 16.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.D-2)(AP, 5/16/97)
1992 Jul 5, Leaders of the
world's seven richest nations gathered in Munich, Germany, for their
18th annual economic summit. President Bush, en route to the summit,
told cheering Poles in Warsaw that "America shares Poland's dream."
(AP, 7/5/97)
1992 Jul 6, The Group of Seven
industrial nations opened their 18th annual economic summit in
Munich, Germany.
(AP, 7/6/97)
1992 Jul 8, Russian President
Boris Yeltsin met with Group of Seven leaders holding their economic
summit in Munich, Germany, where he offered a startling proposal to
swap factories, energy resources and other properties for Russian
debt.
(AP, 7/8/97)
1992 Aug 22, Neo-Nazi violence
against foreigners erupted in Rostock, Germany.
(AP, 8/22/97)
1992 Aug 29, About 13,000
people staged an anti-extremist rally in Rostock, Germany, even as
right-wingers continued attacks on immigrants.
(AP, 8/29/97)(HN, 8/29/98)
1992 Sep 14, Germany cut key
interest rates for the first time in five years, an action the
United States and European Community nations had been urging to help
spur a world economic recovery.
(AP, 9/14/97)
1992 Sep, In Germany Sadiq
Sarafkindi and three other exiled Iranian Kurdish dissidents were
slain at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. In 1997 a German court
concluded that the murders were sponsored by the top political
leadership of Iran and orchestrated by a secretive “Committee for
special Operations,” and carried out by the Iranian Vevak security
service.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A1)
1992 Oct 1, Petra Kelly
(b.1947), founder of the German Green Party, was shot dead in Bonn.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Kelly)
1992 Oct 8, Willy Brandt (78),
former West German Chancellor (1969-74) and Nobel Peace Prize winner
(1971), died in Unkel, Germany.
(AP,
10/8/97)(http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1971/brandt-cv.html)
1992 Nov 8, Some 350,000 people
rallied in Berlin against racist violence.
(AP, 11/8/97)
1992 Nov 23, In Germany, three
Turks were killed when rightist militants firebombed their homes in
Moelln; in Berlin, hundreds of demonstrators protested in solidarity
with foreigners.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1992 Nov 29, A refugee center
in western Germany was firebombed as violence against foreigners
continued, despite a police crackdown on neo-Nazis.
(AP, 11/29/97)
1992 Dec 2, Germany's lower
house of parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Maastricht
Treaty on European unity.
(AP, 12/2/97)
1992 Dec 6, Bowing to
anti-foreigner sentiment, Germany's main political parties agreed to
tighten postwar asylum laws.
(AP, 12/6/97)
1992 Dec 18, Germany ratified
the Treaty on the European Union.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 The film “Stalingrad” was
directed by Joseph Vilsmaiar.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)
1992 The German Red Army urban
guerrilla group abandoned violence.
(SFC, 5/11/96, p.A-8)
1992 Germany imposed a new tax
on investment income.
(WSJ, 12/4/96, p.A1)
1992 Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s
conservative-centrist coalition set an annual quota of 225,000 for
new arrivals in order to stem the rush from former Iron Curtain
countries.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A11)
1992 In Germany Bremen and
Saarland asked to be bailed out of economic difficulties.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.56)
1992 Elf-Aquitaine purchased
the former East German Leuna refinery. It was later alleged that
bribes totaling $44 million were paid by the French government to
the German Social Democrats under Helmut Kohl.
(SFC, 1/24/00, p.A6)
1993 Jan 13, Former East German
leader Erich Honecker was freed from prison and allowed to leave for
Chile.
(AP, 1/13/00)
1993 Jan 30, On the 60th
anniversary of Hitler's swearing-in as chancellor of Germany, more
than 300,000 Germans carried candles to denounce the Nazi era.
(AP, 1/30/98)
1993 Mar 23, Hans Werner
Richter (b.1908), German writer, founder (Gruppe 47), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Werner_Richter)
1993 May 18, Heinrich Albertz
(78), theologist, mayor of Berlin (1966-67), died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1993 May 29, In Solingen,
Germany, five Turks, including three young girls, were killed in a
firebombing blamed on right-wing extremists. Five Turks died in an
arson attack that was blamed on neo-Nazis and led to large
demonstrations. The events were documented in essays by Jane Kramer
collected in 1996 in “The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in
the New Germany.”
(SFEC, 10/20/96, BR, p.5)(AP, 5/29/98)
1993 Jul 3, Steffi Graf of
Germany won her third consecutive Wimbledon title as she defeated
Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic.
(AP, 7/3/98)
1993 Aug 15, Robert W. Kempner
(93), German officer of justice in Prussia and special US prosecutor
of Nazis, died.
(http://library.law.columbia.edu/ttp/TTP_LOC.htm)
1993 Sep 16, A judge in Berlin
convicted three elderly former Communist leaders in the shooting
deaths of East Germans who had tried to scale the Berlin Wall.
(AP, 9/16/98)
1993 Oct 13, A German who had
stabbed tennis star Monica Seles received a suspended jail term.
(AP, 10/13/03)
1993 Oct 29, A group of U.S.
luge athletes was attacked by right-wing skinheads in Oberhof,
Germany.
(AP, 10/29/98)
1993 Nov, In Germany
unemployment hit a country record of 3.5 million.
(http://www.atlapedia.com/online/countries/germany.htm)
1993 Dec 18, The United States
and Germany pledged close cooperation to help Boris Yeltsin through
Russia's political and economic crises in a meeting in Oggersheim
between Vice President Al Gore and Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
(AP, 12/18/98)
1993 Will Tremper, German
journalist, screenwriter and film director, published his
autobiography “My Wild Years.”
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C11)
1993 The documentary film “The
Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl” was made by German
director Ray Muller.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.B1)
1993 Peter Eigen (b.1938)
founded the Advisory Council Transparency International, a
Berlin-based global civil society organization leading the fight
against corruption.
(www.transparency.org/about_us)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eigen)
1993 Germany passed a 30%
withholding tax on investment income. It caused billions of marks to
flow out of Germany and into Luxembourg.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A10)
1993 Germany passed a law that
limited last names to two in an effort to prevent clunky name
chains.
(AP, 5/5/09)
1993 In Germany the
naturalization law of 1913 was modified to allow citizenship after
15 years of residency. A 1999 bill proposed to reduce the waiting
time to 8 years.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D2)
1993 The Reinheitsgebot law of
1516 was relaxed to allow foreign brewers to sell their beer in
Germany.
(WSJ, 5/27/98, p.A1)
1993 In Germany Edmund Stoiber
was elected premier of Bavaria. He announced his resignation in
2007.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.62)
1993 In Germany Neo-Nazi Silvio
Kackowski was arrested for setting fire to a resort complex that was
to become housing for foreign asylum seekers. In 1997 it was learned
that villagers paid the arsonists and supplied them with materials
for the fires.
(SFC, 2/13/97, p.C3)
1993 Swiss architect Peter
Zumthor won the “Topography of Terror” design competition for the
Wilhelmstrasse government district, former headquarters of the Nazi
police forces. By 2000 the $13 million project had escalated to $35
million and was put on hold.
(SFC, 5/8/00, p.A12)
1993 The Red Army Faction (RAF)
called an end to its armed struggle.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)
1993 Daimler-Benz acquired the
Dutch plane-maker NV Fokker.
(WSJ, 1/26/96, A-6)
1993 Ferdinand Piech left Audi
and took over operations at Volkswagen, where he turned losses into
profits. He was the grandson of founder Ferdinand Porsche and the
son of the companies wartime chief, Anton Piech. In 2002 he was
succeeded by Bernd Pischetsrieder. Piech (65) became chairman of
Volkswagen’s supervisory board.
(WSJ, 11/7/96, p.A17)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.70)
1994 Apr 7, Angelus Gottfried
"Golo" Mann (85), German-US historian, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1994 May 29, Erich Honecker
(81), former East German leader (1971-89), died of liver cancer in
Chile.
(AP, 5/29/99) (SFC, 8/26/97, p.A17)
1994 Aug 18, Gottlob Frick
(b.1906), German operatic basso, died.
(www.iclassics.com/artistBio?contentId=304)
1994 Aug 31, Russia officially
ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the
Baltics after a half-century.
(AP, 8/31/99)
1994 Sep 8, The Last US,
British & French troops left West-Berlin.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1994 Oct, The Nobel Prize in
Economics was awarded to John C. Harsanyi and John F. Nash of the US
and to Reinhard Selten of Germany.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A2)
1994 Nov 15, Helmut Kohl was
elected German chancellor (341-340 votes).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Kohl)
1994 Germany’s constitutional
court ruled that German soldiers could be allowed outside the NATO
area with the approval of parliament.
(Econ, 11/18/06, p.27)
1995 Mar, Neo-Nazi Gary Lauck
of the US was arrested in Denmark and extradited to Germany for
supplying hate literature and paraphernalia.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A18)
1995 In Germany Christo and his
wife, Jeanne-Claude, wrapped the Reichstag with over 1 million
square feet of silvery polypropylene fabric, secured with over
51,000 feet of polypropylene rope. The project cost some $13
million.
(SFC, 11/17/98, p.E5)(SSFC, 2/13/05, p.A10)
1995 The film Brother of Sleep
was directed by Joseph Vilsmaiar.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)
1995 The film My Mother’s
Courage was by German director Michael Verhoeven.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.37)
1995 The Violin Concerto No. 2
by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki was written for the German
violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and premiered in Leipzig with the
Central German Radio orchestra.
(SFC, 11/9/96, p.E1)
1995 Chancellor Kohl was the
leader.
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-1)
1995 Oskar Lafontaine took over
leadership of the Social Democrats.
(SFC, 3/12/99, p.A15)
1995 Germany introduced a
35-hour work week.
(WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A14)
1995 Germany devised a
compromise abortion law that permitted abortions within the first 12
weeks with the issuance of a counseling certificate.
(SFC, 1/28/98, p.A6)
1995 Berlin was the most
populous city and Hamburg, a city-state, was second.
(Hem., Oct. '95, p.17)
1995 Lewis H. Gann 1925-1997),
historian, was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of
the German Federal Republic. He served for over 30 years at the
Hoover Institute of Stanford.
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.A19)
1995 Volkswagen built a large
car factory near Lisbon, Portugal.
(Econ, 1/15/11, p.78)
1996 Jan 1, Arthur Rudolph
(89), German-US rocket Engineer, died. His final years were marked
by his forced return to his native Germany from the US because of
his earlier involvement with the slave labor that powered the Third
Reich's V1 & V2 rocket programs.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1996 Jan 27, Germany
commemorated the 1st Holocaust Remembrance Day.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1996 Jan, In Germany the
service time for a draftee in the Bundeswehr was reduced from 12
months to ten, and the size of the army was planned to shrink to
340,000.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A15)
1996 Jan, Juergen E. Schrempp,
CEO of Daimler-Benz, decided to stop funding NV Fokker. Losses from
the Fokker acquisition led to charges totaling $1.5 bil, the largest
in German corporate history.
(WSJ, 1/26/96, A-6)
1996 Feb 6, A Turkish-owned
Boeing 757 jetliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
Puerto Plata shortly after takeoff from the Dominican Republic,
killing 189 people, mostly German tourists.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-14)(AP,
2/6/01)(WSJ, 11/13/01, p.A14)
1996 Feb 9, Adolf Galland (83),
German general (Luftwaffe Ace), died.
(http://tinyurl.com/9wm96)
1996 Feb 27, It was reported
that element 112, aka unumbium, was first made in Darmstadt,
Germany, in an experiment led by Peter Armbruster.
(Econ, 5/5/07,
p.100)(http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.260.html)
1996 Mar 16, For the first
time, ordinary citizens were allowed inside the central archives of
the former East German secret police, the hated Stasi security
agency.
(AP, 3/16/97)
1996 Mar 25, Jan Philipp
Reemtsma was attacked, beaten and abducted as he entered his office
in Hamburg. For 33 days he was chained to a cellar wall with a
ransom set at 30 million marks ($17.6 million). In 1999 he published
"In the Cellar," a chronicle of his captivity.
(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.W11)
1996 Apr 23, In Germany the
Federal Security Council decided to allow German firms to co-produce
weapons abroad even if they did not know who would end up using
them.
(WSJ, 7/11/96, p.A10)
1996 May, The parliament
cleared the way for a high-speed, magnetically levitated train
system to link Berlin and Hamburg. The project is estimated to cost
$3.7 billion and is to be completed in 2005.
(WSJ, 5/10/96, p.A-6)
1996 May 20, Public workers in
many cities of Germany staged warning strikes against the
governments proposed decrease in public spending.
(SFC, 5/21/96, p.A-10)
1996 May, West Berliners voted
to reunite Berlin and Brandenburg while voters in East Berlin and
Brandenburg voted against the union. To have been effective a yes
vote by both states was necessary.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A12)
1996 Jun 9, The latest
unemployment rate was 9.1%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Parade, p.9)
1996 Jun 15, Some 350,000
protestors staged demonstrations against the government’s planned
austerity program.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A6)
1996 Jul 7, The average cost of
a Big Mac in the US was $2.36. In Germany it was $3.22.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Par, p.17)
1996 Aug 20, In Germany
officials arrested 2 businessmen suspected of smuggling computer
technology to Libya that could be used to make lethal nerve gas.
(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A1)
1996 Aug 22, Neo-Nazi Gary
Lauck of the US was sentenced to 4 years in prison for supplying
hate literature and paraphernalia for 2 decades.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A18)
1996 Nov 1, A new law governing
store hours will take effect. Bakeries will be allowed to sell fresh
bread on Sunday mornings, though other stores must remain closed.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A12)
1996 Sep 15, It was reported
that rival Vietnamese gangs were battling a vicious turf war for
trading untaxed cigarettes smuggled in by organized crime. The
country was trying to coax Vietnam to accept the return of thousands
of men in exchange for aid and future credits.
(SFC, 9/15/96, p.A14)
1996 Oct 1, The East German
village of Samswegen (pop.1,400), self-proclaimed as the “Strongest
Village in the World,” was written up for its weightlifting success.
(WSJ, 9/30/96, p.A12)
1996 Oct 11, The parliament
voted to reduce the 656 seats of the Bundestag, lower house, to 598
seats after elections in 2002.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A11)
1996 Nov, “Volkswagen and Its
Workers in the Third Reich” was written by Hans Mommsen and Manfred
Grieger. It was sponsored by VW under a $2.2 mil grant.
(WSJ, 11/7/96, p.A17)
1996 Dec 24, In Frankfurt,
Germany, a women blew herself up and 2 others were killed at
Lutheran Church Singlingen South.
(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B3)
1996 Dec, Wim Duisenberg of the
Netherlands was approved to run the European Monetary Institute in
Frankfurt, Germany.
(SFC, 5/1/98, p.D6)
1996 Anselm Kiefer created his
work "Bohemia Lies by the Sea."
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1996 Thorsten Becker published
"Schones Deutschland," based on the idea of a redivided Germany.
(Hem., 3/97, p.119)
1996 Werner Henze, composer,
published his autobiography "Bohemian Fifths." It was translated to
English in 1999.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.4)
1996 Chancellor Helmut Kohl
published "Ich wolte Deutschlands Einheit" (I Wanted Germany’s
Unity).
1996 The German film “Sexy
Sadie” by Matthias Glasner was a gangster comedy about a convicted
serial killer with a brain tumor.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.E1)
1996 Germany’s federal
government first sold a chunk of Deutsche Telekom, with shares
valued at the D-mark equivalent of €14.57.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.72)
1996 Low-tetrahydrocannabinol
hemp was made legal and quickly became a fast-growing cash crop. A
young Berlin brewer began to add its flowering buds to his beer in
violation of the 1516 Reinheitsgebot law on beer ingredients.
(WSJ, 5/27/98, p.A1)
1996 German-speaking countries
approved a reform of German spelling (orthography).
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.45)
1996 Wolfgang Koeppen (b.1906),
German writer, died. His novels included "Pigeons on the Grass"
(1951), "The Hothouse" (1953) and "Death in Rome" (1954).
(WSJ, 6/29/01, p. W12)
1997 Jan-Jun, Neo-Nazis
committed 4,829 recorded crimes and 353 of them involved violent
attacks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.A20)
1997 Mar 15, German soldiers,
while rescuing foreigners, opened fire under hostile conditions in
Albania. This was their first active combat since WW II.
(SFC, 3/17/97, p.C1)
1997 Mar 17, Ten drunk soldiers
beat up 2 Turks and an Italian during a rampage in Detmold.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A12,14)
1997 Apr 10, A German court
concluded that Iran’s political leadership ordered the September
1992 slaying of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A1)
1997 Apr 28, “The Ghosts of
Berlin” by Brian Ladd was reviewed. Some 800 years of Berlin history
is covered.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1997 Apr, The book “Nazi Gold”
by Tom Bower was published in the US.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1997 May 16, The new 60-story,
Commerzbank in Frankfurt by English architect Sir Norman Foster
opened.
(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.B1)
1997 Jun 4, Some 600,000
chemical union workers agreed to allow wage cuts by up to 10% by
financially strapped companies. Record unemployment stood at 11% and
the government asked unions for some flexibility.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.E2)
1997 Jun, Joseph Abdullah (6),
the son of a German mother and Iraqi father, drowned in a pool in
Sebnitz following an attack by skinhead neo-Nazis.
(SFC, 11/29/00, p.A17)
1997 Jul 12, In Berlin several
hundreds of thousands gathered for the annual Love Parade, a big
party for fans of the electronic dance music known as techno.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.D8)
1997 Jul 25, Thousands of
German soldiers fought to contain the rain-gorged Oder River.
(SFC, 7/26/97, p.A12)
1997 Aug 25, Germany convicted
3 politicians from the defunct East German era on charges related to
shootings of would-be escapees. Egon Krenz, the last leader of the
East German Communist Party, was convicted along with Politburo
members Guenther Kleiber and Guenther Schabowski. The conviction was
upheld in 1999.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A8)(SFC, 11/9/99, p.A14)
1997 Sep 13, A German military
transport, a Soviet-made Tupelov-154 jet, was reported crashed with
24 people off the coast of Angola. A midair collision with a USAF
C-141 Starlifter cargo plane from Namibia was reported and the total
dead reached 32. Poor communications and faulty regional traffic
control were cited as the cause. On Mar 31, 1988 the German
government reported that the German crew was at fault for flying in
airspace reserved for westbound traffic.
(SFC, 9/15/97, p.A1)(SFC,12/16/97, p.B1)(WSJ,
3/31/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.A5)
1997 Oct 19, In Germany Gunter
Grass presented the peace prize of the German book-publishing
industry to Yasar Kemal, a Turkish author. Grass criticized his
compatriots as "closet racists."
(SFC,10/21/97, p.A12)
1997 Nov 5, A court in Bonn
awarded back wages to a Polish-born Jewish woman for 55 weeks of
slave labor at the Weichsel Metall Union company during 1943-1945.
Rywka Merin was awarded $8,500.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A14)
1997 Nov 13, Parliament amended
the 1950 Federal Benefits Law to exclude veterans of disability
rights if they violated “principles of humanity of the law” during
the Third Reich.
(SFC,11/14/97, p.D3)
1997 Nov 28, In Germany
students spent a week protesting the deteriorating quality of their
education and the specter of having to pay for their education.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B5)
1997 The German film
“Ballermann 6” was about a bar by the same name on the Spanish
Island of Majorca.
(WSJ, 12/4/97, p.A1)
1997 The film “Der bewegte
Mann” (Maybe... Maybe Not) was a German satire about tangled
relationships.
(WSJ, 11/5/97, p.B1)
1997 The German film “Didn’t Do
It for Love” was a portrait of dominatrix Eva Norwind and was
directed by Monika Treut.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 The German film “From Hell
to Hell” was directed by Dmitri Astrachan. It was based on a true
story of a Jewish mother who gives away her child to a Polish woman
as she is deported to a concentration camp. She later tries to
reclaim the child and is rebuffed.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 The German film “Knockin’
On Heaven’s Door” was produced by Buena Vista Int’l., a division of
Walt Disney Co.
(WSJ, 11/5/97, p.B1)
1997 The German film “Life Is
All You Get” was directed by Wolfgang Becker. It was about a
slaughterhouse worker who meets the woman of his dreams.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 The German film “Little
Dieter Needs to Fly” was directed by Werner Herzog. It is the story
of Dieter Dengler, a German who became a US pilot and a POW in the
Vietnam War.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 The German film “Rossini
or the Fatal Question, Who Slept With Whom?” was directed by Helmut
Dietl. It was comedy-drama about a group of people who go to an
Italian restaurant.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 The German film “23” was
produced by Buena Vista Int’l., a division of Walt Disney Co.
(WSJ, 11/5/97, p.B1)
1997 The German film “Winter
Sleepers” was directed by Tom Tykwer. It is about 5 people connected
around a freak car accident involving a young girl.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 Germany got rid of its
wealth tax.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.61)
1997 Germany’s Thysen and Krupp
steel firms joined forces.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.56)
1997 Wal-Mart purchased
Wertkauf, a prestigious German chain store. This acquisition was
followed by the purchase of Interspar, another German chain store.
In 2006 Wal-Mart ended its German operations selling its 85 German
stores to Metro.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.54)
1997 Alexander Pircher, a
student in Darmstadt, Germany, created a web site called
Anonymouse.org, which allowed users to type in a Web address in a
box and with a click the Anonymouse server fetches and displays the
page. This allowed anonymous Web searches.
(Econ, 12/2/06, TQ p.3)
1997 Germany’s population was
about 83 million people.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A8)(WSJ, 12/22/97, p.A1)
1998 Jan 12, Germany announced
that it will pay $110 million over 5 years in pensions to Holocaust
survivors in Eastern Europe.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A11)
1998 Jan 16, The Bonn
Parliament took steps to allowing private phones to be bugged. The
Bundestag (lower house) voted to secure a 2/3 majority needed to
change the constitution to give police greater powers.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A8)
1998 Feb 5, In Germany
thousands protested the high unemployment rate. It had reached
12.6%, or 4.8 million people.
(SFC, 2/6/98, p.E3)
1998 Feb 17, Ernst Juenger,
German writer, died at age 102.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)
1998 Feb 22, The Brazilian film
“Central Station” by Walter Salles won the top prize at the Berlin
Film Festival.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.E5)
1998 Feb 24, Six service-sector
unions agreed to merge by year 2000 to create the world’s largest
union with 4 million members.
(WSJ, 2/25/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 1, In Germany, Lower
Saxony Governor Gerhard Schroeder won a sweeping re-election that
paved the way for his successful campaign to oust Chancellor Helmut
Kohl.
(AP, 3/1/99)
1998 Mar 3, Over 130,000 public
sector workers stopped work. The 2nd walkout in 2 days was for a
4.5% increase in pay.
(SFC, 3/4/98, p.C4)
1998 Mar 19-25, CeBIT, the
world’s largest exhibition for information and communications, was
held in Hanover. 600,000 visitors were expected.
(FT, 3/4/98, p.IT4)
1998 Mar 20, Thousands of
protestors attempted to halt a train of atomic waste from southern
Germany from reaching its final destination of Ahaus in northern
Germany.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 21, Christina Nytsch
(11) was found raped and murdered in woods 8 miles from her home in
Struecklingen. In April Police began collecting saliva from 18,000
local men to test for a DNA match. Police found a match and arrested
a suspect in Elisabethfehn in May, 1998. The man, a father of 3
children, confessed to another rape of an 11-year-old girl in Jan,
1996.
(SFC, 4/10/98, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A24)
1998 Mar 27, Ferdinand Porsche,
creator of the Porsche sports car, died at age 88 in Vienna. He was
born in Wiener-Neustadt and moved to Germany with his family after
WW I where his father became chief engineer of Daimler-Benz, the
manufacturer of the Mercedes Benz cars. He wrote an autobiography
titled “Cars Are My Life.”
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.B12)
1998 Mar 30, In Britain the
Rolls-Royce company of Vickers PLC was sold to BMW of Germany for
$570 million. However, BMW was later successfully outbid by
Volkswagen AG
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.B4)(AP, 3/30/08)
1998 Apr 17, Gerhard Schroeder
was endorsed by the Social Democrats to run against Helmut Kohl in
the Sep 27 elections.
(SFC, 4/18/98, p.A10)
1998 Apr 26, The Christian
Democrats lost ground to the Social Democrats in elections in
Saxony-Anhalt. A neo-Nazi party took 13% of the vote. The German
People’s Party (DVU) was largely bankrolled by Gerhard Frey, a
Bavarian millionaire publisher.
(WSJ, 4/27/98, p.A1)(SFC, 7/23/98, p.A10)
1998 May 6, Jurgen Schrempp of
Daimler Benz and Robert Eaton of Chrysler announced in London that
the German auto company will purchase Chrysler in a $38 billion
merger.
(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W1)
1998 May 7, The $34.7 billion
merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler Corp. was confirmed in London.
(USAT, 5/7/98, p.1A)
1998 May 12, Hermann Lenz,
author of the 17 part “Swabian Chronicle” died at age 85.
(SFC, 5/14/98, p.A27)
1998 May 13, Pres. Clinton
traveled to Germany to meet with Chancellor Kohl and commemorate the
50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.
(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A1)
1998 May 28, The German
parliament approved a mass pardon for hundreds of thousands of
people who were punished unjustly by Nazi courts.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.D4)
1998 Jun 1, The European
Central Bank (ECB) was established by the Treaty of Amsterdam. It is
headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. It began operating on Jan 1,
1999.
(www.ecb.int/ecb/orga/escb/html/index.en.html)
1998 Jun 3, The high-speed ICE
884 train derailed near Eschede and 94 people were killed. A damaged
wheel was later cited as the cause.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A1)
1998 Jun 5, Volkswagen won the
bid for Rolls Royce for $703 million.
(SFC, 6/6/98, p.D1)
1998 Jun 27, Some 10,000 gays
and lesbians took part in the 20th commemoration of Christopher St.
Day with a march through Berlin.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.A20)
1998 Jul 11, Some 600,000
people gathered in Berlin for the annual Love Parade, billed as the
largest celebration of techno music.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, p.A18)
1998 Aug 3, Soviet composer
Alfred Schnittke (63) died in Germany. The Kronos Quartet released a
2-disk recording “Alfred Schnittke: The Complete String Quartets”
just weeks before his death.
(WSJ, 8/4/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 10/18/98, DB p.49)
1998 Aug 13, A monument to the
Berlin Wall and the 255 people who died crossing it was dedicated at
the corner of Ackerstrasse and Bernauer Strasse.
(WSJ, 9/10/98, p.A20)
1998 Aug 20, The German
heavy-metal band Rammstein was reported to be making a hit in the US
with their “Sehnsucht” (yearning) album.
(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.B1)
1998 Sep 16, In Germany Mamduh
Mahmud Salim, an alleged terrorist associated with Osama bin Laden,
was arrested.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.C16)
1998 Sep 27, Social Democrat
Gerhard Schroeder won the national elections over Chancellor Helmut
Kohl.
(SFC, 9/28/98, p.A1)
1998 Sep 28, Gerhard Schroeder
announced that he would form a coalition between his Social
Democrats and the Green Party, which received 6.7% of the vote. The
669-seat parliament would have 298 Social Democrats and 47 Greens.
(SFC, 9/29/98, p.A9)
1998 Sep 30, Gerhard Schroeder
visited with Socialist leaders in France and endorsed controls on
capital flows.
(WSJ, 10/1/98, p.A1)
1998 Sep, In the last days
before Kohl handed power over to Gerhard Schroeder, two thirds of
the chancellor’s records were destroyed.
(SFC, 6/29/00, p.A11)
1998 Oct 2, In Europe the new
"Swatchmobile," a 2-seater plastic car by Daimler-Benz, made its
debut. The Smart car was to sell for $8,500 and was rated at 59
miles per gallon.
(WSJ, 10/2/98, p.B1)
1998 Oct 6, The Christian
Democrats named Wolfgang Schaeuble as party leader.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 14, Germany’s new
government proposed to scrap the 1913 citizenship law based on blood
ties. The coalition agreed to promote controlled distribution of
heroin to long-term addicts and to work for expanded rights for gay
couples.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A13)
1998 Oct 15, In Germany the
coalition parties agreed to open talks next year on a timetable for
closing the country’s 19 nuclear power plants.
(WSJ, 10/16/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 20, In Germany the new
government announced a coalition agreement with a plan to reform
taxes, increase employment, and raise gasoline taxes.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 25, Wilhelm Karmann,
designer and builder of sports cars such as the Karmann-Ghia, died
at age 83.
(WSJ, 10/29/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 27, Gerhard Schroeder
was confirmed as chancellor.
(WSJ, 10/27/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct, The Italian freighter
Pallas caught fire in the North Sea and leaked some 10-15 tons of
oil. Hundreds of birds along the northern coast of Germany were
killed by the resulting oil slick.
(SFC, 11/14/98, p.A8)
1998 The film “Changing Skins”
was directed by Andreas Dresen. It was about 2 students who kidnap
their headmaster.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, DB p.12)
1998 The German horror-comedy
film “Killer Condom” opened in the US. It starred Udo Samel and was
directed by Martin Waltz. It was based on the Ralf Konig comic book:
“Kondom des Grauens.” It was about carnivorous condoms that
terrorize patrons in a New York brothel.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.D2)
1998 The film “Rider of the
Flames” (Feuerreiter) was directed by Nina Grosse. It focused on the
life of poet Friedrich Hoelderlin.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, DB p.12)(SFC, 1/14/99, p.D3)
1998 The German film “Trial by
Fire” was a romantic comedy with Janek Rieke.
(SFC, 1/14/99, p.D3)
1998 In Germany Social
Democrat Gerhard Schroeder selected Green Party member Joschka
Fischer as foreign minister. In 2007 Paul Hockenos authored “Joschka
Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An alternative
History of Postwar Germany.”
(Econ, 12/1/07, p.98)
1998 In Germany Angel Merkel
became chairman of the Christian Democrats (CDU). She pushed the
party to accept immigration, a more modern view of the family and a
free-market economy program.
(Econ, 11/25/06, p.52)
1998 Bavaria, Germany, voted to
abolish its Senate.
(Econ, 5/3/08, p.60)
1998 In Germany the Red Army
Faction declared itself disbanded.
(AP, 3/25/07)
1998 In Germany Hartmut Pilch
started his Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) as a Web site. It
grew into an organization dedicated to the idea that basic computer
language should be as free as human speech.
(WSJ, 9/12/06, p.A1)
1998 Wal-Mart purchased the
Wertkauf retailing groups. 21 Wertkauf Gmbh stores were purchased by
Wal-Mart in 1997.
(SFC, 3/30/99, p.F2)(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A1)
1998 Wal-Mart purchased 74
hypermarkets from Spar Handels AG. [see Mar 1999]
(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 1, Germany along with
10 other European Union nations made the transition to the new Euro
monetary system.
(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Jan 1, Weimar began one
year’s title as the European Union’s “city of culture.”
(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T1)
1999 Jan 26, In Germany
Chancellor Schroeder abandoned an ambitious timetable for the
planned shutdown of nuclear power plants.
(SFC, 1/27/99, p.C10)
1999 Jan, The new Jewish Museum
in Berlin was completed. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind. It was
scheduled to open in Sep, 2001.
(SFEC, 8/6/00, DB p.37)(SFC, 1/1/01, p.B6)
1999 Feb 7, In Germany the
Christian Democrats won elections in Hesse state elections putting
the Schroeder government short of a majority in the Bundesrat upper
house.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A10)
1999 Feb 10, In Germany it was
announced that work on the nuclear waste storage dump near Gorleben
would be halted. The site had been planned to store waste from the
country's 19 nuclear reactors.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A17)
1999 Feb 13, Neo-Nazi youths
chased Omar Ben Noui (28) of Algeria, who fled in fear and broke
through a glass door severing an artery. Noui bled to death. In 2000
eight youths were convicted of manslaughter and 3 received jail
terms.
(SFC, 11/14/00, p.A17)
1999 Feb 16, The government
announced a new fund to compensate Eastern European workers who were
enslaved by the Nazis.
(SFC, 2/17/99, p.A12)
1999 Feb 17, In Berlin Israeli
security guards shot and killed 3 Kurds who forced their way into
the Israeli consulate over the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan.
(SFC, 2/18/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 23, Heavy rain and
snow in the Alps left 5 people dead and 13 missing in Austria,
Switzerland, France and Germany. An avalanche in the Austrian Alps
at Galtuer killed 9 people and at least 30 were missing.
(WSJ, 2/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A8)
1999 Mar 11, In Germany Oskar
Lafontaine, the finance minister, resigned following an apparent
power struggle with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Hans Eichel.
Governor of Hesse, was expected to succeed him.
(SFC, 3/12/99, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/12/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 30, It was reported
that Wal-Mart agreed to buy 74 Interspar supermarkets from Germany's
Spar Handels chain.
(SFC, 3/30/99, p.F2)
1999 Apr 12, In Germany a
monorail fell from its suspension rail and plunged 30 feet into the
Wupper river. 3 people were killed and 47 injured in the derailment
of the historic (1901) "hanging railway."
(SFC, 4/13/99, p.A11)
1999 Apr 14, The German
government began to move its capital from Bonn to Berlin. The first
minister moved June 26. The 669 member parliament, 15 federal
ministries and 153 foreign embassies were scheduled to move.
(SFC,11/26/97, p.A9)(SFC, 4/15/99, p.A14)(SFEC,
6/27/99, p.A24)
1999 Apr 25, It was reported
that Germany had fulfilled its pledge to accept 10,000 refugees from
Kosovo.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.A27)
1999 May 5, Pres. Clinton
visited US troops in Germany and conferred with senior NATO
commanders.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A10)
1999 May 7, The lower house
gave final approval to reducing the waiting period for
naturalization from 15 years to 8.
(SFC, 5/8/99, p.C1)
1999 May 20, The US Justice
Dept. settled charges against Roche Holding AG and BASF AG, two of
the largest vitamin makers, for price fixing. Roche agreed to pay
$500 million with a guilty plea, and BASF agreed to pay $225 million
with a guilty plea.
(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)
1999 Jun 4, The Deutsche Bank
AG $9.8 billion acquisition of Bankers Trust, an American Bank, was
finalized.
(Econ, 5/19/07, SR
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankers_Trust)
1999 Jun 9, Germany sent $18
million to the US Treasury for distribution to the survivors of the
WW II concentration camps.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A6)
1999 Jun 23, The Berlin
Philharmonic elected Sir Simon Rattle to succeed Claudio Abado as
chief conductor in Sep. 2002.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.E6)
1999 Jun 25, In Germany the
parliament authorized a national Holocaust memorial designed by
Peter Eisenman of New York. The design featured 2,700 close-set
concrete pillars on a plot of about 100 sq. yards in Berlin.
(SFC, 6/26/99, p.A11)
1999 Jun 27, In Germany a bomb
in Merseburg injured 16 people.
(WSJ, 6/28/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 30, In Germany Turkish
businesses in at least 9 cities were hit by firebombs following the
conviction of Kurdish leader Ocalan.
(SFC, 7/1/99, p.A12)
1999 Jul 1, In Germany Johannes
Rau (68) was sworn in as the 8th postwar president. He succeeded
Roman Herzog as the symbolic head.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A18)
1999 Jul 7, The AMD Fab 30
plant created its 1st copper-based chips at its new plant in
Dresden. The state of Saxony attracted Advanced Micro Devices with a
$500 million package to locate there.
(SFC, 9/6/99, p.C5)
1999 Jul, In Berlin the
techno-party Love Parade drew 1.5 million people.
(SFC, 9/6/99, p.A12)
1999 Aug 25, Chancellor
Schroeder's austerity budget was approved. It called for $16 billion
in spending cuts to help curtail the $1 trillion state debt.
(SFC, 9/23/99, p.A10)
1999 Sep 1, A French judge said
that Alois Brunner, twice convicted wartime private secretary of
Adolf Eichmann, would be tried in absentia in 2000. Brunner was
reported to be living in Damascus under an assumed name.
(SFC, 9/2/99, p.A16)
1999 Sep 4, Martin R. Frankel,
a Connecticut money manager suspected of fraud, was arrested in at
the Hotel Prem in Hamburg, Germany.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, p.A6)
1999 Sep 5, Voters in western
Saarland ousted the Social Democratic Party of Gerhard Schroeder and
in Brandenburg the party's share dropped to force a coalition.
(SFC, 9/6/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 8, The parliament held
its inaugural session in the refurbished Reichstag in Berlin.
(SFC, 9/6/99, p.A12)
1999 Sep 12, The Social
Democrats were ousted from power in elections in Thuringia and
suffered heavy losses in North Rhine-Westphalia.
(WSJ, 9/13/99, p.A1,36)
1999 Sep 15, DaimlerChrysler
unveiled its new Java show car at the Frankfurt auto show.
(WSJ, 9/16/99, p.A25)
1999 Sep 18, The 166th annual
Oktoberfest began in Munich.
(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.T3)
1999 Sep 19, The opposition
Christian Democrats consolidated their control in the state of
Saxony with the defeat of the ruling Social Democrats.
(SFC, 9/20/99, p.A8)
1999 Sep 21, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak of Israel was the 1st foreign leader to visit the new
capital in Berlin.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 30, Gunter Grass,
German novelist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature and cited his
1959 novel "Tin Drum" for restoring honor to German literature.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A2)
1999 Oct 4, Emil Schumacher,
artist, died at age 87. He was known for his abstract style called
"informal art," where the workmanship and application of materials
becomes the image.
(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A26)
1999 Oct 19, In Germany tens of
thousands of workers marched through Berlin to protest the
government's austerity budget and the pay gap between workers in the
east and west.
(SFC, 10/20/99, p.B3)
1999 Oct 26, The US CIA agreed
to give Germany copies of some 32,000 files that belonged to the
Stasi, the former East German intelligence service. The CIA acquired
the files in 1989.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.A13)
1999 Oct 31, In Augsburg,
Germany, leaders of the Roman Catholic and modern Lutheran Churches
signed the Augsburg Accord, a "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification," in a step toward reconciliation. The accord gave
weight to the Lutheran position on salvation through faith and
embraced the Catholic ethic of earthly service.
(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A11,12)
1999 Nov 1, In Bad Reichenhall,
Germany, a teenage gunman and his sister were found dead after
commandos stormed the house from which the boy had shot and killed 2
pedestrians and injured 8 others.
(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A14)
1999 Nov 9, In Meissen a
15-year-old boy stabbed Sigrun Leuteritz (44), a history teacher, 22
times in the chest. He said that he was overcome by an obsessive
compulsion to kill her. In Bielefeld a Turkish man whose marriage
proposal was spurned by a young woman, killed her and 5 members of
her family before shooting himself.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.A29)
1999 Nov 19, In Germany
officials announced an amnesty program for some 20,000 foreigners
seeking asylum. A cut off date of Jul 1, 1993 was set for eligible
families.
(SFC, 11/20/99, p.A12)
1999 Nov 26, In Germany the
parliament approved $16 billion in spending cuts for next year that
included cuts in pensions and jobless benefits.
(SFC, 11/27/99, p.A18)
1999 Nov, Former Chancellor
Helmut Kohl acknowledged that he was aware of secret slush funds in
his Christian Democratic Party (CDU).
(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.A18)
1999 Dec 7, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder won re-election as leader of the Social Democrats.
(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A16)
1999 Dec 7, Lawyers
representing victims of Nazi slave labor rejected a $4.2 billion
compensation offer from German industry and stood by their $5.2 to
$7.9 target range.
(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A14)
1999 Dec 14, In Germany the
government and industry officials agreed to establish nearly $5.2
billion fund to compensate slave laborers of the Nazi regime.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 26, In Europe heavy
winds and rain killed 88 people in France, 17 dead in Germany and 13
dead in Switzerland. A 2nd storm hit a day later. Damages from the
storms were later estimated to be at least $4 billion. The storms
destroyed an estimated 400 million trees across France.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/27/99, p.A1)(SFC,
12/28/99, p.A8)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A11)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/25/09)
1999 The German film "Run Lola
Run" starred Franka Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu and was directed by
Tom Tykwer.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, DB p.36)
1999 The German film
“Sonnenallee” (The Eastie Boys) was directed by Leander Haussmann
and was about fun times in East Berlin in the 1970s.
(SFC, 10/20/99, p.A10)
1999 Germany made it illegal to
bribe foreign officials. Up to this time Siemens claimed tax
deductions for such bribes as what it termed “useful expenditure.”
(Econ, 9/11/10, p.82)
2000 Jan 1 In Germany a new
citizenship law came into force. The new law made it somewhat easier
for foreigners resident in Germany on a long-term basis, and
especially their German-born children, to acquire German
citizenship.
(Econ, 4/5/08,
p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law)
2000 Jan 3, Germany reported
plans to cut the tax on profits from sales of shares held less than
a year, making 50% of the gains taxable rather than 100%. The change
would be effective in 2001.
(WSJ, 1/4/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 7, It was reported
that a recent series of tax cuts announced by Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder included a corporate exemption on capital gains taxes on
the sale of shares in other corporations. Current capital gains
taxes were close to 60%.
(WSJ, 1/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Jan 11, An EU court ruled
in favor of a German woman who claimed that a German constitutional
ban against women bearing arms amounts to sexual discrimination.
(SFC, 1/12/00, p.A11)
2000 Jan 16, Prince Ernst
August of Hannover (b.1954), a great-grandson of the last German
emperor, Wilhelm II, slapped hotel owner Josef Brunlehner on Lamu
Island, Kenya, allegedly as a symbolic reproach over noise from a
disco. He was pursued in Germany where the law allows prosecutors to
charge citizens who commit crimes abroad. August was convicted in
2004 and fined $633,000. In 2010 August was retried on charges of
causing serious bodily harm. On march 9, 2010, a German judge
sentenced Prince August to pay a fine of euro200,000 ($270,000)
after convicting him for the decade-old altercation.
(AP, 1/13/10)(SFC, 1/14/10,
p.A2)(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-6780117.html)(AP, 3/9/10)
2000 Jan 20, In Germany
Wolfgang Huellen (49), a finance official of the Christian
Democratic Party, committed suicide in Berlin over fear of an audit
of the party's finances.
(SFC, 1/21/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 3, Vodafone AirTouch
PLC of Britain took over Mannesmann AG of Germany for a record $170
billion in stock.
(SFC, 2/4/00, p.A1)
2000 cFeb 5, In Germany a train
derailed and ploughed into a house outside of Cologne and 6 people
were killed with 20 injured.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A4)
2000 Feb 15, In Germany the
Christian Democrats were ordered to return over $20 million in state
campaign funds for breaking campaign finance laws.
(SFC, 2/16/00, p.A8)
2000 Feb 16, In Germany
Wolfgang Schaeuble, leader of the Christian Democrats, resigned.
(SFC, 2/17/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 16, In Israel German
Pres. Johannes Rau spoke before the parliament and gave an apology
for WW II Nazi genocide.
(SFC, 2/17/00, p.D3)
2000 Feb 27, In Germany voters
in Schleswig-Holstein gave victory to the Social Democrats over the
Christian Democrats in the 1st elections following the financial
scandals of Helmut Kohl and the Christian Democrats. Heidi Simonis
was returned to office as state premier.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 27, In Germany 3
teenagers of American soldiers hurled large stones off a pedestrian
bridge in Darmstadt and killed Sandra Ottman (20) and Karin
Rothermel (41). The 3 teens were convicted of murder and sentenced
up to 8 ½ years in prison.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A13)(SFC, 12/23/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 17, Old East German
Stasi files revealed that radioactive material was used to mark
opponents, their papers and money. East German dissident writer
Rudolf Bahro, who died of Leukemia, may have been a victim.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.C16)
2000 Mar 20, In Germany Angela
Merkel (45) became the first woman to head the Christian Democratic
Union.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 23, Horst Koehler (57)
of Germany, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, became the new president of the 182-nation IMF
following endorsement by the 24-member board of directors.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D4)
2000 Mar 23, Germany completed
a $5 billion agreement on how to allocate funds among surviving
forced laborers and other workers in Hitler's concentration camps.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.A12)
2000 May 3, The trial began of
former East German officials responsible for administering steroids
to 142 female athletes from 1974-1989.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
2000 Jun 1, In Germany the Expo
2000 opened in Hanover and ran to Oct 31.
(WSJ, 6/29/00, p.A24)
2000 Jun 10, In Germany the
3-day Rock of the Ring music festival in Neurburg drew some 100,000
people to see 90 bands.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A31)
2000 Jun 11, In Dessau Alberto
Adriano (39), a 20-year German resident from Mozambique, was kicked
to death by 3 men. Enrico Hilprecht (24) was later convicted and
sentenced to life in prison. Two 16-year-old accomplices were
sentenced to 9 years each.
(SFC, 8/31/00, p.A1)
2000 Jun 14, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder agreed with heads of the nuclear power industry to end the
use of atomic energy. With an expected life span of 32 years closure
of all 17 plants would occur by 2020. In 2005 the timetable was
confirmed. In 2007 an expansion of the timetable for closure was up
for consideration.
(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A16)(Econ, 2/10/07, p.50)
2000 Jun 26, In Germany a
6-year-old Turkish boy was attacked and killed in a school yard in
Hamburg by a pit bull and a Staffordshire terrier. The attack led
German states to enact new rules on dog ownership.
(SFC, 7/1/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun, Ernst Nolte,
historian, won the Konrad Adenauer Prize for literature. Nolte held
that Hitler’s anti-Semitism had a rational core as a riposte to
Bolshevism.
(SFC, 6/21/00, p.A13)
2000 Jul 6, The parliament
approved legislation to govern a $5 billion humanitarian fund for
Nazi-era slave workers and other victims of the Holocaust.
(SFC, 7/7/00, p.A18)
2000 Jul 7, German drug maker
Boehringer Ingelheim said it would donate nevirapine, a drug to help
prevent the transmission of AIDS from mothers to infants, to every
nation in the developing world that asks for it.
(SFC, 7/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 10, DASA (minus MTU)
merged with Aerospatiale-Matra of France and Construcciones
Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) of Spain to form the European
Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). DASA was founded as
Deutsche Aerospace AG on May 19, 1989 by the merger of
Daimler-Benz's aerospace interests (MTU, Dornier and two divisions
of AEG). In July 1989 the two AEG divisions were themselves merged
within Deutsche Aerospace to form Telefunken Systemtechnik (TST). In
December 1989 Daimler-Benz acquired Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm
(MBB) and merged it into DASA.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASA)
2000 Jul 14, The left-of-center
Parliament passed a major tax-cut program.
(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A16)
2000 Jul 16, In Ludwigshafen 4
young neo-Nazis firebombed a refugee center and injured 3 children
from Kosovo. They were later sentenced up to 5 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/15/00, p.B2)
2000 Jul 27, In Germany an
explosive device detonated and injured 9 people at a train station
in Duesseldorf.
(SFC, 7/28/00, p.D3)
2000 Aug 11, In Hamburg
officials closed the Hamburger Sturm, a neo-Nazi newspaper.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A11)
2000 Sep 14, Germany banned the
Blood and Honor skinhead group saying it spread Nazism through
music, magazines and web sites.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.D4)
2000 Sep 15, Truckers across
Europe blocked highways to protest high fuel costs. Protests hit
Spain, Germany, Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 4, The Bucerius Law
School in Hamburg opened as Germany’s 1st private law school.
(WSJ, 9/13/00, p.A18)
2000 Nov 9, Hundreds of
thousands of Germans marched to condemn a wave of right-wing
violence in an “Uprising of the Upright.”
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A16)
2000 Nov 24, Germany and the
Portuguese Azore Islands recorded new cases of mad cow disease.
(SFC, 11/25/00, p.A16)
2000 Nov, Metin Kaplan was
sentenced in Germany for operating a terrorist organization. His
group had planned to bomb Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara with an
airplane packed with explosives on Turkey’s 75th anniversary.
Kaplan, known as the “caliph of Cologne,” was extradited to Turkey
in 2004.
(SFC, 2/5/02, p.A9)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.53)
2000 Dec 13, Munich prosecutors
opened an insider trading and fraud investigation of Thomas Haffa,
head of EM.TV.
(WSJ, 1/18/00, p.A10)
2000 Germany’s coalition
government of leftists and Greens passed a law forbidding the
shutdown of the country’s 19 nuclear reactors by 2020.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.72)
2000 The German power group
E.ON was formed through the merger of Veba and Viag.
(Econ, 2/25/06, p.71)
2001 Jan 10, Chancellor
Schroeder created a new super-ministry for food, agriculture and
consumer protection to combat mad cow disease.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.A14)
2001 Jan 26, The lower house
passed an overhaul of the national pension system.
(SFC, 1/27/01, p.C16)
2001 Jan 31, Germany announced
plans to destroy 400,000 cattle due to the mad cow crises.
(SFC, 2/2/01, p.D4)
2001 Feb 8, Ex-Chancellor Kohl
agreed to pay a fine to close a slush fund investigation.
(WSJ, 2/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 25, The Social
Democrats posted big gains in 2 state elections, while the Greens
lost ground.
(WSJ, 3/26/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 27, Some 20,000 police
blocked protesters who sought to block a train delivering
radioactive waste from France. The German nuclear waste was
reprocessed in France and returned.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 29, Pres. Bush met
with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who disagreed with Bush’s
opposition to the 1997 Kyoto global-warming accord. It was later
revealed that the 2 men agreed to withhold aid for Russia until
corruption ceased.
(SFC, 3/30/01, p.A9)(WSJ, 5/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 30, SAP, a large
German software firm, announced that it would buy bought Top Tier, a
small Israeli software firm founded by Shai Agassi, for $400
million. Top Tier enabled business partners to access SAP
applications using a web interface. In 2007 Agassi left SAP and
founded Better Place, a company dedicated to building a global
network of charging and battery-exchange stations to make electric
cars a mass-market proposition.
(http://irrationalbusiness.com/new/research/shorttakes/4102001.html)(Econ,
5/2/09, p.68)
2001 Mar, In Rotenberg,
Germany, Armin Meiwes (39) killed and ate Bernd Juergen Brandes (43)
by agreement. In 2004 Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and
sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison. A Frankfurt court in May
2006 overturned that conviction and threw out the defense argument
that Meiwes had acted on his victim's request. In 2008 Meiwes was
sentenced to life in prison after a court rejected his appeal.
(SFC, 1/31/04, p.A1)(AP, 10/24/08)
2001 Apr 10, Germany’s PM
Schroeder ended 2 days of talks with Pres. Putin of Russia, but no
agreement was reached on Russian debt.
(WSJ, 4/11/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 30, It was reported
that Germany’s Chancellor Schroeder had proposed a draft for turning
the EU Executive Commission into a European government and giving
the EU Parliament full power over the 15-nation budget.
(SFC, 4/30/01, p.A8)
2001 May 2, Germany inaugurated
its new Chancellery in Berlin designed by Axel Schultes.
(SFC, 5/3/01, p.B2)
2001 May 11, Chancellor
Schroeder pushed threw a reform of the pension system that would
gradually force citizens to invest for themselves as state
contributions decreased.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.A10)
2001 May 30 Lawmakers gave the
final approval for $4.5 billion in payments to the last
uncompensated Nazi victims of slave labor.
(SFC, 5/31/01, p.A12)
2001 Jun 11, Chancellor
Schroeder and leading energy companies signed an agreement to shut
down the country’s 19 nuclear power plants. Average operation was
limited to 32 years and the last would close around 2021.
(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)
2001 Jun 12, It was reported
that Berlin suffered from a $30 million debt. The left-right
coalition under mayor Eberhard Diepgen recently collapsed.
(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A10)
2001 Jun 16, Klaus Wowereit,
who recently announced that he was gay, was sworn in as Mayor of
Berlin.
(SFC, 6/16/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 5, Hannelore Kohl
(68), the wife of Chancellor Kohl, was found dead from suicide in
Oggersheim. She suffered from a rare light allergy.
(SFC, 7/6/01, p.A18)
2001 Jul 23, In Bonn, Germany,
negotiators from 178 nations, without the US, rescued the 1997 Kyoto
Protocol and accepted rules to cut emissions of waste gases linked
to global warming after marathon talks.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.3A)(SFC, 7/24/01, p.A1)(AP,
7/23/02)
2001 Aug 1, In Germany
legislation went into effect offering legal status to same-sex
couples.
(SFC, 8/2/01, p.A9)
2001 Oct 18, Germany issued an
int’l. arrest warrant for Zakariya Essabar (24) for links to the
bombing of the WTC.
(SFC, 10/20/01, p.A5)
2001 Oct 21, In Berlin the
Social Democrats held on to power in municipal elections, but would
have to form a coalition to govern.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
2001 Nov 6, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder said he would activate 3,900 troops for action in
Afghanistan.
(SFC, 11/7/01, p.A5)
2001 Nov 28, German authorities
arrested Mounir El Motassadeq (27), on suspicion of funneling money
to the Sep 11 hijackers.
(SFC, 11/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 5, Afghan delegates in
Koenigswinter, Germany, signed an agreement for an interim
post-Taliban government to begin Dec 22.
(SFC, 12/6/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/5/02)
2001 Dec 14, W.G. Sebald
(b.1944), author, died in a car accident. His books included “The
Emigrants” (1996), “The Rings of Saturn” (1998) and “Austerlitz”
(2001).
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.M4)
2001 Gitta Sereny authored “The
Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections, Germany, 1938-2001.”
(SSFC, 12/16/01, p.M3)
2001 The OECD’s Program for
Int’l. Student Assessment (PISA) ranked Germany 21st in reading
skills and 20th in math and science among the 31 countries assessed.
Data collection began in 2000.
(Econ, 2/11/06, Survey
p.7)(http://tinyurl.com/n3jmd)
2002 Jan 18, Bayer AG disclosed
that as many as 100 deaths might be linked to Baycol, a promising
cholesterol drug that was withdrawn in Aug 2001.
(WSJ, 1/21/02, p.A10)
2002 Feb 6, German unemployment
figures for January rose to 4 million.
(SFC, 2/7/02, p.A11)
2002 Feb 19, In Germany a man,
who recently lost his job, killed 2 ex-bosses and the principal of
his former high school in Freising.
(WSJ, 2/20/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 6, It was reported
that new regulations (Kuschelregel, the cuddle rule) required German
pig farmers to spend at least 20 seconds each day looking at each
pig.
(WSJ, 3/6/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 6, In Kabul,
Afghanistan, 3 Danish and 2 German peacekeeping soldiers were killed
while defusing a soviet era missile.
(WSJ, 3/7/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 17, Luise Rinser (90),
author, died. Her work included “The Glass Rings” (1941), “A Woman’s
Prison Journal” (1946) and “Diary of a North Korean Journey.”
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A20)
2002 Mar 13, Hans-Georg Gadamer
(102), German philosopher and influential in hermeneutics (the study
of the understanding and meaning of texts), died. His work included
“Truth and Method” (1960).
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
2002 Apr 8, It was reported
that state undercover agents accounted for some of the most
extremist statements made by the 7,500 member, right-wing, National
Democratic Party.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A3)
2002 Apr 11, In Tunisia a gas
tanker truck crashed into the wall of a synagogue on the island of
Djerba and killed 16 people including 11 German tourists. The
government at first called it an accident. Later evidence indicated
that it was an act of terrorism.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.A17)(SFC, 4/17/02, p.A8)(SFC,
4/24/02, p.A7)
2002 Apr 19, Thieves stole 9
expressionist paintings from the Bruecke-Museum in Berlin.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A17)
2002 Apr 21, Opposition
conservatives won elections in the Saxony-Anhalt. The Christian
Democrats 15% gain was a boost to Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian
governor seeking to beat Schroeder Sep 22.
(SFC, 4/22/02, p.A5)
2002 Apr 23, German police
arrested 11 suspected Islamic militants during a sweep against Al
Tawhid (Divine Unity), a Sunni Muslim and Palestinian movement.
(SFC, 4/24/02, p.A8)
2002 Apr 26, In Erfurt,
Germany, Robert Steinhaueser (19), shot and killed 12 teachers, 2
students, a deputy principal, a school secretary and a police
officer before he killed himself. He was angry for being expelled
due to poor grades.
(SFC, 4/27/02, p.A1)
2002 May 15, Metalworkers in
Baden-Wuerttemberg won a higher than expected wage increase that
included 4% in June and 3.1% in 2003. A 10-day strike was expected
to end.
(WSJ, 5/16/02, p.A1)
2002 May 21, There were
anti-war protests in Berlin on the eve of Pres. Bush’s arrival.
(WSJ, 5/22/02, p.A1)
2002 May 23, Pres. Bush at a
Berlin press conference said that he expects Pres. Putin to “get on
board” with America’s hard-line policy toward Iran and Iraq. Bush
also addressed the German Parliament and said terrorist groups
constitute a “new totalitarian threat,” and then flew on to Moscow.
(SFC, 5/24/02, p.A1)
2002 Jun 17, German
construction workers launched their first major strike in more than
50 years, following members of the country's main manufacturing
union in walking out earlier this year to back up demands for higher
wages.
(AP, 6/17/02)
2002 Jun 24, In Germany 2
people were killed and two others seriously injured in a drive-by
shooting in downtown Dortmund.
(AP, 6/24/02)
2002 Jun 27, A German police
wiretap revealed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi planned to launch a
terror attack in Germany.
(WSJ, 1/31/06, p.A6)
2002 Jun 27, The mayor of the
Bavarian town of Roeckingen, who has been missing since early March,
was found dead in a forest in the western Czech Republic.
(AP, 6/27/02)
2002 Jun 30, Ronaldo, the
world's greatest goal-scorer, capitalized on an error by the best
goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, then scored again to lift Brazil to an
unprecedented fifth World Cup title Sunday night, 2-0 over Germany.
(AP, 6/30/02)
2002 Jun, The 11th edition of
the Documenta art event, held every 5 years, opened in Kassel,
Germany, under Nigerian-born director Okwui Enwezor.
(SFC, 7/24/02, p.D8)
2002 Jul 1, Bashkirian flight
2937 with 45 Russian children headed for a beach vacation in Spain
were among 71 people killed when their chartered Tupolev airliner
slammed into a Boeing 757 DHL cargo plane over southern Germany. The
flights were under Swiss air control. An onboard device told the
pilot to climb but he followed a controller’s order to dive instead.
In 2007 four employees of a Swiss air traffic control company were
convicted of negligent homicide for the crash of flight 2937.
(AP, 7/2/02)(SFC, 7/2/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/2/02,
p.A1)(SFC, 7/3/02, p.A6)(WSJ, 7/9/02, p.A1)(AP, 9/4/07)
2002 Jul 3, Swiss authorities
said a collision-warning system was out of service in the Zurich
tower when it took control of a Russian airliner and a cargo jet
shortly before they collided on July 1 at 35,000 feet, killing 71
people, including 45 children headed for an end-of-school beach
holiday. One of 2 required air controllers was on a break.
(AP, 7/3/02)(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A8)
2002 Jul 3, It was reported
that up to 40,000 companies might collapse in Germany this year.
(SFC, 7/3/02, p.A12)
2002 Jul 18, In Germany
Chancellor Schroeder fired defense minister Rudolf Scharping for
accepting some $72,000 in payments from a public relations firm.
(SFC, 7/19/02, p.A18)
2002 Jul, A German police
investigation linked Muhammad Sultan to an alleged terror-attack
plan.
(WSJ, 1/31/06, p.A6)
2002 Aug 16, In Germany
authorities evacuated thousands of people near Dresden's historic
center as floodwaters in the Elbe River rose to a record high and
spilled into a square close to some of the city's cultural
landmarks.
(AP, 8/16/02)
2002 Aug 20, In Germany 5
members of the Iraqi Opposition of Germany took over the Iraqi
embassy. German police commandos freed two senior diplomats from
armed men who had stormed the Iraqi embassy, bringing a bloodless
end to a five-hour hostage drama by a previously unknown group
opposed to Saddam Hussein.
(SFC, 8/20/02, p.A7)(AP, 8/20/03)
2002 Aug 28, Germany awarded
its Goethe Prize to Marcel Reich-Ranicki, literary critic and
Polish-born Holocaust survivor.
(SFC, 9/2/02, p.D5)
2002 Sep 19, German police
stormed homes and froze bank accounts across the country after
outlawing 16 more groups linked to a jailed Islamic militant accused
of plotting an airplane attack in Turkey.
(AP, 9/19/02)
2002 Sep 22, Gerhard
Schroeder's Social Democrats held onto power in Germany's closest
postwar election, but the chancellor will face a tougher opposition
as he tries to reduce unemployment and revive the economy. The
parliamentary elections pitted center-left Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder against conservative challenger, Bavarian governor Edmund
Stoiber.
(Reuters, 9/22/02)(AP, 9/23/02)
2002 Sep 27, Police in Lebanon
arrested Muhammad Sultan on charges of forging passports and
supporting a terrorist group based on German police investigations.
Sultan was released in 2004 after serving a 3½ year
sentence.
(WSJ, 1/31/06, p.A6)
2002 Oct 1, German police found
the body of Jakob von Metzler, 11-year-old heir to a Frankfurt
family banking fortune, bundled under a lakeside dock, days after
the boy was kidnapped and a nearly million-dollar ransom was paid.
In 2003 Magnus Gaefgen (28) told the Frankfurt state court that he
had not intended the Sept. 27 kidnapping to end in death. He was
convicted of kidnapping and murdering Metzler and sentenced to life
in prison. In 2011 Gaefgen was awarded euro3,000 ($4,290) in damages
because a police officer had threatened violence during an
interrogation.
(AP, 10/1/02)(AP, 4/11/03)(AP, 8/4/11)
2002 Nov 7, Rudolf Augstein
(79), who founded the U.S.-style Der Spiegel newsweekly in the ruins
of post-war Germany and turned it into the country's most respected
magazine, died of pneumonia.
(AP, 11/7/02)
2002 Nov 12, An explosion at a
private ammunition warehouse in an eastern German town killed at
least three people.
(AP, 11/12/02)
2002 Dec 21, In Afghanistan 6
people in a German military helicopter and up to eight on the ground
were killed when the aircraft crashed before landing at an airport
near the capital Kabul.
(Reuters, 12/21/02)
2002 The German film “Nirgendwo
in Afrika” (Nowhere in Africa) won an Oscar.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.83)
2003 Jan 22, France and Germany
joined forces to prevent any U.S.-led war on Iraq.
(Reuters, 1/22/03)
2003 Feb 3, Germany began its
first working day as president of the U.N. Security Council.
(AP, 2/4/03)
2003 Feb 19, In Germany
Mounir el Motassadeq (28) was sentenced to the maximum 15 years in
prison for helping the Hamburg-based al-Qaida terror cell in the
9/11 attacks on the US.
(AP, 2/19/03)
2003 Mar 5, The foreign
ministers of France, Germany and Russia said they will block any
attempt to get U.N. approval for war against Iraq.
(AP, 3/5/03)
2003 Mar 14, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder gave a speech before the German Bundestag outlining the
proposed plans for reform. He pointed out three main areas which the
agenda would focus on: the economy, the system of social security,
and Germany's position on the world market. The agenda came to be
called Agenda 2010, a reference to the Lisbon Strategy's 2010
deadline.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010)
2003 Mar-2004 Jul, In Germany
29 patients died at a Bavarian hospital. The deaths at Sonthofen of
17 female and 12 male patients (aged 40-94) were caused by a male
nurse. He used a mixture of the sedative midazolam, the anesthetic
etomidate and the muscle relaxant lysthenon to kill the patients. In
2005 the nurse was charged with murder.
(AP, 9/15/05)
2003 Apr 3, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder said he hoped for a quick victory by US and
British forces in Iraq.
(WSJ, 4/4/03, p.A7)
2003 Apr 4, In Algeria
searchers using camels and helicopters equipped with heat-seeking
sensors scoured the Sahara Desert for 21 tourists, mostly Germans,
who vanished in Algeria over the past six weeks.
(AP, 4/4/03)
2003 Apr 11, The leaders of
Russia, France and Germany gathered for a summit that was expected
to push for the United Nations to play the leading role after the
end of hostilities in Iraq.
(AP, 4/11/03)
2003 Apr 29, The leaders of
France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, all critics of the U.S.-led
war on Iraq, agreed to beef up their military cooperation in an
effort to make Europe's defense less reliant on the US.
(AP, 4/29/03)
2003 May 3, It was reported
that half of Germany's bee colonies failed to survive the winter due
to a mite that began spreading from Southeast Asia about 90 years
ago.
(SFC, 5/3/03, p.B8)
2003 May 8, In Hungary a
passenger train collided with a double-decker bus, slicing the bus
in two. At least 30 people were killed, all German tourists on the
bus.
(AP, 5/8/03)
2003 May 15, The economies of
Germany, Netherlands and Italy contracted during the first three
months of 2003 as the European Union as a whole showed no growth for
the first time in almost two years.
(AP, 5/16/03)
2003 May 17, A German tour bus
overturned on a French highway in heavy rain, killing at least 28 of
the 74 people on board.
(AP, 5/17/03)
2003 May, Germany published its
voluntary corporate governance code.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.72)
2003 May, Munich, Germany,
ousted Microsoft from 14,000 government computers in favor of Linux.
(Econ, 9/13/03, p.59)
2003 Jun 7, In Germany a new
law allowed stores to stay open 4 extra hours to 8 p.m.
(AP, 6/6/03)
2003 Jun 8, In Germany storms
left 10 people dead.
(WSJ, 6/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jun 20, A 31-nation
conference in Germany agreed to expand efforts to combat terrorist
financing and money laundering. The Financial Action Task Force
issued a 40-point program to keep international law enforcement
abreast of criminals' increasingly sophisticated efforts to conceal
illegal money flows.
(AP, 6/20/03)
2003 Jun 21, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder appealed for a swift end to three weeks of union strikes
demanding a shorter work week in formerly communist eastern Germany,
warning of further damage to the already weak economy.
(AP, 6/21/03)
2003 Jun 29, German Chancellor
Gerhard announced a plan to bring forward tax cuts worth about $20.6
billion, a move that could inject new life into Europe's largest
economy.
(AP, 6/29/03)
2003 Jul 10, Unemployment in
Germany was reported to be around 11% with social spending close to
30% of the gross domestic product.
(WSJ, 7/10/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul 12, In Germany Techno
fans took part in the 15th Love Parade in Berlin. Hundreds of
thousands fans of techno music were expected to join the event.
(AP, 7/12/03)
2003 Aug 27, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder said that Germany was committed to deploying troops to
northern Afghanistan to support reconstruction efforts.
(AP, 8/28/03)
2003 Sep 8, Leni Riefenstahl
(101), filmmaker, died in Bavaria. Her depiction of Hitler's
Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will," was renowned and despised as
the best propaganda film ever made. In 2007 Steven Bach authored
“Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl” and Jurgen Trimborn
authored “Leni Riefenstahl: A Life.”
(AP, 9/9/03)(SFC, 9/10/03, p.A19)(Econ, 3/10/07,
p.82)
2003 Sep 21, In Germany
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party suffered a bitter defeat in
state elections that focused on Germany's stagnating economy.
(AP, 9/21/03)
2003 Sep 26, German authorities
reported that they have broken up 38 child-pornography rings with
links to tens of thousands of suspects around the world, including
the US.
(AP, 9/27/03)
2003 Oct 12, Germany won the
Women's Soccer World Cup 2-1 over Sweden in the eighth minute of
overtime.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2003 Oct 17, German lawmakers
approved an $18 billion tax cut for next year and reductions in
jobless benefits.
(AP, 10/17/03)
2003 Nov 1, About 100,000
people took to the streets of Berlin to demonstrate against
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's plans to trim Germany's generous
welfare state.
(AP, 11/1/03)
2003 Nov 4, Germany's defense
minister dismissed the head of the country's elite special forces
after the general praised a conservative lawmaker under
investigation for alleged anti-Semitic remarks.
(AP, 11/4/03)
2003 Nov 12, A convoy carrying
radioactive waste from a French reprocessing plant reached a storage
site in northern Germany.
(AP, 11/13/03)
2003 Nov 20, Advanced Micro
Devices said it would build $2.4 billion chip factory in
Germany to produce microprocessors on 300-mm silicon wafers.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.B1)
2003 Nov 28, Konrad Adenauer,
chancellor from 1949 to 1963, won the most votes in a survey
conducted by a public television station to name the greatest German
of all time. Martin Luther came in 2nd and Karl Marx 3rd.
(AP, 11/29/03)
2003 Dec 11, A German court
freed a Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 al-Qaida terror
cell in Hamburg, saying there was new evidence he did not know about
the plot.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 13, Tens of thousands
of students took to the streets of three German cities, protesting
government plans to slash funding for universities.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 15, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder salvaged a deal to which he has tied his political future,
a plan to spur Germany's economy by cutting taxes, trimming
welfare-state benefits and loosening stringent worker protection
laws.
(AP, 12/15/03)
2003 Dec 16, US special envoy
James A. Baker III said France, Germany and the US agreed to seek
reductions in Iraq's foreign debt within the Paris Club of creditor
nations.
(AP, 12/16/03)(SFC, 12/17/03, p.A18)
2003 Dec 20, A German bus
swerved off a Belgian highway, crashed against a concrete divider
and caught fire, killing 12 people and injuring dozens more.
(AP, 12/20/03)
2003 Dec 19, German lawmakers
adopted a package of tax cuts and looser employment laws.
(SFC, 12/20/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 31, Security forces
boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named
Khaled el-Masri (b.1963). For the next five months, el-Masri was a
ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked
to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan. He was the
wrong guy. El-Masri was dumped in Albania in a remote hillside on
May 28, 2004, without explanation or apology. Five months later
Germany withdrew warrants for the arrest of 13 CIA agents.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri)(AP, 2/9/11)(SSFC,
3/6/11, p.F6)
2003 The German film “Goodbye
Lenin,” directed by Wolfgang Becker, became a big hit grossing $80
million.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.83)
2003 Xing, a professional
social network website, was founded by Lars Hinrichs of Hamburg,
Germany. It went public in 2006.
(Econ, 9/27/08, p.76)
2003 Bavaria originated a local
currency called the chiemgauer, named after the region where it
originated. The currency was created to lose value every month and
could be renewed for a sticker costing 2% of its value, which
encouraged quick spending.
(Econ, 1/24/09, p.81)
2004 Jan 9, The German
Neuzeller Kloster Brewery announced plans to introduce its
"Anti-Aging-Bier" this year and sell it in grocery and drug stores.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Feb 29, In Germany
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party was handed a stinging defeat by
voters in Hamburg in elections reflecting the pent-up anger over his
push to cut cherished state benefits.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Mar 16, Two Germans
working on a water-supply project south of Baghdad were shot to
death, and their deaths brought to six the number of foreigners
killed in drive-by shootings in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/16/04)
2004 Apr 3, Hundreds of
thousands of Germans protested against Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder's unpopular drive to trim the welfare state.
(AP, 4/3/04)
2004 Apr 7, In Germany a court
in Hamburg released Mounir el-Motassadeq (30), the only man
convicted so far of involvement in the Sep 11, 2001, attacks.
(WSJ, 4/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr 21, Two German fighter
jets collided and crashed in the country's north, police said. The
two-person crew of one plane died and the other crew parachuted to
safety.
(AP, 4/21/04)
2004 May 3, The fast-spreading
"Sasser" computer worm has infected hundreds of thousands of PCs
globally and the number could soon rise sharply. When a machine is
infected, error messages may appear and the computer may reboot
repeatedly.
(Reuters, 5/3/04)
2004 May 7, German authorities
arrested Sven Jaschen, an 18-year-old high school student, for
creating the "Sasser" network computer worm. Jaschan also
confessed to writing the Netsky virus and was suspected to be
responsible for 70% of the 2004 virus infections. In 2005 Jaschan
was found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data.
He was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months.
(AP, 5/8/04)(USAT, 5/11/04, p.4B)(SFC, 7/29/04,
p.C3)(AP, 7/8/05)
2004 May 13, France and Germany
declared an intention to formulate a joint industrial policy aimed
at creating a framework for mergers and joint ventures.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.55)
2004 May 23, In Germany Horst
Koehler, a former head of the IMF and advocate of bolder economic
reforms, was elected as the country's 9th postwar president.
(AP, 5/23/04)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.47)
2004 Jun 10, German researchers
reported that a border collie named Rico understands more than 200
words and can learn new ones as quickly as many children.
(AP, 6/10/04)
2004 Jun 15, In Germany
Volkswagen fired Klaus-Joachim Gebauer, a midlevel personnel
manager, for alleged embezzlement. Gebauer soon began telling
stories of management sex junkets in Brazil, India and other places.
(WSJ, 11/17/05, p.A1)
2004 Jun 18, Germany's
parliament passed a measure that will allow the military to shoot
down hijacked airliners in German airspace if they are deemed a
threat.
(AP, 6/18/04)
2004 Jun 26, In Berlin,
Germany, hundreds of thousands of revelers sporting costumes from
full Victorian garb to skimpy leather outfits and feather boas
celebrated gay pride.
(AP, 6/26/04)
2004 Jun 28, In Germany
Mozart's opera "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail" (The Abduction from
the Seraglio) has caused a scandal in Berlin. A new production
featured rape, torture and masturbation, a nude bass singing an aria
in the shower and a cross-dressing hero who rounds off the night by
slaughtering a troupe of semi-naked prostitutes.
(AP, 6/28/04)
2004 Jul 1, Horst Koehler,
former IMF, head was sworn in as Germany's 9th post-war president.
(AP, 7/1/04)
2004 Jun 3, Germany’s Goethe
Center opened a reading room in Pyongyang, North Korea.
(www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1207346,00.html)
2004 Jul 9, Cpl. Wassef Ali
Hassoun (24) arrived in Germany from Lebanon, where he had turned up
at the US Embassy in Beirut a day earlier. He had been missing since
June 20 from his base near the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah. The
Pentagon announced that Hassoun would be charged with desertion,
larceny and wrongful disposition of military property in connection
with his service-issued M9 pistol that disappeared with him and
never turned up. On January 4, 2005, he was again labeled a deserter
after failing to return to his base at Camp Lejeune in North
Carolina from authorized leave. He was reportedly in Lebanon.
(AP, 7/10/04)(SFC, 7/9/04,
p.A1)(www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/05/hassoun.case/index.html)
2004 Jul 17, In Germany
thousands of DaimlerChrysler workers walked off the job, extending
protests against threats to cut jobs if employees don't accept steps
to cut labor costs.
(AP, 7/17/04)
2004 Jul 13, Carlos
Kleiber (b.1930), German conductor, died. He was buried in Slovenia
next to his wife. He was considered as one of the great conductors
of the 20th century.
(www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/obituary/0,12723,1265571,00.html)
2004 Jul 22, A court in
Dusseldorf, Germany, acquitted all 6 defendants in the 6-month
Mannesmann trial. They were accused of committing a breach of trust
relating to bonuses paid to CEO Klaus Esser and other executives
following the 2000 sale of Mannesmann to Vodafone.
(Econ, 7/24/04, p.60)
2004 Jul, In Germany Hartz IV
was voted into law. It limited unemployment pay to the 1st year out
of work, after which a much lower social security benefit kicked in.
The Hartz laws originated in 2002 when Chancellor Schroder asked
Peter Hartz, personnel chief at Volkswagen, to propose reforms in
Germany’s labor market.
(Econ, 9/4/04, p.62)(Econ, 2/11/06, Survey p.9)
2004 Sep 1, In Germany
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Cabinet agreed to forego a 4.4
percent pay raise for itself and top civil servants in an attempt to
help fight the country's burgeoning budget deficit.
(AP, 9/1/04)
2004 Sep 2, In Germany a fire
in Weimar's Duchess Anna Amalia Library caused the loss or damage of
thousands of irreplaceable books. Some 6,000 historical works were
saved.
(AP, 9/3/04)
2004 Sep 18, Munich's mayor
opened the southern city's 171st Oktoberfest festival for a crowd of
some 500,000.
(AP, 9/18/04)
2004 Sep 19, In Germany the
neo-Nazi National Democratic Party took 9.2% of the vote in Saxony
and secured 12 seats.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.63)
2004 Oct 5, New data showed
unemployment in Germany, the eurozone's biggest economy, is
continuing to rise and could even reach five million by the winter.
(AP, 10/5/04)
2004 Oct 14, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder arrived in Libya for an official visit during
which he is to hold talks with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
(AP, 10/14/04)
2004 Oct 15, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi clashed over Iraq
during their first-ever meeting in Tripoli while German business
leaders touted for business in the oil-rich former pariah state.
Schroeder praised the reforms of Muammar Gaddafi and invited the
Libyan leader to visit Germany.
(AP, 10/15/04)(Reuters, 10/15/04)
2004 Oct 20, Workers at a
General Motors plant in Bochum, Germany, swallowed their anger over
job cuts and voted to end a seven-day stoppage that has disrupted
output at three other GM car factories.
(AP, 10/20/04)
2004 Nov 20, Germany and the
United States agreed on a proposal to write off as much as 80
percent of Iraq's debt.
(AP, 11/20/04)
2004 Dec 3, In Germany 3 Iraqi
citizens of Kurdish origin were arrested for plotting to kill Iraqi
PM Ayad Allawi. In 2008 the 3 men were convicted and sentenced to
prison. The Stuttgart state court convicted the three men of
attempted participation in murder and membership in terrorist
organization Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to
al-Qaida.
(AP, 7/15/08)
2004 Dec 6, China and Germany
signed contracts worth $2.1 billion for Airbus jets and other
industrial goods. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called for an end to
a 15-year-old European arms embargo on China.
(AP, 12/6/04)
2004 Dec 21, Siemens CEO
Heinrich von Pierer said his German industrial conglomerate has
signed a $2 billion deal to provide Russia's national railway with
60 high speed trains. The InterCityExpress (ICE) trains would
initially run between Moscow and St. Petersburg at speeds of up to
155 miles per hour. They also will be used between St. Petersburg
and Helsinki, Finland, and between other large cities within Russia.
(AP, 12/21/04)
2004 Helmut Jung, WW II private
in Germany’s Seventh Panzer division, authored his WW II memoir “But
Not for the Fuehrer.”
(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
2004 Gabor Steingart authored
"Decline of a Super Star," in which he argued that Germany's history
since 1945 has been a big mistake.
(Econ, 3/27/04, p.50)
2004 The German film “Gegen die
Wand” (Head-On) by Hamburg-born Fatih Akin, won the Berlin film
festival. It was a bleak, violent tale about Turkish-German cultural
crossover.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.83)
2004 The German film “Der
Untergang” (Downfall) by Oliver Hirschbiegel, was about Hitler’s
last days.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.83)
2004 Germany passed an
immigration law that required new immigrants to study German.
(Econ, 2/11/06, Survey p.13)
2004 Statistics from Germany’s
Federal Crime Office (BKA) showed that a quarter of bribes received
this year were by local government officials of whom 53 were mayors.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.67)
2004 BMW unveiled the world's
fastest hydrogen-powered car at the 2004 Paris auto show. Dubbed the
H2R, it can exceed 300 kilometers (185 miles) per hour and reaches
100 km per hour from a standing start in around six seconds.
(Reuters, 9/12/06)
2005 Jan 1, Germany was
forecast for 1.9% annual GDP growth with a population at 82.7
million and GDP per head at $35,540.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.88)
2005 Jan 12, German police
arrested 14 people during raids of apartments and mosques in five
states in a crackdown on an Islamic extremist organization suspected
of aiding terrorists.
(AP, 1/12/05)
2005 Jan 21, A German policeman
was stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors and another taken
hostage when a man they were trying to arrest turned violent.
(AP, 1/21/05)
2005 Feb 2, The EU told Italy,
France and Germany, to do more to bring their budgets in balance as
required by the rules of Europe's single currency.
(AP, 2/2/05)
2005 Feb 2, Max Schmeling
(b.1905), the heavyweight champion whose two fights with Joe Louis
set off a propaganda war between the Nazi regime and the US on the
eve of World War II, died at age 99 at his home in Hollenstedt,
Germany.
(AP, 2/4/05)
2005 Feb 7, Hatun Surucu (23),
a divorced mother, was killed by three shots to her head on a Berlin
street. In 2006 a court convicted Ayhan Surucu, her younger Turkish
brother, of the murder in what prosecutors described as an "honor
killing" meant to punish the woman for her Western lifestyle. Ayhan
was sentenced as a juvenile to nine years and three months in
prison.
(AP, 4/14/06)
2005 Feb 23, Pres. Bush and
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledged to help developing
nations cut back on their output of greenhouse gases.
(SFC, 2/26/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 11, Germany’s
parliament tightened laws against neo-Nazi demonstrations.
(SFC, 3/12/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 12, Customers of the
German Edeka supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their
shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out,
saving up to 40 seconds spent scrabbling for coins or cards.
(Reuters, 3/12/05)
2005 Apr 11, In Germany
thousands of public sector workers staged warning strikes aimed at
forcing German states to agree to a deal that would introduce
performance-rated pay.
(AP, 4/11/05)
2005 Apr 13, It was reported
that German car manufacturers were establishing new museums to
exhibit their history. DaimlerChrysler AG was erecting a museum in
Stuttgart as was Porsche AG, BMW AG was building one in Munich,
while Volkswagen AG had one in its Autostadt theme park in
Wolfsburg.
(WSJ, 4/13/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 19, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger (78) of Germany became Pope Benedict XVI. As the 265th
pope he promised to enforce strictly conservative policies for the
world's Roman Catholics. In Germany Ratzinger's latest book, "Werte
in Zeiten des Umbruchs" (Values in Times of Upheaval), was already
sold out after its release a week ago. Ratzinger viewed secularism
and moral relativism as the chief adversaries of God and the church.
(AP, 4/19/05)(WSJ, 4/20/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr 29, The German
government finally scaled back its 2005 growth forecasts,
acknowledging that its earlier prognosis had been too optimistic in
face of high oil prices and an unexpected economic contraction at
the end of last year.
(AFP, 4/29/05)
2005 May 9, Werner G. Seifert,
the long-serving chief executive of the German stock exchange, was
ousted by The Children's Investment Fund (TCI), a British hedge
fund. In 2006 Seifert authored his account of the affair: “Invasion
der Heuschrecken: Intrigen, Machkampfe, Marktmanipulation.”
(Econ, 4/8/06, p.64)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.81)
2005 May 10, Germany dedicated
its national Holocaust memorial in Berlin, an undulating field of
2,711 concrete slabs.
(AP, 5/10/05)(Econ, 5/7/05, p.48)
2005 May 21, Germany's
prestigious Academy of Arts was reopened at its pre-World War II
site next to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
(AP, 5/21/05)
2005 May 27, The EU
constitution cleared its final legislative hurdle in Germany, two
days before French voters have their say on the document.
(AP, 5/27/05)
2005 May 30, Germany's
conservative opposition nominated Angela Merkel, a former chemistry
researcher who entered politics during the collapse of communism, as
its challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
(AP, 5/30/05)
2005 Jun 12, UniCredit, Italy’s
largest bank, announced the takeover HVB Group, Germany’s 2nd
biggest.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.70)
2005 Jun 17, In Germany former
US Pres. George Bush, one-time Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and
former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl received an award for their
role in ending Germany's Cold War division.
(AP, 6/18/05)
2005 Jun 26, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder arrived in Washington for a visit shortened by
election-year pressure.
(AP, 6/27/05)
2005 Jun 27, France, Germany,
Brazil and Chile called for a tax on airline tickets to help finance
the global fight against poverty.
(AP, 6/28/05)
2005 Jul 5, Workers began
removing a field of crosses at Berlin's former Checkpoint Charlie
after a privately run museum lost a court battle to keep the
memorial to people killed at the East German border during the Cold
War.
(AP, 7/5/05)
2005 Jul 22, In Germany a pilot
died when his ultralight plane crashed near the German parliament.
He was questioned over the disappearance of his wife and expressed
"suicidal intentions" before the flight.
(AP, 7/23/05)
2005 Jul 28, DaimlerChrysler
said CEO Juergen Schrempp, architect of the controversial merger
between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler Corp., will step down and turn the
top job over to Chrysler head Dieter Zetsche.
(AP, 7/28/05)
2005 Jul 29, The U.S. Army said
it will pull out of 13 bases in southern Germany as part of its
repositioning of American forces around the world.
(AP, 7/29/05)
2005 Jul 31, Police in eastern
Germany found the remains of nine newborn babies buried in a garden
and arrested a woman (39) believed to be their mother.
(AP, 8/1/05)
2005 Aug 2, France, Britain and
Germany hardened their tone toward Iran, warning that Tehran risked
triggering an international crisis and could face U.N. sanctions if
it follows through with a threat to resume its nuclear program.
(AP, 8/2/05)
2005 Aug 3, German shoemaker
Adidas-Salomon AG said it will buy Reebok for $3.8 billion, giving
the company about 20 percent of the US market and the potential to
better challenge leader Nike Inc. on its home turf.
(AP, 8/3/05)
2005 Aug 12, A German court
convicted Holger Pfahls, former deputy defense minister, of
accepting illegal payments and evading taxes while serving in the
government of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
(AP, 8/12/05)
2005 Aug 18, Pope Benedict XVI
began his first foreign trip as pontiff, leaving Rome to take part
in the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany.
(AP, 8/18/05)
2005 Aug 19, In Germany Mounir
El Motassadeq (31), a Moroccan man accused of helping the Sept. 11
hijackers was convicted, of membership in a terrorist organization
but was acquitted of direct involvement in the attacks on the US. He
was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
(Reuters, 8/19/05)
2005 Aug 19, Pope Benedict XVI
warned of rising anti-Semitism and hostility to foreigners, winning
a standing ovation from members of Germany's oldest Jewish community
during a visit to a rebuilt synagogue that had been destroyed by the
Nazis.
(AP, 8/19/05)
2005 Aug 20, Hundreds of German
far right extremists marched through Berlin and gathered for a rally
in former Nazi hotbed Nuremberg after a meeting to honor Adolf
Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess was banned.
(Reuters, 8/20/05)
2005 Aug 21, Pope Benedict XVI
triumphantly ended his four-day trip to his native Germany,
celebrating an open-air Mass for a million people in Cologne.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2005 Aug 30, In Germany
Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit defended his decision to welcome a
leather and fetish enthusiasts to the German capital and accused his
conservative critics of being "small-minded."
(AP, 8/30/05)
2005 Sep 3, Volkswagen said it
plans to cut 10,000 jobs from its workforce over the next few years
as it reduces production.
(AP, 9/3/05)
2005 Sep 8, German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin sealed an
agreement to build a Baltic Sea gas pipeline aimed at boosting
Russia's gas sales to Europe and securing uninterrupted energy
supplies for Germany.
(AP, 9/8/05)
2005 Sep 8, A German military
plane carrying 15 tons of military rations for survivors of
Hurricane Katrina was sent back by US authorities because it did not
have the required authorization.
(AP, 9/10/05)
2005 Sep 11, The German firm
Allianz, Europe’s biggest insurer, opted for pan-European status as
part of a merger and restructure.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.64)
2005 Sep 17, Germany’s 172nd
Oktoberfest opened and will run to Oct 3.
(AP, 5/17/05)
2005 Sep 18, Exit polls showed
conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party leading in German
parliamentary elections but falling short of the majority she needed
to form a center-right coalition as the nation's first female
chancellor. Merkel's bloc won the most votes in elections, but fell
short of a clear mandate to govern.
(AP, 9/18/05)(AP, 9/18/06)
2005 Sep 20, Top politicians on
both sides of Germany's political standoff agreed a bipartisan
"grand coalition" linking Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and
challenger Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats would be the best way
out of the post election muddle.
(AP, 9/20/05)
2005 Sep 25, In Germany Porsche
announced that it plans to take a stake of around 20% in VW in a
move that would help shield Europe's biggest car maker from a
hostile takeover.
(AFP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 28, Germany's outgoing
parliament voted overwhelmingly to keep its troops in Afghanistan
for another year.
(AP, 9/28/05)
2005 Sep, Telebid, a German
online auction, was launched. It used purchased-credits, instead of
symbolic offers, for bidding. Over the next few years it expanded
into Austria, Canada, Spain, Britain and America. In 2008 it changed
its name to Swoopo.
(Econ, 8/15/09,
p.58)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo)
2005 Oct 2, Voters in the
German city of Dresden cast the last ballots in the inconclusive
national election in what could offer a breakthrough in a bitter
power struggle over who will be the next chancellor. The election
there was postponed for two weeks due to the death of a neo-Nazi
candidate.
(AP, 10/2/05)
2005 Oct 3, Munich's two-week
Oktoberfest drew to a close, and organizers said more people visited
this year but they drank less beer than in 2004.
(AP, 10/3/05)
2005 Oct 10, Conservative
leader Angela Merkel said she had reached a "good and fair" deal
that will make her Germany's first female chancellor in a
power-sharing agreement that would end Gerhard Schroeder's seven
years in office.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 10, The US formally
handed Rhein-Main Air Base over to the German government, ending a
60-year stay during which the sprawling field was a hub of activity
for American forces facing Soviet bloc troops and Mideast tensions.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 12, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder said he will not participate in Germany's new coalition
government, ending seven years in power marked by a newly assertive
foreign policy and efforts to prune welfare benefits that were a
drag on Europe's biggest economy.
(AP, 10/12/05)
2005 Oct 13, Germany's highest
administrative court has upheld claims to real estate in Berlin by
heirs of the Jewish Wertheim family who lost their department store
fortune under the Nazis. The department store site is worth some $20
million. The decision opened the way for claims on a total of 24
acres of former Wertheim property in Berlin, which was estimated to
be worth some $200 million.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Oct 17, Deutsche Bank AG
and private bank Sal. Oppenheim said they would acquire a combined
14% stake in China's Hua Xia Bank in a deal worth 272 million euros
($326.4 million).
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 24, Germany’s two main
political parties said the country faced a $42 billion budget
shortfall, signaling tough spending cuts or tax hikes under a
planned coalition even as its economy struggles.
(AP, 10/24/05)
2005 Oct 26, A court in
Duesseldorf convicted 4 Arab men of plotting to attack Jewish
targets in Germany and found 3 of them guilty of being members of a
terrorist organization.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Oct 30, Dresden's $215
million rebuilt Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, was
re-consecrated, 60 years after it was destroyed by Allied bombs in
World War II. The Protestant church was originally built in 1743 and
collapsed after a wave of bombing in February 1945.
(AP, 10/30/05)(SSFC, 10/30/05, p.A16)
2005 Nov 1, Britain's
Competition Commission (CC) gave approval to proposed takeovers of
the London Stock Exchange by the German Deutsche Boerse or the
pan-European market Euronext, but attached conditions.
(AFP, 11/1/05)
2005 Nov 2, Deutsche Telekom
AG, Europe's biggest phone company, said that it plans to cut 32,000
jobs from its payroll in Germany in the next three years, 25,000 at
its main operations and 7,000 from a staffing agency subsidiary.
(AP, 11/2/05)
2005 Nov 11, Germany's biggest
political parties reached a deal to form a coalition government,
sealing an accord that makes Angela Merkel the nation's first female
chancellor.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 11, Automaker
DaimlerChrysler AG ended its ill-fated involvement with Japan's
Mitsubishi Motors Co., selling its 12.4 percent stake in the company
to Goldman Sachs for an undisclosed price.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 14, Angela Merkel's
Christian Democratic party overwhelmingly approved a coalition
agreement with the Social Democrats that will make her Germany's
first woman chancellor.
(AP, 11/14/05)
2005 Nov 18, Conservative
leader Angela Merkel took a last step toward becoming Germany's
first female chancellor when she and other party officials signed a
hard-won agreement to form a left-right coalition government.
(AP, 11/19/05)
2005 Nov 22, Angela Merkel was
elected as Germany's first female chancellor, taking power at the
helm of an unwieldy alliance of the right and left that now
officially has the job of turning around Europe's biggest economy.
(AP, 11/22/05)
2005 Dec 2, It was reported
that a money-laundering scandal that started in Germany has spread
to other countries and implicated Leonid Reiman, Russia’s
telecommunications minister and close Putin ally. Prosecutors
suspected that Mr. Reiman had set up a network of shell companies
and trusts to conceal over $1 billion in assets.
(WSJ, 12/2/05, p.A3)
2005 Dec 2, In eastern Germany
a fire at a shelter for the homeless killed nine people.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 Dec 6, A German man filed
a lawsuit in Virginia claiming he was held captive and tortured by
US government agents after being mistakenly identified as an
associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Khaled El-Masri said he was
arrested Dec 31, 2003 while attempting to enter Macedonia for a
holiday trip and flown to Afghanistan. During five months in
captivity he was subjected to "torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment.
(AP, 12/06/05)
2005 Dec 7, The European
aircraft manufacturer Airbus said that German Wings, a low-cost
airline, had placed a firm order for 18 Airbus 319 airliners.
(AFP, 12/07/05)
2005 Dec 12, Swedish
home-appliance maker AB Electrolux said it will close its plant in
Nuremberg, Germany, by the end of 2007, transferring production to
Poland and Italy and eliminating 1,750 jobs.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 13, DB Real Estate, a
subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, closed grundbesitz-invest, a €6.2
billion property fund, for a revaluation. It was the 1st closure in
the 40-year history of the open-ended property funds.
(Econ, 1/21/06, p.73)
2005 Dec 14, It was reported
that Volkswagen AG was getting ready for the 2006 US launch of its
$1 million Bugatti Veyron, a 2-seater with 1,001 horsepower.
(WSJ, 12/14/05, p.D1)
2005 Dec 16, Mohammed Ali
Hamadi, a Lebanese man serving a life sentence in Germany for the
1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and killing of a U.S. Navy diver,
returned to Lebanon after being paroled in Germany.
(AP, 12/20/05)
2005 Dec 18, A German TV
station said a German archaeologist kidnapped in Iraq last month
with her driver has been freed.
(AP, 12/18/05)
2005 Dec 19, In Germany
Ladislav Niznansky (88), a former Nazi commander, was acquitted of
murder in three massacres in Slovakia after a court said there was
no reliable evidence he was involved in the killings. Niznansky, a
former Slovak army captain who at first supported the 1944 revolt,
changed sides after he was captured and took charge of the Slovak
section of a Nazi unit, code-named Edelweiss, that hunted resistance
fighters and Jews. He was convicted of the massacres and sentenced
to death in absentia by Czechoslovakia in 1962.
(AP, 12/19/05)
2005 Dec 28, The German state
of Bavaria banned the Multi-Kultur-Haus (MKH) association, a
radical Islamist group, saying materials seized from its offices
urged Muslims to murder Jews and Christians.
(AP, 12/28/05)
2005 Dec 30, It was reported
that more than 150,000 Germans packed their bags and left in 2004
due to unemployment, the greatest exodus in any single year since
the late 1940s.
(Reuters, 12/30/05)
2005 Dec 30, In Germany the US
Air Force handed over the keys to Rhein-Main Air Base to the
operator of Frankfurt International Airport in a final act of
closure for the base, which for 60 years hosted American forces.
(AP, 12/30/05)
2005 Dec 31, Yemeni kidnappers
released a former German diplomat and his four family members.
(AP, 12/31/05)
2005 Dec, Germany’s former
chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted a job chairing the consortium
of a new pipeline for Russian gas to western Europe under the Baltic
Sea.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.49)
2005 Germany passed a temporary
measure dubbed Lex Telecom to allow a group of model plaintiffs to
establish a precedent in a case against Deutsche Telecom.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.72)
2005 The government of Germany
disclosed in 2008 that an eighth of Germans lived at or below the
poverty line in 2005.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.69)
2005 In Germany Landlust
magazine was launched by an agricultural trade publisher. By 2011
circulation grew to 800,000.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.57)
2006 Jan 2, The roof of an ice
rink with about 50 people inside collapsed after a heavy snowfall in
a town in the Bavarian Alps killing 15 people, most of them teens
and children.
(AP, 1/5/06)
2006 Jan 12, A German court
convicted Amin Lokman Mohamed (33), an Iraqi man, of aiding a terror
group in his home country and sentenced him to seven years in
prison.
(AP, 1/12/06)
2006 Jan 13, President Bush met
with Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel, at the White House.
German's security services faced the prospect of a parliamentary
inquiry, triggered by reports that German agents in Baghdad had
helped the United States pinpoint bombing targets on April 7, 2003.
Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier confirmed that Germany had 2
agents in Baghdad, who helped American with coordinates for
non-targets.
(Reuters, 1/13/06)(WSJ, 1/13/06, p.A1)(Econ,
1/21/06, p.49)(AP, 1/13/07)
2006 Jan 18, In Germany
thousands of doctors marched through Berlin to demand changes to the
state health care system, including better pay and less bureaucracy.
(AP, 1/18/06)
2006 Jan 19, In Germany
environmentalists positioned a 55-foot dead whale in front of the
Japanese Embassy in Berlin to protest against Japanese
whale-hunting.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan 20, German factory
workers at Swedish home-appliances maker AB Electrolux launched a
strike, demanding a better severance package when the plant shuts
down late next year.
(AP, 1/20/06)
2006 Jan 24, In Germany
automaker DaimlerChrysler AG said that it would cut administrative
staff by 20 percent worldwide over three years, dropping 6,000 jobs
in order to save some $1.2 billion a year and make the company
leaner and more profitable.
(AP, 1/24/06)
2006 Jan 27, It was reported
that one of every two German oak trees was sick due to pollution and
global warming.
(www.dawn.com/2006/01/27/int14.htm)
2006 Jan 27, Johannes Rau (75),
former German president (1999-2004), died. He urged his country to
open up to foreigners and promoted deeper ties with Israel.
(AP, 1/27/06)
2006 Jan, In Germany Mario
Mederake (36), an unemployed laborer, snatched Stephanie Rudolph
(13) off the street as she was on her way to school in Dresden. Over
the course of the next 36 days, Mederake turned her into his "sex
slave", raping her more than 100 times.
(AFP, 11/6/06)
2006 Feb 2, German
alternative-power company Solarworld AG said it will buy businesses
from Shell to take over as the top maker of solar power equipment in
the US.
(AP, 2/2/06)
2006 Feb 6, Public employees in
the southern German state of Baden Wuerttemberg walked off the job
in protest of plans to make them work longer without increasing
their pay.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 7, In Germany Mounir
el Motassadeq (31), a Moroccan convicted of belonging to a terrorist
cell that included three Sept. 11 hijackers, was freed from prison
after a federal court ruled he shouldn't be jailed with appeals
still pending.
(AP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 10, Volkswagen
announced that it would cut up to 20,000 jobs over the next 3 years
from its western German workforce of 103,000, as well as demanding
longer hours for no extra pay. The company share price rose 15% on
the announcement.
(Econ, 2/18/06, p.57)
2006 Feb 13, In Germany some
22,000 public workers in 8 of 16 federal states stopped work to
protest an expanded workweek with no increase in pay.
(WSJ, 2/13/06, p.A7)
2006 Feb 15, Germany said
further tests had confirmed H5N1 bird flu in two swans, prompting
other European countries to step up efforts to prevent the virus
infecting domestic livestock.
(AP, 2/15/06)
2006 Feb 18, A German plane
from Azerbaijan went missing in northern Iraq. 5 Germans and an
Iraqi on board were found dead the next day.
(AP, 2/19/06)
2006 Feb 22, Michaela
Giersberg, a nursing assistant, was convicted in Bonn, Germany, of
killing 9 women she had been caring for from 2003-2005. She was
sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/22/06)
2006 Feb 26, On the final day
of the Turin Winter Olympics, Sweden beat Finland 3-2 to win the
men's hockey gold. Germany led the gold medal count with 29. The US
won 25 medals including 9 gold, Canada won 24, Austria 23 and Russia
22. Drew Lachey leaped to victory with professional partner Cheryl
Burke on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Shizuka Arakawa won a gold
medal for Japan in figure skating.
(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(AP,
2/26/07)
2006 Feb 28, The deadly strain
of bird flu was confirmed in a cat in northern Germany, the first
time the virus has been identified in a mammal in the 25 nations of
the European Union.
(AP, 2/28/06)
2006 Mar 6, German drugmaker
Bayer AG said its fourth-quarter profit fell 33% after it set aside
275 million euros ($330.5 million) to settle claims that it colluded
on prices of rubber and plastic in the US.
(AP, 3/6/06)
2006 Mar 8, A German minister
claimed that deadly bird flu was moving closer to infecting humans
in Europe after two more cats died of the virus. China reported its
10th human fatality.
(AFP, 3/8/06)
2006 Mar 9, A German laboratory
said the H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in a weasel-like mammal
called a stone marten.
(AP, 3/9/06)
2006 Mar 9, In southern Germany
a delivery van struck a funeral procession after the driver had a
fatal heart attack. The crash killed two mourners.
(AP, 3/9/06)
2006 Mar 13, Germany's public
sector strikes entered their sixth week developing into a test of
union strength and exposing cracks between the parties in Chancellor
Angela Merkel's coalition government.
(AP, 3/13/06)
2006 Mar 13, Merck KGaA, a
maker of pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals, launched a
15-billion-euro (18-billion-dollar) hostile takeover bid for
Berlin-based rival Schering, opening the way for a bitter bidding
battle.
(AP, 3/13/06)
2006 Mar 23, German prosecutors
said 2 former employees of Siemens AG's Power Generation branch have
been charged with offering bribes totaling some 6 million euros
($7.3 million) to secure contracts from Italian gas companies.
(AP, 3/23/06)
2006 Mar 24, Bayer AG's 16.3
billion euro ($19.6 billion) offer for drugmaker Schering AG was
embraced by its target as German rival Merck abandoned its own
takeover offer.
(AP, 3/24/06)
2006 Mar 28, The German state
of Bavaria announced a ban on the use of cell phones in schools to
prevent students from viewing images of pornography and extreme
violence.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 29, In Germany factory
workers at Ford, Infineon, DaimlerChrysler and other companies in
Germany temporarily walked off their jobs as part of a series of
warning strikes to put pressure on employers over demands for higher
wages.
(AP, 3/29/06)
2006 Mar 30, Former German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was appointed chairman of the
consortium building a strategically vital gas pipeline linking
Russia's vast reserves with German markets, and awarded a salary of
about $300,000.
(AP, 3/30/06)
2006 Mar 30, Germany's
metal-working sector was hit by a second consecutive day of strikes
as members of the giant IG Metall union applied more pressure for a
five-percent pay rise.
(AP, 3/30/06)
2006 Apr 13, Bayer AG made its
official takeover bid for fellow German drugmaker Schering AG,
offering 16.5 billion euros ($20.01 billion), slightly more than its
previous 16.3 billion euro ($19.76 billion) offer that Schering's
board had recommended be accepted.
(AP, 4/13/06)
2006 Apr 16, A 37-year-old
Ethiopian-born German man suffered life-threatening head and brain
injuries in a beating at a tram stop in Potsdam. On April 19 a
15-strong Nigerian delegation was to check into Potsdam's Voltaire
Hotel and stay for a week, but pulled out after hearing about the
weekend attack.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 May 3 In their second
meeting at the White House, President Bush and German Chancellor
Angela Merkel vowed to keep pressing Iran on its nuclear program as
other allies took the issue to the United Nations.
(AP, 5/4/06)
2006 May 9, A German court
handed down a life sentence for murder to Armin Meiwes, the German
cannibal jailed for killing a man and feeding on his flesh,
overturning a previous manslaughter conviction.
(AP, 5/9/06)
2006 May 10, German customs
authorities arrested four men, breaking up a smuggling ring that
allegedly was supplying Iran with navigation equipment for military
use.
(AP, 5/10/06)
2006 May 15, More than 12,000
doctors across Germany went on strike in the biggest walkout in the
sector since a dispute over pay flared two months ago.
(AP, 5/15/06)
2006 May 23, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met the Shanghai bishop from the Chinese Catholic
church on the final day of a visit in which rights issues took
center stage alongside trade.
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 26, In Germany a
knife-wielding teenager went on a rampage and attacked pedestrians
as they left a celebration in Berlin, wounding 27 people. The
attacker (17) had mingled with crowds leaving a sound-and-light show
inaugurating Berlin's new central rail station in the heart of the
capital.
(AP, 5/27/06)
2006 May 29, Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD), the US maker of computer chips, said it planned to
invest 2.5 billion dollars (1.96 billion euros) in expanding
capacity at its factory in Dresden, eastern Germany, over the next
three years.
(AFP, 5/29/06)
2006 Jun 1, The German
parliament overwhelmingly approved the government's plan to deploy
German troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo during its July
election, despite public skepticism about the mission.
(AP, 6/1/06)
2006 Jun 1, A German court
jailed Sabine Hilschenz (40) for 15 years for killing eight of her
newborn babies in the worst case of infanticide in the country's
criminal history. She had buried them in flower pots and a fish tank
at her parents’ home.
(AFP, 6/1/06)(SFC, 4/8/08, p.A3)
2006 Jun 14, German drugmaker
Merck KGaA agreed to sell its 21.8% stake in Schering AG to Bayer
AG, clearing the way for Bayer to take over Schering and end a
merger drama that saw Merck in a position to block the takeover. In
the process Merck gained a windfall of some €400 million.
(AP, 6/14/06)(Econ, 6/17/06, p.64)
2006 Jun 16, Germany’s
parliament approved a big increase in value-added tax, to take
effect in 2007. Efforts to lower corporate taxes faced stiff
opposition.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.71)
2006 Jun 26, Thousands of
doctors at municipal hospitals in Germany walked off the job in a
strike that follows a recent round of walkouts by their counterparts
at university-run clinics. A 2-year-old bear was killed by a hunter
under sanction by officials in the southern state of Bavaria. Bruno
was the first wild bear to be seen in Germany since 1835. The next
day Italy's environment minister lodged an official protest with his
German counterpart over the killing.
(AP, 6/26/06)(AP, 6/28/06)
2006 Jul 2, EADS's French
co-chief executive Noel Forgeard and Airbus's German head Gustav
Humbert tendered their resignations over delays to deliveries of the
A380 superjumbo that has wiped billions of euros (dollars) off
EADS's share price. Louis Gallois became the new EADS co-CEO;
Christian Strieff was named the new president and CEO of Airbus.
(AFP, 7/2/06)(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 5, Germany's Cabinet
approved a 2007 budget that foresees trimming the deficit to comply
with EU rules, and the finance minister said Berlin likely would hit
the target this year.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 6, Israel signed a
contract with Germany for 2 new Dolphin submarines capable of
carrying nuclear warheads.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Jul 13, President Bush met
with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Stralsund, Germany, while on
his way to the G8 summit in Russia.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 16, A small German
tourist plane crashed on takeoff from the Italian island of Elba,
killing four people aboard and seriously injuring one.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 17, EAD’s Airbus,
reeling from a management shakeup that followed delays in its
flagship superjumbo jet program, unveiled a long-awaited revamp of
its mid-sized A350 at the Farnborough Air Show in England.
(AP, 7/17/06)(WSJ, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 20, German and US
scientists began a 2-year project to decipher the genetic code of
the Neanderthal.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 26, Germany, Israel
and the US signed an agreement opening to researchers an archive of
millions of Nazi files describing how the Holocaust was carried out.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 28, Wal-Mart Stores
Inc. said it is ending its loss-generating business in Germany just
two months after leaving South Korea in what analysts welcomed as a
move to focus resources on expanding in more profitable
international markets like China and Latin America. Wal-Mart sold
its 85 German stores to Metro, the local market leader.
(AP, 7/28/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.54)
2006 Jul, Bombs were planted on
two regional trains at Cologne's main station, but failed to
explode. Youssef Mohammed el-Hajdib was arrested a month later in
Kiel. Jihad Hamad, fled to his native Lebanon and was arrested
there. In 2007 Hamad was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a
Lebanese court. In 2008 el-Hajdib (24), a Lebanese man, was
convicted in Germany of attempted murder and sentenced to life in
prison for the failed attack.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2006 Aug 11, German novelist
Guenter Grass (78) admitted in an interview that he served in the
Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary
forces, during World War II. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1999 for works including his 1959 novel, "The Tin Drum." His new
memoir about the war years, Peeling the Onion” was published in
September, 2006. The English translation came out in 2007.
(AP, 8/11/06)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.M1)
2006 Aug 19, In Germany a
21-year-old Lebanese was arrested in a police swoop on the railway
station in Kiel as he tried to flee the city, where he was a
student. He was one of two men suspected of planting bombs on German
trains in a failed terrorist attack in July.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 24, Jihad Hamad (20),
the second main suspect in a failed plot to bomb two German trains,
was arrested in his native Lebanon after surrendering to police.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Murat Kurnaz
(b.1982), a German native, was released after spending more than 4
years locked up at Guantanamo Bay. He had been arrested in Pakistan
in late 2001. In 2007 he and Helmut Kuhn authored “Fünf Jahre
meines Lebens: Ein Bericht aus Guantanamo” (Five years of My Life: A
Report from Guantanamo).
(Econ, 2/3/07,
p.53)(http://tinyurl.com/36pdk5)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.97)
2006 Aug 25, German police
arrested a 3rd suspect in connection with a failed attempt to blow
up two trains. Lebanese authorities picked up a 4th man believed to
have been involved.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Sep 9, Pope Benedict XVI
began a six-day homecoming to his native Bavaria.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 11, Joachim Fest (79),
German journalist and historian, died. He worked closely with Adolf
Hitler's architect Albert Speer on his memoirs. Fest's biographical
portrait "Hitler," published in English in 1974 the year after its
German release, is widely regarded as the best, among many, on the
dictator.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Pope Benedict XVI
delivered a speech at Regensburg Univ. that included brusque words
about Islam. He quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying
“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will
find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by
the sword the faith he preached.” The speech quickly provoked
criticism from the world’s Muslim communities. The pontiff later
said he regretted that Muslims were offended.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A17)(AP, 9/12/07)
2006 Sep 14, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said she has again raised human rights issues with
visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and urged Beijing to respect the
freedom of the press.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Three men became
the first rabbis ordained in Germany since World War II.
(AP, 9/14/07)
2006 Sep 18, In Germany
Jacqueline Battles, the German wife of an American contractor
accused of cheating the US government in Iraq, was arrested on
suspicion of money laundering. In March a US jury ordered
contractors Mike Battles and Scott Custer to pay $10 million for
swindling the US government over Iraqi rebuilding projects in
connection with their Middletown, R.I.-based company, Custer Battles
LLC.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 19, In southern
Germany a US AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter crashed on a
training mission, killing two American soldiers.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 22, In northwestern
Germany the high-speed, Transrapid magnetic train, traveling at 125
mph, crashed. 23 of the 29 people aboard were killed and others
injured in the first fatal wreck involving the high-tech system. A
gas tank exploded in a bakery in a south German village, burying a
dozen people in the rubble and injuring several more.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Russian Pres.
Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac joined
German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a three-way informal summit in a
chateau in Compiegne.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 25, Deutsche Oper, a
leading German opera house, canceled a 3-year-old production of
Mozart's "Idomeneo" that included a scene showing the severed head
of the Prophet Muhammad, unleashing a furious debate over free
speech.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, UCB, a Belgian
drug firm, announced a takeover of Germany’s Schwarz Pharma for €4.4
billion.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.71)
2006 Sep 27, Germany opened a
conference in Berlin on opening a 2-year dialogue separating Islamic
fundamentalism from Islam.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.62)
2006 Oct 4, The world's biggest
book fair opened in Frankfurt, Germany, with Indian authors taking
center stage and a new scheme to protect writers' copyrights from
Internet piracy creating a buzz.
(AFP, 10/4/06)
2006 Oct 7, In northern
Afghanistan 2 German journalists working for the country's national
broadcaster and traveling on their own were killed by gunmen, the
first foreign journalists murdered here since late 2001. In southern
Afghanistan a NATO soldier was killed in an attack by militants who
exploded a roadside bomb and fired on a military patrol.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 9, Khaled al-Masri
(43), a Kuwaiti-born German citizen, testified in a Spanish court
that he was kidnapped on Dec 31, 2003, at the Serbia-Macedonia
border while on vacation, tortured by US intelligence agents for 23
days, then flown by the CIA to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned
and abused for five months. He was released in Albania in May 2004
after the CIA discovered they had the wrong person.
(AP, 10/9/06)
2006 Oct 14, in southwestern
Germany 2 female US soldiers died after they were hit by a train at
Neckarsteinach station, east of Heidelberg.
(AP, 10/15/06)
2006 Oct 27, Germany's Defense
Minister Franz Josef Jung said the military has suspended two
soldiers from duty in connection with photos of service members
posing with skulls in Afghanistan. Pictures taken in early 2003
showed soldiers posing with a skull on the hood of their vehicle and
one soldier holding the skull next to his exposed genitals.
(AP, 10/27/06)
2006 Nov 2, Hundreds of euro
bills in Germany have mysteriously disintegrated in the last several
months, apparently due to exposure to sulfuric acid.
(AFP, 11/2/06)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria,
Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the
Netherlands and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as
cold Germans rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from
Europe's interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2006 Nov 9, Markus Wolf (83),
who outwitted the West as communist East Germany's long-serving
spymaster, died. Wolf served under Erich Mielke, the hated Stasi
chief, from 1956 until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wolf detailed a
string of his sagas in his 1997 book "Memoirs of a Spymaster."
(AP, 11/9/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.90)
2006 Nov 14, Civil rights
groups filed a suit with German prosecutors seeking war crimes
charges against outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for
alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.
(AP, 11/14/06)
2006 Nov 15, Over 200 German
police raided more than 30 offices of the engineering and
electronics giant Siemens as well as the apartments of some of its
top managers in a huge embezzlement probe. The company was
cooperating fully with the investigation.
(AFP, 11/15/06)(WSJ, 12/27/07, p.A4)
2006 Nov 15, Libyan leader
Moamer Kadhafi received assurances from German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier that Berlin would work to bolster ties with
Tripoli when it assumes the EU presidency next year.
(AFP, 11/15/06)
2006 Nov 16, In Germany Mounir
El Motassadeq, a Moroccan man, was convicted of acting as an
accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks by a
federal appeals court that ruled that he played a direct role in the
plot.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 20, In Kempten,
Germany, nurse Stephan Letter was convicted of killing 28 of his
patients (2003-2004) at a hospital in Sonthofen, Germany, and
sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 11/20/06)
2006 Nov 20, In northwest
Germany, Sebastian Bosse (18) with explosives strapped to his body,
killed himself after storming a high school in Emsdetten and
injuring several people with gunfire.
(AP, 11/21/06)
2006 Nov, Klaus Jacobs, a
German-born billionaire, announced that he would donate 200 million
euros to the Int’l. University Bremen (IUB). This saved IUB,
Germany’s only fully fledged private and int’l. university.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.51)
2006 Dec 5, Knut became the
first polar bear born to be born in Germany’s Berlin Zoo in 30
years. He was rejected by his mother and spent his first 44 days in
an incubator. Zookeeper Thomas Doerflein (d.2008 at 44) raised the
cub by hand.
(www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,461624,00.html)(SFC, 9/26/08,
p.B9)
2006 Dec 5, In Germany world
chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost the sixth and decisive game
against computer program Deep Fritz, ceding a hard-fought Man vs.
Machine match 4-2.
(AP, 12/5/06)
2006 Dec 9, German police found
traces of radiation in two buildings linked to a Russian businessman
who met the murdered ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London on the
day he fell ill. Radiation traces were found overnight in an
apartment belonging to Dmitry Kovtun's ex-wife in the northern city
of Hamburg. Kovtun is now in hospital.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 11, German
investigators confirmed that a car used by Russian businessman
Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of fatally poisoned ex-spy Alexander
Litvinenko before the two men met, was contaminated with the rare
radioactive substance polonium-210.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Siemens, a German
conglomerate, filed papers with the SEC to account for some $265
million siphoned out of secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein,
Austria and Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.65)
2006 Dec 16, Researchers from
Germany, America, and Israel met in Heidelberg to discuss
vibration-response imaging, invented by Dr. Igal Kushnir, an Israeli
pediatrician.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.83)
2006 Dec 21, Deutsche Bank AG
agreed to pay $208 million to end SEC investigations into improper
mutual fund trading.
(SFC, 12/22/06, p.D3)
2006 Dec 24, Germany said it
will not offer the Sri Lankan government new aid until the peace
process in the country advances and called on other nations to
increase the pressure on Colombo.
(AFP, 12/24/06)
2006 Dec, The German jobless
total rose back above four million, after unemployment in the
eurozone's biggest economy fell to a four-year low the previous
month.
(AFP, 1/3/07)
2006 David Blackbourn authored
“The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern
Germany.” He covered water management in Germany over the past 250
years.
(Econ, 2/18/06, p.80)
2006 Gerhard Schroder, former
chancellor of Germany, authored his memoir “Decisions: My Life in
Politics.”
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.60)
2006 Germany passed legislation
enabling parents to enjoy 14 months of taxpayer funded leave
(Elterngeld) following the birth of children. It became effective on
Jan 1, 2007.
(Econ, 7/23/11, p.63)
2006 In Germany a person known
to the press as “the informant” offered to sell a DVD stolen from
LGT group, a firm owned by Liechtenstein’s ruling dynasty to
Germany’s foreign intelligence service.. In 2002 Heinrich Kieber, an
employee of Liechtenstein’s LGT Treuhand AG, had ended his services
with the company and stolen confidential data on thousands of
customers and beneficiaries. He was convicted of fraud and theft in
2004 and sentenced to 3 years probation. German authorities later
confirmed the purchase of Liechtenstein banking data from an
informant for some $6.2 million.
(WSJ, 2/25/08, p.A6)(Econ, 2/23/08, p.70)
2006 Heros, a major German cash
transport firm, went bankrupt. Karl-Heinz Weis, the founder and
chief executive, later admitted that he and his colleagues had begun
pilfering client money in the 1990s to fill gaps and shortfalls in
the daily delivery of cash.
(Econ, 2/10/07, p.81)
2006 Germany numbered some 82
million people and stood as the world’s 3rd largest economy. Its
defense spending stood at 1.4% of GDP.
(Econ, 10/28/06, p.61)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.27)
2007 Jan 1, In Germany a
government plan to encourage working couples to have children went
into effect with benefits worth up to 25,200 euros (17,000 pounds).
(AP, 1/2/07)
2007 Jan 8, In Germany Mounir
el Motassadeq, a Moroccan man convicted of aiding three of the four
suicide pilots who committed the Sept. 11 attacks, was sentenced to
the maximum of 15 years in prison for his role in the terror plot.
(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 16, The European
Parliament elected German conservative Hans-Gert Poettering as
president of the chamber to replace outgoing Spanish Socialist Josep
Borrell.
(AFP, 1/16/07)
2007 Jan 21, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met with Pres. Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort
of Sochi for talks set to focus on securing guarantees for energy
supplies to the EU. Putin promised to smooth energy flow to Europe.
(AP, 1/21/07)(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 22, Scientists warned
that glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050, and that
most would be gone by 2037.
(SFC, 1/23/07, p.A4)
2007 Jan 26, In Germany Peter
Hartz, Volkswagen human resources executive, was fined $750,000 and
given a 2-year suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to funding
an account that provided special travel perks for employees.
(www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/volk-j27.shtml)
2007 Jan 30, Thousands of
German workers took part in protests against a government plan to
raise the retirement age to 67.
(AP, 1/30/07)
2007 Feb 5, In northern Germany
3 men and 3 women were found shot dead in a Chinese restaurant in
the early hours in Sittensen. A 7th person died a day later. German
police soon arrested two Vietnamese men in connection with the
killings.
(AFP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 10, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, while visiting Munich for a security conference,
warned that the increased use of military force by the US is
creating a new arms race, with smaller nations turning toward
developing nuclear weapons.
(AP, 2/10/07)(WSJ, 2/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Feb 14, German-US auto
giant DaimlerChrysler said it planned to axe 13,000 jobs at its
loss-making Chrysler subsidiary as part of a broad restructuring
plan aimed at returning the US unit to profitability by 2009. The
bulk of the job losses will affect union workers, with 9,000 hourly
jobs eliminated in the United States and 2,000 in Canada.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 14, Deutsche Boerse,
operator of the Frankfurt stock exchange, said it has agreed to buy
five percent of the Mumbai stock exchange for 42.7 million dollars
(32.8 million euros).
(AFP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 15, In Germany Ernst
Zundel (b.1939), a far-right activist, was convicted of incitement
and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison for anti-Semitic
activities, including contributing to a Web site dedicated to
Holocaust denial.
(AP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb 22, Lothar-Guenther
Buchheim (89), the German author and art collector best known for
his 1973 autobiographical novel, "Das Boot," died. In 1981, the book
was turned into an acclaimed German film starring Juergen Prochnow
that detailed the hopelessness of war and its effect on sailors
living in the cramped confines of their submarine.
(AP, 2/23/07)
2007 Feb 27, DaimlerChrysler
AG, seeking to cut costs and boost sales in North America, said it
will start selling Chinese-made cars in that market and western
Europe as it tries to meet demand for smaller, more economical
vehicles.
(AP, 2/27/07)
2007 Feb 28, European airliner
maker Airbus told unions that it would dispose of six factories and
switch some work from France to Germany under a plan costing some
10,000 jobs.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb, In Cologne, Germany,
Mina Ahadi, an Iranian-born woman, set up Europe’s first Muslim
atheist group: The National Council of Ex-Muslims.
(WSJ, 4/1207, p.A11)
2007 Mar 1, In France, Germany
and Spain workers at Airbus revolted against massive cutbacks,
planning a strike next week in a warning to the company that its
recovery strategy is in for a long, tough haul.
(AFP, 3/1/07)
2007 Mar 1, The environment
ministry in the state of Lower Saxony said a German man had obtained
enriched uranium and buried it in his garden, raising concerns about
the security of Germany's nuclear reactors.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Mar 6, Volkswagen's new
chief executive Martin Winterkorn has been nominated as chairman of
Swedish truck maker Scania in a new phase in the plans for a
three-way tie-up with German group MAN. VW is Scania's biggest
shareholder with a voting stake of 34 percent and traditionally
holds the chair of the Swedish truck maker's supervisory board.
(AFP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 15, The EU said it
would put pressure on members of the Southeast Asian regional
grouping ASEAN at talks in Germany to urge Myanmar to improve its
human rights record.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 15, It was reported
that the Pascha brothel in Cologne, Germany, hopes to capitalize on
the growing number of retirees by offering a 50% discount for sex in
the afternoon.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 19, The Airbus A380
made its first flight to North America to show off the superjumbo to
potential US buyers and to the airports they hope will be flight
bases for the double-decker jet. As a test a day earlier, Frankfurt
air show organizers boarded more than 500 people onto the aircraft
using two jetways with an impressive time of less than 20 minutes.
(AP, 3/19/07)
2007 Mar 25, In Germany
Brigitte Mohnhaupt (57), a one-time leader Germany's Red Army
Faction, was released after a quarter-century in prison for her
involvement in some of the radical left-wing group's most notorious
murders.
(AP, 3/25/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Germany a board
member of Siemens AG, Europe's biggest electronics and engineering
company, was arrested in connection with an investigation of alleged
payments to the head of a tiny labor union. A trail against 2
managers had begun on March 13, for use of funds to smooth contracts
with Italy’s utility, Enel.
(AP, 3/27/07)(Econ, 3/17/07, p.71)
2007 Mar 30, A leading German
retailer said that it will pay $117.5 million to compensate a Jewish
family for real estate that was taken by the Nazis and eventually
resold to the firm. The Jewish Claims Conference said it will use an
unspecified amount of the money from KarstadtQuelle AG to fund
programs for Holocaust victims, and give the rest to heirs of the
Wertheim family, which was been seeking compensation for 15 years.
(AP, 3/30/07)
2007 Apr 1, Israeli PM Ehud
Olmert invited Arab leaders to attend a peace conference to discuss
their ideas for reaching Mideast peace. The Israeli army sealed off
the West Bank ahead of the weeklong Passover holiday, restricting
the movement of Palestinians into Israel. In her first Mideast trip
as EU president, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered Europe's
help in bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating
table, trying to build on a new burst of international efforts to
restart peace talks.
(AP, 4/1/07)(AP, 4/2/07)
2007 Apr 1, Hans Filbinger
(93), a former governor of Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state
(1966-1978), died. He had resigned amid revelations about his past
as a Nazi-era naval judge.
(AP, 4/2/07)
2007 Apr 14, A video showing a
German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision
African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was
broadcast on national television. The Defense Ministry said the
video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of
Rendsburg and that the army has been aware of it since January.
(AP, 4/14/07)
2007 Apr 20, German Defence
Minister Franz Josef Jung arrived in South Korea to discuss the
proposed sale of second-hand Patriot missiles and other military
issues.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 20, AIDA, Germany’s
largest cruise line, christened the new 2,050 passenger AIDAdiva in
the Hamburg harbor.
(SFC, 4/21/07, p.A5)
2007 Apr 20, It was reported
that German researchers had discovered a natural anti-HIV factor.
The 20 amino acid peptide chain blocked multiple strains of HIV.
(SFC, 4/20/07, p.A7)
2007 May 7, More than 1,000
government delegates gathered in Bonn, Germany, to find ways to
break gridlock in international negotiations on widening action to
slow global warming. The UN urged far tougher action to fight
climate change at the 166-nation climate conference.
(Reuters, 5/7/07)
2007 May 9, Hundreds of German
police raided the offices and apartments of left-wing activists
suspected of planning to disrupt next month's Group of Eight summit,
leading security officials to tighten border controls ahead of the
gathering.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2007 May 11, Germany’s
steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG said it will build a new $4.19 billion
steel plant in Alabama. Deutsche Telekom employees began an
open-ended strike in protest at restructuring measures at Europe's
biggest telecoms operator.
(AP, 5/11/07)(AFP, 5/11/07)
2007 May 13, German
pharmaceutical giant Merck KGaA announced that it had signed an
agreement to sell its generic drugs division to the US group Mylan
Laboratories for 4.9 billion euros (6.6 billion dollars).
(AP, 5/13/07)
2007 May 14, German-based
DaimlerChrysler said it will sell almost all of money-losing
Chrysler to Cerberus, a private equity firm, for $7.4 billion,
backing out of a troubled 1998 takeover aimed at creating a global
automotive powerhouse. John Snow, former US treasury secretary,
served as chairman of Cerberus.
(AP, 5/14/07)(Econ, 5/19/07, p.67)
2007 May 19, In Germany G8
finance ministers from the world's richest nations sought ways to
improve financial management in Africa and were asked to scold China
for lending too freely to African countries.
(AP, 5/19/07)
2007 May 19, In northern
Afghanistan a suicide attacker detonated himself next to German
soldiers shopping in a crowded market in Kunduz, killing 3 German
soldiers and 6 Afghan civilians with 16 people wounded. A district
police chief and a bodyguard were killed in a bomb blast in the
eastern province of Nangarhar.
(AFP, 5/19/07)
2007 May 20, In Germany
engineering concern Siemens said Peter Loescher, from US
pharmaceutical giant Merck, will take over as chief executive from
July 1.
(AP, 5/20/07)
2007 May 25, German lawmakers
passed a ban on smoking on public transport and in federal
buildings, including the parliament. It still needs approval from
the upper house of parliament, where the government also has a
majority.
(AP, 5/25/07)
2007 May 28, Joerg Immendorff
(b.1945), German artist, died. He was best known for his
“Café Deutschland” series begun in 1978.
(SFC, 5/29/07, p.B3)
2007 May 29, European and Asian
foreign ministers meeting in Germany agreed to set a 2009 deadline
to complete negotiations on a new international climate change pact
to limit greenhouse gases.
(AP, 5/29/07)
2007 May 29, In Iraq 5 British
men were pulled out of a Finance Ministry office by about 40 heavily
armed men in police uniforms in broad daylight and driven in a
convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City. Management
consultant Peter Moore and four of his security guards were seized.
In 2008 a Shiite militia that claimed responsibility for the
kidnapping said a hostage named Jason had committed suicide on May
25. The bodies of Alec MacLachlan (30), Jason Swindlehurst (38), and
Jason Creswell (39) were handed over to British officials in 2009.
Moore was released on Dec 30, 2009. The body of Alan McMenemy was
returned in early 2012. Two car bombers hit neighborhoods on
opposite sides of the Tigris River, killing 40 people and wounding
more than 100 others. 3 German computer consultants were kidnapped
from an Iraqi Finance Ministry office in Baghdad. Gunmen in Samarra
set up fake checkpoints on the outskirts of the city and abducted
more than 40 people, most of them soldiers, police officers and
members of two tribes that had banded together against local
insurgents. Col. Hamid Ibrahim al-Jazaa, a Sunni police chief
praised by US forces for clearing his city of insurgents, was
arrested following an investigation into alleged murder, corruption
and crimes against the Iraqi people. Al-Jazaa, his brother and 14
bodyguards were taken into custody in the city of Hit. One US
soldier died of wounds from a roadside bomb attack northwest of
Baghdad.
(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)(AP, 5/31/07)(AP,
7/20/08)(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 12/30/09)(AFP, 1/20/12)
2007 May, In Germany 6 former
members of cycling Team Telekom confessed to using
performance-enhancing drugs.
(Econ, 6/9/07, p.74)
2007 Jun 2, In Rostock,
Germany, masked demonstrators protesting the upcoming G-8 summit
meeting hurled stones and flagpoles at police.
(AP, 6/2/07)
2007 Jun 4, In Germany hundreds
of protesters clashed with police ahead of this week's G8 meeting,
as anti-globalization activists challenged attempts by security
officials to keep them away from the summit town of Heiligendamm.
Nearly 1000 officers and protesters were already injured in clashes.
(AP, 6/4/07)(WSJ, 6/4/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun 6, German police used
water cannon to scatter stone-throwing demonstrators as several
thousand protesters gathered at a seven-mile fence surrounding the
G8 summit meeting involving President Bush and other leaders.
(AP, 6/6/07)
2007 Jun 7, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the G8 has agreed on a plan
calling for "substantial cuts" to greenhouse gas emissions. Riot
police used water cannons to turn protesters away from the fence
surrounding the Group of Eight summit. G8 leaders reached an
agreement on climate change, adopting a statement that says they
should "seriously consider" proposals to cut the emissions of
greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050. Russian President Vladimir
Putin, bitterly opposed to a US missile shield in Europe, told
President Bush that Moscow would drop its objections if the
radar-based system were installed in Azerbaijan.
(AP, 6/7/07)(AP, 6/7/08)
2007 Jun 8, In Germany the
leaders of the G8 met with African leaders on their summit's
concluding day, agreeing on a $60 billion package to fight disease
in Africa as diplomats worked behind the scenes on a possible deal
with Russia over Kosovo's future. The G8 powers called for action
against "the perpetrators of atrocities" in Darfur and said it would
back UN action against the Sudanese government and rebel groups if
the conflict is not ended. President Bush was ill and stayed in his
room after meeting privately with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
(AP, 6/8/07)(AFP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 8, Japan’s Inamori
Foundation announced that a California-based earthquake scientist,
Japanese chemist and German choreographer have won the $410,000
Kyoto Prize for achievement in the arts and sciences. The basic
sciences award went to Hiroo Kanamori of the California Institute of
Technology for his research on major earthquakes along the Pacific
Rim; Hiroo Inokuchi at the University of Tokyo received the advanced
technology award for his work in organic electronics; German
choreographer Pina Bausch was awarded the arts and philosophy prize
for her pioneering work in developing a new genre of ballet dubbed
"Tanztheater," or dance theater.
(AP, 6/9/07)
2007 Jun 10, The first
high-speed rail link between France and Germany began scheduled
services, slashing travel times and marking a major step towards a
truly pan-European rapid transit network.
(AP, 6/10/07)
2007 Jun 12, Germany wrapped up
one aspect of its Nazi past by shutting down a forced labor fund
that paid out more than 4.37 billion euros to 1.7 million elderly
victims of the Hitler era around the world.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 18, In eastern Germany
a bus veered off a highway and fell into a roadside ditch, killing
13 people and injuring about 30.
(AP, 6/18/07)
2007 Jun 21, Talks in Germany
between the US, EU, India and Brazil to save the World Trade
Organization’s (WTO) Doha round of free trade negotiations
collapsed.
(Reuters, 6/21/07)
2007 Jun 26, German authorities
said a tax official, who stole more than $230,000 from the state by
inventing taxpayers and claiming money owed to them, has been handed
a jail sentence of three years and three months.
(AP, 6/26/07)
2007 Jun 29, Germany and
Denmark agreed to build an 11-mile bridge spanning the waters
between the two nations and cut travel times between Scandinavia and
central Europe.
(AP, 6/29/07)
2007 Jun 29, A German court
convicted nurse Irene Becker (54) of murdering five patients at a
top Berlin hospital with overdoses of medication, sentencing her to
life in prison. Becker had argued she'd wanted to ease the suffering
of some of the patients.
(AP, 6/29/07)
2007 Jul 2, Count Gottfried von
Bismarck (44), whose life of privileged excess as a descendant of
Germany's "Iron Chancellor" was clouded by two deaths at his
decadent parties, was found dead at his $10 million apartment in
London's Chelsea district.
(AP, 7/4/07)
2007 Jul 3, In Germany striking
train drivers brought parts of the rail network to a standstill,
backing their demands for a large pay increase with a walkout that
affected tens of thousands of commuters.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2007 Jul 7, German scientists
said a genetically engineered herpes virus, designed to kill cancer
cells but leave normal tissue unharmed, has shown early promise in
clinical tests.
(Reuters, 7/7/07)
2007 Jul 12, South Africa
banned the import of poultry products from Germany after an outbreak
of the potentially fatal H5N1 strain of bird flu.
(AFP, 7/12/07)
2007 Jul 16, A group
representing thousands of children of Holocaust survivors filed a
class-action lawsuit against the German government, demanding that
Germany pay for their psychiatric care.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 21, A purported
Taliban spokesman said the militia killed two German hostages
because Germany didn't announce a troop withdrawal. The Afghan
government, however, said one of the Germans died of a heart attack
and that the second was still alive. Ruediger Diedrich, one of two
Germans kidnapped in southern Afghanistan on July 18, was found
dead. Germany has 3,000 soldiers in NATO's International Security
Assistance Force.
(AP, 7/21/07)(AP, 7/21/08)
2007 Jul 26, Germany's Identity
Foundation said leading Indian economist and Nobel laureate Amartya
Sen (73) will be awarded the Meister Eckhart prize for his work on
human development theory.
(AFP, 7/26/07)
2007 Aug 15, In Germany 6
Italian men were fatally shot in the head in the western city of
Duisburg, an execution-style killing that Italy's interior minister
said appeared to be a feud between two Italian organized crime
clans. On March 12, 2009, Dutch police arrested Giovanni Strangio
(30), an Italian man wanted for the killings in Duisburg.
(AP, 8/15/07)(AP, 3/13/09)
2007 Aug 15, In Afghanistan US
led ground troops and airstrikes targeted "hundreds of foreign
fighters" dug into positions in the Tora Bora region of eastern
Nangarhar province. 2 German police officers and a German foreign
ministry employee were killed in Kabul, in a bomb attack claimed by
the Taliban.
(AP, 8/15/07)
2007 Aug 18, In Germany 2
Africans were attacked by right-wing extremists in Mainz, the same
night as a brutal mob assault on eight Indians in the country's
former communist east.
(AFP, 8/25/07)
2007 Aug 25, A German federal
lab confirmed that tests have found that birds at a poultry farm in
southern Germany died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, and some
160,000 birds were being slaughtered as a precaution.
(AP, 8/26/07)
2007 Aug 25, In Germany more
than 1 million revelers, many scantily dressed, danced their way
through the streets of Essen to sound of whistles blowing and techno
music for the Love Parade's debut in its new home, western Germany's
industrial Ruhr region.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2007 Sep 4, In Germany 3
suspected Islamic terrorists from an al-Qaida-influenced group
nursing "profound hatred of U.S. citizens" were arrested on
suspicious of plotting imminent, massive bomb attacks on US
facilities in Germany. In 2008 Fritz Martin Gelowicz (29), Daniel
Martin Schneider (22) and Adem Yilmaz (29) were charged with
membership in a terrorist organization.
(AP, 9/5/07)(SFC, 9/3/08, p.A8)
2007 Sep 5, German officials
announced that three militants from an Islamic group linked to
al-Qaida were planning "imminent" bomb attacks against Americans in
Germany when an elite anti-terrorist unit raided their small-town
hideout.
(AP, 9/5/08)
2007 Sep 6, German police
hunted for about a dozen people suspected of plotting massive bomb
attacks against Americans in a plot whose discovery fanned debate
over increasing official surveillance powers.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 9, Volkswagen
announced the Up! At the Frankfurt Motor Show. The 6,000 euro
($8,300) is a small car intended for emerging markets.
(Econ, 9/15/07, p.78)
2007 Sep 11, A militant group
called Islamic Jihad Union claimed responsibility for foiled
bombings that targeted Ramstein US Air Base as well as US and Uzbek
consulates in Germany.
(AP, 9/11/08)
2007 Sep 17, German police
arrested Augustin Ngirabatware, a former Rwandan minister, wanted by
the International Tribunal on genocide charges related to Rwanda’s
1994 conflict. He was charged with genocide and crimes against
humanity in October 2008 and pleaded not guilty. In 2009 prosecutor
Wallace Kapaya said he has proof Ngirabatware stole money donated by
the World Bank and IMF as well as cash from lenders including
Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the US, Belgium and Canada to buy
weapons and transport for the extremist Hutu militia known as the
Interahamwe. Ngirabatware is the son-in-law of Felician Kabuga,
Rwanda's most wanted genocide suspect.
(AP, 9/20/07)(AP, 9/23/09)
2007 Sep 19, Gabriele Pauli
(50), Bavaria's most glamorous politician, shocked the Catholic
state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years.
She said after that time, couples should either agree to extend
their marriage or it should be automatically dissolved.
(Reuters, 9/20/07)
2007 Sep 20, German low-cost
carrier Air Berlin said it would buy the carrier Condor from travel
giant Thomas Cook, after swallowing two national rivals in less than
a year.
(AP, 9/20/07)
2007 Sep 20, Estonia decided it
will not allow a German-Russian consortium to conduct a survey of
its exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea for a planned
underwater gas pipeline.
(AP, 9/20/07)
2007 Sep 30, Haile Gebrselassie
of Ethiopia broke the world record in winning the Berlin Marathon in
two hours, four minutes and 26 seconds.
(AP, 9/30/07)
2007 Oct 3, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel arrived in Ethiopia overnight at the start of a tour
of African countries that will also take in South Africa and
Liberia.
(AFP, 10/3/07)
2007 Oct 4, Siemens, one of the
world’s biggest electrical engineering firms, accepted a $285
million fine imposed by a court in Munich for bribery by its
communications division. CEO Peter Loscher announced a
re-organization that included reducing its 9 divisions to three and
downsizing the 11-man executive board. The ruling named officials in
Nigeria, Libya and Russia as recipients of 77 bribes totaling some
$17.5 million.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.70)(WSJ, 11/16/07,
p.A1)
2007 Oct 9, Two European
scientists won the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics for a discovery that
lets computers, iPods and other digital devices store reams of data
on ever-shrinking hard disks. France's Albert Fert and German Peter
Gruenberg independently described giant magnetoresistance in 1988,
then saw the electronics industry apply it in disks with incredible
amounts of storage.
(AP, 10/9/07)
2007 Oct 10, Gerhard Ertl of
Germany won the 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry for studies of
chemical reactions on solid surfaces, which are key to understanding
questions like how pollution eats away at the ozone layer.
(AP, 10/10/07)
2007 Oct 10, Rudolf
Blechschmidt, a German engineer, and four Afghans taken hostage on
July 18 were freed in exchange for six Taliban fighters. Wardak
province district chief Mohammad Nahim later changed his statement
saying five imprisoned criminals had been freed. NATO-led and Afghan
troops clashed overnight with Taliban fighters in southern
Afghanistan, leaving eight suspected militants dead and three
detained.
(AP, 10/10/07)
2007 Oct 12, Half of Germany's
commuter and regional trains were brought to a standstill by a train
drivers' pay strike that caused chaos in many major cities.
(AP, 10/12/07)
2007 Oct 15,
In Germany Pres. Putin held talks with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel on the sidelines of a German-Russian political
conference called the Petersburg Dialogue.
(AFP, 10/15/07)
2007 Oct 19,
A team of students from Germany's Technische Universitat
Darmstadt won a weeklong competition on the Washington DC National
Mall for the best, most efficient, and well-designed and -engineered
solar home.
(AP, 10/19/07)
2007 Oct 30, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met India's leadership at the start of a state visit
aimed at boosting trade and security links.
(AP, 10/30/07)
2007 Nov 3, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel made her first visit to Afghanistan and said Berlin
would increase efforts to strengthen the Afghan police.
(AP, 11/3/07)
2007 Nov 6, Central bankers
past and present warned of more credit pain to come as Germany's
Commerzbank and a big American lender became the latest to reveal
losses from U.S. subprime mortgage lending.
(AP, 11/6/07)
2007 Nov 8, German authorities
said bank manager in Tuebingen gave loans to a woman for sex and
then embezzled thousands of euros to buy the silence of her
relatives. In total the man diverted some 520,000 euros (362,033
pounds) from clients' accounts, of which he gave about 70,000 euros
to the woman, and kept 40,000 euros for himself.
(Reuters, 11/8/07)
2007 Nov 10, German train
drivers ended the country's longest freight train strike, but the
labor dispute is set to continue next week.
(AFP, 11/10/07)
2007 Nov 14, German train
drivers began a new 62-hour strike on freight services that industry
and the government fear could have a dramatic impact on Europe's
biggest economy.
(AP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 18, German prosecutors
filed terrorism charges against a Moroccan man, identified as
Abdelali M. (25), was accused of helping recruit foreign fighters
for al-Qaida in Iraq. He was arrested in Sweden in March and handed
over to Germany in May.
(AP, 12/20/07)
2007 Nov 28, Nazi documents
stored in a vast warehouse in Germany were unsealed, opening a rich
resource for Holocaust historians and for survivors to delve into
their own tormented past. Inquiries were handled by the archive's
400 staff members in the German spa town of Bad Arolsen.
(AP, 11/28/07)
2007 Nov 29, Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel surrendered to demands by the Social
Democrats, a junior partner in the grand coalition, for a minimum
wage for postal workers.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.60)
2007 Dec 1, At the 20th annual
European Film Awards in Berlin Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's
"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" won the best film prize.
(AP, 12/1/07)
2007 Dec 5, In Germany 3 men
were convicted of aiding the al-Qaida in Germany, including one who
prosecutors say was part of the terrorist network's command
structure and had contact with top leaders.
(AP, 12/5/07)
2007 Dec 5, In Darry, Germany,
the bodies of 5 young boys, ages 3 to 9, were found in their home
after their 31-year-old mother told a doctor where they were.
Authorities in eastern Germany announced they had found the bodies
of three infant girls and had taken their mother into custody on
manslaughter charges.
(AP, 12/6/07)
2007 Dec 5, Karlheinz
Stockhausen (b.1928), German avant-garde composer, died. His
innovative electronic works made him one of the most important
composers of the postwar era. His work included “Kontakte” (1959-60)
and “Stimmung” (1968), a sextet for unaccompanied voices on a 6-note
chord of B-flat.
(AP, 12/8/07)(Econ, 12/15/07, p.95)
2007 Dec 7, Germany's top
security officials said they consider the goals of the US-based
Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the
nation's constitution and will seek to ban the group.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2007 Dec 8, In Spain German
Chancellor Angela Merkel challenged European and African leaders to
confront human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, putting the country's
president Robert Mugabe in the spotlight at an EU-Africa summit.
(AP, 12/8/07)
2007 Dec 13, Lufthansa AG said
it is paying $300 million for a 19% stake in JetBlue Airways.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.D3)
2007 Dec 14, It was reported
that German AIDS researchers have discovered a protein common in
semen that boosts the infectious potential of HIV 100,000-fold.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 14, Britain’s
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) confirmed
a new case of the livestock disease bluetongue in a cow
imported from Germany, two months after an earlier outbreak was said
to have been contained.
(AFP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 16, In eastern
Afghanistan a roadside bomb blast killed two Afghan civilians and
wounded five others, while a clash in the south left four Taliban
dead. Harald Kleber (42) a German national locally known by his
Muslim name, Abdul Rahman, was kidnapped in heart province. The next
day German authorities said Kleber was wanted in Germany for fraud.
(AP, 12/16/07)(AFP, 12/17/07)(AFP, 12/18/07)
2007 Dec 24, The head of a
special unit said on German radio prosecutors are investigating
12,000 suspects in a child pornography network, the largest ever
found in Germany.
(AP, 12/24/07)
2007 Dan Hough authored “The
Left Party in Contemporary German Politics.”
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.57)
2007 Researchers from
Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found a 3-millimetre-long (0.118
inch) ant in the Amazon rainforest and dated its origin back to
about 120Mil BC, making it the oldest still inhabiting the earth.
(Reuters, 9/16/08)
2008 Jan 1, Smokers took to
lighting up on the sidewalks as a ban took effect across France ,
Germany and Lithuania, the latest European countries to say "no
smoking." Across France smokers took advantage of a one-day grace
period and savored their last cigarettes over morning coffee in
cafes as a ban against lighting up in bars and restaurants took
effect.
(AP, 1/1/08)(AFP, 1/1/08)
2008 Jan 15, Finland's Nokia,
the top global mobile phone manufacturer, said that it planned to
close a factory in Germany by mid-year which employs 2,300 workers.
(AFP, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Germany
officials said a troubled teen (16) is spending nine months in
remote Siberia as part of efforts to turn him away from violence.
"If he doesn't hack wood, his place is cold. If he doesn't get
water, he can't wash."
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 22, The foreign
ministers of China and Germany said that ties between their
countries had normalized after months of stony silence over Berlin
receiving the Dalai Lama.
(AP, 1/22/08)
2008 Jan 24, A German court
convicted Redouane El Habhab (38), a German of Moroccan heritage, of
helping al-Qaida in Iraq and sentenced him to nearly six years in
prison.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Feb 3, In southwest
Germany an apartment building fire killed at least nine people, five
of them children, and left 20 people hospitalized in Ludwigshafen.
(AP, 2/4/08)
2008 Feb 20, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel attacked Liechtenstein’s traditional banking secrecy
and demanded a US-style deal giving Berlin insight into German
investments in the Alpine tax haven.
(AP, 2/20/08)
2008 Feb 22, The German finance
ministry threatened to tax all financial transfers to Liechtenstein
unless the Alpine principality relaxed its banking secrecy codes and
helped trace tax evaders.
(AFP, 2/22/08)
2008 Feb 27, Germany's highest
court found that government surveillance of personal computers
violates the individual right to privacy. German investigators said
this will restrict their ability to pursue terrorists.
(AP, 2/27/08)
2008 Feb 27, The German luxury
carmaker BMW said that a restructuring plan aimed at boosting
profitability would see the overall elimination of 8,100 jobs
worldwide.
(AP, 2/27/08)
2008 Mar 1, A violent storm
plagued parts of Europe and deaths rose to 10 after two people in
Poland were killed by falling objects because of hurricane-strength
winds. Germany reported 2 deaths, the Czech Rep. 2 deaths and 4 more
in Austria.
(AP, 3/2/08)
2008 Mar 5, In Germany scores
of flights were canceled as hundreds of airport workers walked off
the job at several airports, part of a wider labor action to win
higher pay for public service workers.
(AP, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 13, Volkswagen, the
biggest European car maker, vowed to become "the best auto
manufacturer in the world" and welcomed a looming takeover by luxury
sports car maker Porsche.
(AFP, 3/13/08)
2008 Mar 16, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel acknowledged her country's "historical responsibility"
to Israel as she opened a three-day visit marking the 60th
anniversary of the Jewish state.
(AP, 3/16/08)
2008 Mar 18, In Israel Angela
Merkel, chancellor of Germany, addressed Israel’s parliament and
condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.59)
2008 Mar 28, In Chile 5 youths,
aged 14-20, attacked 9 German soldiers and took them hostage in the
port city of Iquique. One soldier escaped and police quickly
surrounded the house and arrested four suspects after a shootout.
(AP, 3/29/08)
2008 Apr 2, Newspapers reported
that Egypt has ordered the seizure of the March 25 special edition
of the German news magazine Der Spiegel after it was deemed to be
insulting to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
(AFP, 4/2/08)
2008 Apr 10, Berlin police
found a body that is probably that of Anna Mikhalchuk (52), a
missing Russian artist, who had been condemned by the Orthodox
Church for an exhibit in her homeland. The death was an apparent
suicide.
(AP, 4/11/08)
2008 Apr 14, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel arrived in Dublin to discuss a European Union reform
treaty that still bemuses most Irish voters ahead of a June
referendum that will determine the pact's fate.
(Reuters, 4/14/08)
2008 Apr 23, German publisher
Bertelsmann said it planned to publish the world's first reference
book based on entries from Wikipedia, the popular online
encyclopedia. The single volume, 992-page tome would contain about
50,000 condensed entries and sell for about $31.80.
(AP, 4/23/08)(SFC, 4/24/08, p.C1)
2008 May 24, Deutsche Telekom
acknowledged that in 2005 it had hired an outside firm to track
hundreds of thousands of phone calls by senior executives and
journalists to identify the sources of press leaks. The practice
continued into 2006.
(AP, 5/26/08)(Econ, 6/7/08, p.65)
2008 May 26, Germany turned red
as unusual weather brought iron-rich dust from Africa to Europe.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.79)
2008 May 27, Germany unveiled a
memorial to the Nazis' long-ignored gay victims, a monument that
also aims to address ongoing discrimination by confronting visitors
with an image of a same-sex couple kissing.
(AP, 5/27/08)
2008 May 31, A former Deutsche
Telekom security chief said the national phone company spied
on its staff for years to see who had unauthorized contacts with
journalists.
(AP, 5/31/08)
2008 Jun 1, German researchers
reported that the development of a blood-based genetic test for
predicting lung cancer among smokers with 80% accuracy.
(WSJ, 6/2/08, p.B4)
2008 Jun 2, In Germany Some
2,000 delegates from 162 countries and dozens of specialist agencies
opened a two-week conference to start tackling the details of a new
global warming agreement slated to take effect after 2012.
(AP, 6/2/08)
2008 Jun 23, Somali gunmen
reportedly seized 4 Europeans from a yacht off the Gulf of Aden and
took to Puntland, a semiautonomous region of northern Somalia. They
demanded $1 million for the release of a German couple, their young
son and a French boat captain. German officials subsequently said no
child was kidnapped. The German couple was released on August 8
following a $1 million ransom.
(AP, 6/26/08)(AP, 8/9/08)
2008 Jun 24, Countries at a
one-day conference in Berlin agreed to commit more than $240 million
to help strengthen the Palestinian Authority's police force and
court system. The funding being sought was for the Palestinian
Authority-controlled West Bank, which does not control the Gaza
Strip.
(AP, 6/24/08)
2008 Jun 29, In Germany Bettina
Schardt (79) committed suicide using a formula of antimalarial drugs
tranquilizers provided by Dr. Roger Kusch. She did not want to move
into a nursing home and asked Mr. Kusch for a way out.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/europe/03germany.html)
2008 Jul 1, Munich-based
Giesecke & Devrient, caved in to pressure from the German
government to stop supplying Zimbabwe with special blank paper
money. Zimbabwe required new notes every few weeks as the inflation
rate pushed well over one million percent.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 2, Deutsche Bank
acquired the Dutch corporate banking arm of ABN AMRO from Fortis, a
Benelux bank, for $1.1 billion in cash.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.83)
2008 Jul 3, Lydia Lassen-Berge
(69), a former prostitute dubbed the "Black Widow" by the German
press, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of four
wealthy but frail elderly male companions. Siegmund Schlufter (53),
her accomplice, was sentenced to 12 years in jail for carrying out
the killings.
(AFP, 7/3/08)
2008 Jul 7, Germany’s Fresenius
SE said it has agreed to buy US generic drug maker APP
Pharmaceuticals for $3.7 billion in cash in a deal that will give
the health care company more opportunities in the North American
market for drugs administered intravenously.
(AP, 7/7/08)
2008 Jul 8, Industrial
conglomerate Siemens AG said it will cut 16,750 jobs, or 4.2 percent
of its global work force, to streamline operations and slice nearly
$2 billion in costs in the face of a slowing economy.
(AP, 7/8/08)
2008 Jul 8, A German cargo ship
held captive for 41 days off the coast of Somalia was released and
all aboard were safe and unharmed. A Somali official said the
pirates received a ransom of $750,000. The Lehmann Timber was one of
two ships hijacked on May 30 off the Horn of Africa.
(AP, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 9, German
investigators carried out raids on 600 homes in Austria, Switzerland
and Germany seeking chemicals used to produce an illicit date-rape
drug.
(AP, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 9, In Istanbul,
Turkey, men armed with pistols and shotguns attacked a police guard
post outside the US consulate, sparking a gunbattle that left 3
attackers and 3 officers dead. In eastern Turkey, a local governor
said Kurdish guerrillas have kidnapped three German tourists on a
climbing expedition.
(AP, 7/9/08)(Reuters, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 15, Volkswagen
announced that it would build a $1 billion car plant in Chattanooga,
Tenn., and expected to open it as soon as 2011.
(WSJ, 7/30/08,
p.C10)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiFdSOp19gU)
2008 Jul 17, Algeria and
Germany wound up two days of talks in Algiers with a call for more
economic cooperation between the two countries.
(AP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 19, In Germany more
than 1.5 million revelers danced through the streets of Dortmund at
the annual Love Parade techno music festival.
(AP, 7/19/08)
2008 Jul 22, Iraqi PM Nouri
al-Maliki met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for talks aimed
at strengthening economic ties between the two countries.
(AP, 7/22/08)
2008 Jul 24, In Germany US
presidential candidate Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela
Merkel discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as climate
and energy issues at Germany's chancellery. Obama stood before an
enormous crowd in Berlin and summoned Europeans and Americans to
work together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism
that supports it."
(AP, 7/24/08)
2008 Jul 25, German
semi-conductor group Infineon posted a sharp quarterly loss and
announced the loss of 3,000 jobs.
(AP, 7/25/08)
2008 Jul 30, Germany's highest
court partially overturned bans on smoking in bars, ruling that
states must either ban smoking in all restaurants and pubs or offer
exceptions for single-room establishments.
(AP, 7/30/08)
2008 Aug 1, A German farmer who
lost both his arms in an accident was successfully fitted with two
new limbs in what is believed to be the first complete double arm
transplant.
(AP, 8/1/08)
2008 Aug 21, Armed pirates
hijacked a Japanese chemical tanker with 19 crew, an Iranian bulk
carrier with 29 crew, and a German cargo ship with a crew of 9 off
Somalia's coast.
(AP, 8/21/08)(AP, 8/22/08)
2008 Aug 27, In Afghanistan a
German soldier was killed and another three injured in a roadside
bomb attack in Kunduz province. Germany counted some 3,300 soldiers
as part of the international force in Afghanistan. US-led coalition
troops clashed and called in airstrikes against militants in Kunduz
province, killing more than a dozen insurgents. In southern
Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed a US coalition soldier on a
patrol. In the Nad Ali area of Helmand province, a fight between
police and militants killed 14 insurgents. More than a dozen
militants were killed after they attacked a coalition base in
Shaheed Hasas district of the southern Uruzgan province. Two Afghan
guards also died during the attack. About a dozen militants were
killed during a raid by coalition troops in eastern Paktika
province.
(AP, 8/27/08)(AP, 8/28/08)(AP, 8/30/08)
2008 Aug 31, Allianz, a
Germany-based insurer, sold Dresdner, a German bank, to Commerzbank
for $14.2 billion.
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.88)
2008 Sep 3, Swiss prosecutors
said police have broken up an Internet child pornography ring
operating in at least four European countries where men exchanged
details about their contacts with young girls. In all investigators
said they had identified 600 people in Germany, 40 in Austria, 13 in
Switzerland and four in Liechtenstein using the forum.
(AP, 9/3/08)
2008 Sep 4, German ministers
agreed to update data protection laws for the digital age in the
wake of scandals showing how easily personal details can be bought
on the Internet.
(AFP, 9/4/08)
2008 Sep 17, A German court
convicted 3 Turkish men of siphoning $25 million from the Deniz
Feneri charity, which raised fund to ostensibly help needy Muslims.
(Econ, 9/20/08, p.69)
2008 Sep 20, German police
cancelled an anti-Islamic congress planned for today in Cologne
after leftist opponents of the rally clashed with its right-wing
backers.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 28, In Germany Haile
Gebrselassie of Ethiopia broke the marathon world record for the
second straight year, becoming the first man to run the distance in
under two hours and four minutes. He clocked 2:03.59 in winning his
third straight Berlin Marathon, breaking the mark of 2:04.26 he set
last year over the same flat course.
(AP, 9/28/08)
2008 Sep 29, Britain seized
control of mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley. Germany organized
a credit lifeline for blue-chip commercial real estate lender Hypo
Real Estate Holding AG, while Iceland's government took over Glitnir
bank, the country's third largest.
(AP, 9/29/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of
Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a
summit on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and
jobs across the continent. They vowed to do all they could to
prevent Wall Street's turmoil from destabilizing their banking
systems. Germany's No. 2 commercial property lender, Hypo Real
Estate Holding AG, said its $48 billion rescue plan had unraveled
when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 5, Germany joined
Ireland and Greece in guaranteeing all private bank accounts,
putting Europe's biggest economy at odds with calls for a unified
European response to the global financial meltdown.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 6, Three European
scientists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for separate
discoveries of viruses that cause AIDS and cervical cancer,
breakthroughs that helped doctors fight the deadly diseases. French
researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited
for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV; while
Germany's Harald zur Hausen was honored for finding human papilloma
viruses that cause cervical cancer,
(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 7, Chancellor Angela
Merkel's Cabinet voted to extend Germany's military mission in
Afghanistan for 14 more months.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 7, Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD) and Advanced Technology Investment, a recently formed
investment firm owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, said they will
become joint owners of a new company that will take over AMD’s
factories in Germany.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.B3)
2008 Oct 21, Italy's Court of
Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3
million) to nine family members of victims of a June 1944 massacre.
The next day Germany rejected the ruling by Italy's top criminal
court.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 29, In Germany
Viswanathan Anand of India retained his world chess title by drawing
with the white pieces against Russian challenger Vladimir Kramnik.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Oct 30, In Germany the
last flight lifted off from Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, bringing an
end to an era of aviation that spanned World War II, the Cold War
and the rebirth of the German capital.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Nov 4, In Germany a tour
bus returning from a day trip to a farm caught fire on a highway
near the northern city of Hannover, killing 20 people. A cigarette
was suspected but it may also have been caused by a spark from the
undercarriage.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,446824,00.html)
2008 Nov 5, Germany’s cabinet
approved measures to boost the economy that will cost around €23
billion ($29.9) over the next 4 years.
(WSJ, 11/6/08, p.A15)
2008 Nov 7, Klaus Zumwinkel,
former head of Deutsche Post, was charged with tax evasion. He had
stepped down from his post in February following a raid on his home
in Cologne.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.77)
2008 Nov 9, Rose Kabuye, Rwanda
Pres. Kagame's chief of protocol, was arrested at Frankfurt airport
on an international warrant issued in 2006 by French anti-terrorism
judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
(AFP, 11/10/08)
2008 Nov 10, Deutsche Post AG
said it will close all of its DHL Express service centers, cut 9,500
jobs in the United States and eliminate US-only domestic express
shipping by land and air, citing heavy losses and fierce
competition.
(AP, 11/10/08)
2008 Nov 11, Rwanda expelled
the German ambassador and Pres. Kagame declared that Germany
violated his country's sovereignty when it arrested one of his aides
in connection with an attack that set off Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 11/11/08)
2008 Nov 12, Germany's biggest
industrial union secured a 4.2 percent pay rise over 18 months for
the nation's manufacturing workers in a deal that averted an all-out
strike.
(AP, 11/12/08)
2008 Nov 12, In Germany Dr.
Gero Huetter said his 42-year-old patient, an American living in
Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus
for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant
of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of
carrying the virus.
(AP, 11/13/08)
2008 Nov 13,The 38th Chess
Olympiad started in Dresden, Germany. It included 146 teams in the
open division, often referred to as the men's division although it
includes a few women. The separate women's division included 111
teams.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 19, Germany extradited
to France Rose Kabuye (47), chief of protocol to Rwandan President
Paul Kagame, over an assassination triggering the 1994 genocide,
amid mass anti-European protests in Kigali. Some European
investigators feared that Kabuye deliberately delivered herself to
German authorities so her lawyers could gain access to the case
files prepared against her and other Kagame allies.
(AFP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 19, Germany chemical
company BASF SE said it is temporarily closing 80 plants worldwide
due to slumping demand and cutting production at 100 more, including
facilities in Texas and Louisiana. Some 20,000 workers are affected.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 21, German security
officials said they are dropping the pursuit of a ban on Scientology
after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity.
(AP, 11/22/08)
2008 Nov 25 Armenia won its
second straight gold medal at the Chess Olympiad in Germany by
defeating China 2.5-1.5 in the 11th and final round.
(AP, 11/26/08)
2008 Nov 27, Germany's defense
minister laid the foundation stone for the first national memorial
in Berlin, designed by German architect Andreas Meck, to soldiers
killed serving in the country's post-World War II military.
(AP, 11/27/08)
2008 Dec 1, In Germany Monika
Halbe (44) was sentenced to four years and three months in prison
for killing the children born in 1988 and 2003 by suffocation or
neglect. The case of a third infant killed in 1986 and stored with
the other two was not prosecuted because the statute of limitations
had expired.
(AP, 12/1/08)
2008 Dec 13, The Indian navy
captured 23 pirates who threatened a merchant vessel in the lawless
waters of the Gulf of Aden, where dozens of ships have come under
attack by gunmen in recent months. The pirates were from Somalia and
Yemen. A German helicopter thwarted another attack on a freighter
being chased by speed boats off Yemen.
(AP, 12/13/08)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A20)
2008 Dec 14, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel met with German ministers, business
executives and labor leaders to chart a course through the financial
crisis.
(AP, 12/14/08)
2008 Dec 15, Siemens pleaded
guilty to charges of bribery and corruption and agreed to pay fines
of $800 million in America and $540 million in Germany, on top of an
earlier €201 million. For over 6 years Siemens had paid foreign
officials some $805 million to win contracts.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.112)
2008 Dec 15, In southern Yemen
tribesmen kidnapped a German aid worker and her parents, demanding
the government release imprisoned clan members.
(AP, 12/15/08)
2008 Dec 23, Germany filed suit
at the World Court asking Italy to stop its legal system from
awarding damages to victims of Nazi war crimes.
(AP, 12/24/08)
2008 Dec 25, A German military
helicopter chased away pirates who were trying to board an Egyptian
ship off the coast of Somalia. One of the ship's crew was shot in
the attack.
(AP, 12/25/08)
2008 Dec 29, In Germany Munich
Re, the world's number two reinsurer, said natural disasters killed
over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating
years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal.
(AFP, 12/29/08)
2008 In Germany the Storch
Heinar (stork Heinar) cartoon character was originally hatched by
members of a group that fights the far right and linked to the
left-leaning Social Democratic Party, which heads
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's state government. The bird was
initially meant to combat the rise in popularity of a fashion label
popular with neo-Nazis, Thor Steinar.
(AP, 9/2/11)
2008 The Vietnamese German
University (VGU) opened in Ho Chi Minh City. It focused on
engineering and economics with programs taught in English by
visiting German professors.
(Econ, 10/2/10, p.45)
2009 Jan 1, In Germany thieves
over the last 24 hours stole an estimated $250,000 in art work from
the Fasanengalerie, a private art gallery in western Berlin.
(SFC, 1/3/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 5, Germany’s ruling
coalition agreed to a 2-year fiscal stimulus package of as much as
$69 billion (€50 billion).
(WSJ, 1/6/09, p.A8)
2009 Jan 5, In southwestern
Germany the body of billionaire Adolf Merckle (74) was found near
railway tracks at Blaubeuren. He had committed suicide after his
business empire ran into trouble in the global financial crisis.
Merckle’s VEM holding company controlled Ratiopharm, building
materials giant HeidelbergCement and one of Europe's biggest
wholesale drug distributors, Phoenix. In 2008 Forbes Magazine ranked
Merckle as the world’s 94th richest man.
(AP, 1/6/09)(Econ, 1/10/09, p.58)(AP, 3/18/10)
2009 Jan 9, In Germany
Commerzbank AG issued a euro5 billion ($6.8 billion) bond, the first
to be backed by the government's massive stabilization package.
(AP, 1/9/09)
2009 Jan 12, Germany’s
coalition government approved a $67 million spending package to
mitigate recession effects.
(Econ, 1/17/09, p.52)
2009 Jan 14, Shares in Deutsche
Bank, Germany's biggest bank, slumped after it announced massive
losses for the fourth quarter and new terms for its takeover of
giant retail lender Postbank.
(AP, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 19, Rwanda said it was
restoring relations with Germany after a diplomatic spat between the
two countries over Berlin's arrest of a top Rwandan official for
complicity in the 1994 genocide. A Rwandan court passed a life
sentence on Agnes Ntamabyariro, a former justice minister accused of
ordering the killing of Jean Baptiste Habyarimana, a Tutsi official
who opposed Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 1/19/09)(AFP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 21, Germany banned the
production, sale or possession of a synthetic marijuana-like drug
known as "Spice," effective as of Jan 22, becoming the 4th nation to
ban the substance, marketed as an herbal room-freshener, after
Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 22, In Germany Klaus
Zumwinkel (65), the former chief executive of Deutsche Post,
admitted in court that he evaded taxes by squirreling money away in
Liechtenstein, calling it the greatest mistake of his life. A court
on Jan 26 convicted Zumwinkel of tax evasion, giving him a two-year
suspended sentence and a hefty fine.
(AP, 1/22/09)(AP, 1/26/09)
2009 Jan 29, Somali pirates
hijacked a German gas tanker, the MV Longchamp, and its 13-man crew
in the Gulf of Aden, the third ship captured off the Horn of Africa
this month. The ship was released along with its 13 crew members on
March 28.
(AP, 1/29/09)(SFC, 1/30/09, p.A16)(AP, 3/28/09)
2009 Jan 30, Hans Beck (79),
creator of the colorful plastic Playmobil toy figures that sold by
the millions around the world, died in Germany. Beck had created and
developed the 3-inch (7.5-centimeter) tall line of figures for the
company in 1971. they were dubbed Playmobil and brought to market in
1974.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Jan 31, Porsche's new
museum in Stuttgart, a sprawling monument to 60 years of German
engineering, opened to the public.
(AP, 1/30/09)
2009 Feb 4, In Germany
countries leading the drive to resolve concerns about Iran's nuclear
program welcomed the new US administration's readiness to engage
with Tehran. Foreign Ministry officials from Germany and the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China,
France, Russia and the US, met in Wiesbaden.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Feb 5, Germany's biggest
lender, Deutsche Bank, posted its first annual loss since World War
II after a terrible fourth quarter but said it would survive the
global meltdown without state aid. Deutsche Bank reported a 2008
loss of $5 billion, including $1.8 billion attributed a group run by
Wall Street trader Boaz Weinstein.
(AP, 2/5/09)(WSJ, 2/6/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 12, Researchers in
Germany, on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, said
they have completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, 3
billion genetic building blocks that will shed new light on the
ancient hominid as well as the origins of humans, its closest
relation. Lead scientist Svante Paabo established in 1997 that
Neanderthals were cousins rather than ancestors of modern humans.
(AP, 2/12/09)(Econ, 2/21/09, p.80)
2009 Feb 12, Domenica Niehoff
(63), Germany's best-known former prostitute, died. She was a
familiar figure on TV talk shows in the 1970s and '80s and was
instantly recognizable for her 48-inch bust and notoriously
revealing outfits.
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 13, In Germany Ahmad
Obeidi (24), and Afghan immigrant, was convicted of murdering his
16-year-old sister in a so-called "honor killing."
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 14, The Peruvian film
“La Teta Asustada” (The Milk of Sorrow), directed by Claudia Llosa,
won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milk_of_Sorrow)(Econ, 3/14/09,
p.42)
2009 Feb 17, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister met with top Iraqi leaders in
Baghdad in the latest high-level visit by a major Western nation
that opposed the 2003 US-led invasion but has promised to help Iraq
rebuild now that security has improved.
(AP, 2/17/09)
2009 Mar 1, Germany rejected
appeals for a single multibillion euro (dollar) bailout of eastern
Europe, even after Hungry begged EU leaders not to let a new "Iron
Curtain" divide the continent into rich and poor.
(AP, 3/1/09)
2009 Mar 3, In Germany the
building that houses the Cologne city archives collapsed. 3 people
were feared missing in other damaged buildings nearby.
(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Mar 5, Germany’s restored
Neues Museum was unveiled after six years of painstaking work to
repair World War II bomb damage that ruined much of the renowned
Berlin building.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 9, Helg Sgarbi, a man
dubbed "the Swiss gigolo" by the German media, was sentenced to six
years in prison for defrauding BMW heiress Susanne Klatten (46),
Germany's richest woman, of euro7 million ($9 million) and
attempting to blackmail her for tens of millions more.
(AP, 3/9/09)
2009 Mar 10, Germany's navy
handed over nine suspected Somali pirates to Kenyan authorities and
they will be taken to a court to face charges. The nine were
arrested March 3 after they attacked the Hamburg-based MV Courier
cargo ship.
(AP, 3/10/09)
2009 Mar 11, German prosecutors
said they have charged retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk (88)
with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as
a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp, and will seek his
extradition from the US.
(AP, 3/11/09)
2009 Mar 11, In southwestern
Germany Tim Kretschmer (17) dressed in black opened fire at his
former high school in Winnenden, killing 12 people. He fled the
scene and killed a 56-year-old janitor of a nearby psychiatric
hospital in a park. He then fled in a hijacked car, and killed 2
more people before apparently shooting himself to death. Kretschmer
graduated last year from the school of about 1,000 students. In 2011
Stuttgart state court gave Kretschmer’s father a 21-month suspended
sentence for not securing his 9mm Beretta pistol.
(AP,
3/11/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Kretschmer#Perpetrator)(AP,
3/12/09)(AP, 2/10/11)
2009 Mar 12, In Germany a
scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to
inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within 48 hours of the
accident, the at-risk scientist, a woman (45) whose identity has not
been revealed, was injected with an experimental vaccine from
Canada. After 2 weeks the woman appeared to be healthy. At the time
of the accident, she was wearing three layers of protective gloves,
and though the needle stuck her, the plunger of the syringe was not
pushed so it's not certain the virus entered her bloodstream.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 15, Germany's
chancellor Angela Merkel called for greater government supervision
of gun owners after a school shooting last week that killed 15
people.
(AP, 3/15/09)
2009 Mar 15, A German newspaper
reported that Deutsche Post AG has paid a pension of euro20 million
($26 million) to Klaus Zumwinkel, the former CEO convicted of tax
evasion.
(AP, 3/15/09)
2009 Mar 16, The US and Germany
signed an agreement to share science and technology research in an
effort to improve the security of both nations.
(AP, 3/16/09)
2009 Mar 31, Germany's top
security official banned the Homeland-Faithful German Youth
(HDJ), a far-right group, on the ground that it organizes
seemingly harmless activities to promote racist and Nazi ideology
among children and young people.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Volkswagen opened
a new plant in western India, pledging to make further inroads into
the country's growing auto market.
(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Peru’s President
Alan Garcia reversed course and accepted a donation from Germany for
a museum honoring those killed in Peru's 20-year armed conflict with
Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Apr 3, NATO began its
2-day 60th anniversary summit in France and Germany.
(AP, 4/3/09)
2009 Apr 4, France and Germany
fully endorsed President Barack Obama's new Afghan war strategy but
firmly resisted sending more combat troops in a rift that
overshadowed symbols of unity at NATO 60th-anniversary summit.
NATO's European leaders pledged a significant increase in troops for
the US-led war in Afghanistan at their summit, but the alliance
seemed sure to arouse hostility in the Muslim world by choosing the
controversial Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's new
secretary general. All 28 NATO leaders unanimously approved
Rasmussen as the new civilian leader of the alliance. Black-clad
protesters attacked police and set a hotel and a customs station
ablaze near a bridge linking France and Germany that served hours
earlier as the backdrop for a show of unity by NATO leaders.
(AP, 4/4/09)
2009 Apr 4, Somali pirates
seized a 20,000-ton German container vessel, the Hansa Stavanger and
its 24-member crew, in their latest attack on the Indian Ocean's
busy commercial shipping lanes. The ship and crew were released on
August 3 as pirates boasted $2.75 million in ransom.
(AP, 4/5/09)(AP, 4/6/09)(AP, 7/18/09)(Econ,
8/22/09, p.53)
2009 Apr 6, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel made an unannounced visit to northern Afghanistan to
meet with her country's troops and view rebuilding efforts. She
pressed President Karzai to review carefully a new law that critics
say legalizes marital rape. In southern Afghanistan an insurgent
rocket attack hit the Netherlands' main military base, killing one
Dutch soldier and wounding 5 of his colleagues and 2 Afghan
soldiers.
(AP, 4/6/09)
2009 Apr 7, A man opened fire
at a courthouse in Bavaria, killing his sister-in-law and injuring
two other people. He then shot himself dead. The incident appeared
to stem from a long-running inheritance dispute.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 11, Turkey’s
agriculture ministry said 11 people have died in Turkey over the
past three weeks, including three young Germans, after drinking
bootleg spirits.
(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Apr 17, Five of Germany's
leading Internet providers agreed to block access to sites
identified by national criminal investigators as hosting child
pornography, as authorities reported the breakup of an international
ring.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 19, The Shanghai Motor
Show opened. Porsche kicked off the show by unveiling the Panamera,
the German luxury carmaker's first foray into the sedan segment.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8007484.stm)
2009 Apr 22, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet approved a new law to require the
vast majority of the country's Internet service providers to block
child pornography sites.
(AP, 4/22/09)
2009 Apr 29, The WHO raised its
alert for swine flu from level 4 to level 5, its 2nd highest alert
level. Austria and Germany confirmed cases of swine flu, becoming
the third and fourth European countries hit by the disease. US
health officials reported that a 23-month-old child in Texas has
died from the disease. The World Health Organization called an
emergency meeting to consider its pandemic alert level.
(AP, 4/29/09)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 29, In Afghanistan
US-led troops battled militants and announced they killed 42
suspected insurgents. Two attacks on German forces killed one
soldier and wounded nine as Germany's foreign minister began a
two-day visit to the country.
(AFP, 4/29/09)(AP, 4/29/09)
2009 May 1, May Day protesters
clashed with riot police in Germany, Turkey and Greece, while
thousands angry at the government's responses to the global
financial crisis took to the streets in France. Riot police battled
700 stone-throwing left-wing militants in Berlin for more than five
hours in May Day clashes that stretched into early pre-dawn hours.
(Reuters, 5/1/09)(AP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 4, In Germany Sergio
Marchionne, the boss of Italy's Fiat, drummed up support in Berlin
for audacious plans to snap up General Motors' European arm and
merge it with the bankrupt Chrysler to create a new global auto
giant. Germany's economy minister said Fiat Group SpA wants to take
over GM's Opel unit without running up debt and would preserve the
three main German assembly plants if successful.
(AFP, 5/4/09)(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 5, Somali pirates
hijacked the MV Victoria, a German cargo ship carrying 11 crew
members in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates released the ship and its 11
Romanian crew members on July 18 following a ransom of $1.8 million.
(AP, 5/6/09)(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 May 12, John Demjanjuk,
retired Ohio autoworker, arrived at a German prison after 3 decades
of fighting in court. He was deported from the US to face
allegations of being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews and
others as a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 16, In Germany tens of
thousands of workers from across the country marched through
downtown Berlin to call for increased government measures to protect
their jobs.
(SSFC, 5/17/09, p.A6)
2009 May 19, Tesla, an electric
car maker in San Carlos, Ca., sold a 10% stake to German auto giant
Daimler.
(SFC, 5/20/09, p.C1)
2009 May 23, Horst Koehler won
a 2nd term as German president in a parliamentary vote that gave
conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel a symbolic victory months
ahead of a national election.
(AP, 5/23/09)
2009 May 25, Dairy farmers
created traffic chaos in Berlin, blocked milk processing plants in
France and protested at EU headquarters in Brussels, seeking more
aid to cope with a sharp drop in milk prices.
(AP, 5/25/09)
2009 May 30, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said General Motors Corp. will sell its Opel unit and
other European assets to Canada's Magna International Inc. in a deal
that would protect the assets from GM's likely bankruptcy.
(AP, 5/30/09)
2009 May 31, Three US Army
soldiers were killed and two were injured in an accident on a German
autobahn near Kaiserslautern.
(AP, 6/1/09)
2009 Jun 4, In Germany the
federal and state governments approved an €18 billion plan to create
more university places, boost funding for research and cultivate a
small group of elite institutions.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.57)
2009 Jun 5, President
Barack Obama toured a World War II concentration camp in Germany
after prodding the international community to redouble efforts
toward separate Israeli and Palestinian states in hopes of resolving
a conflict fueled by the Jewish nation's post-Holocaust creation.
(AP, 6/5/09)
2009 Jun 9, Arcandor, the owner
of Germany’s larges chain of department stores, filed for
bankruptcy. In 2007 Arcandor’s property portfolio was spun off
saddling its 91 Karstadt department stores with high rents.
(Econ, 6/13/09, p.66)
2009 Jun 11, German researchers
said a new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112, Ununbium,
Latin for 112, will soon be officially included in the periodic
table. A team in Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing
charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to
hit a lead target.
(Reuters, 6/11/09)
2009 Jun 17, Ralf Dahrendorf
(80), German thinker and politician, died. He spent his life
defining and defending liberty and wrote almost 30 books to this
end.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.94)
2009 Jun 19, In West Germany 3
German retirees, who lost $1.4 million in the financial crisis,
kidnapped James Amburn (56), their American investment adviser, in
an attempt to recoup the money. Amburn was freed by police after 4
days. In 2010 the retirees were convicted, with their 74-year-old
ringleader and sentenced to six years in prison.
(AP, 3/23/10)(http://tinyurl.com/yhdokyf)
2009 Jun 23, In Afghanistan 3
German soldiers were killed when their patrol near the northern city
of Kunduz came under fire. A suicide car bombing targeting a US-led
military convoy in the eastern province of Ghazni killed two
passers-by. Also in Ghazni, Taliban ambushed a police convoy,
killing a policeman. 3 Afghan aid workers were killed in a roadside
bombing in the northern province of Jawzjan. Another blast killed
three policeman just outside the southern city of Kandahar. Afghan
and coalition forces killed 23 suspected Taliban fighters in a clash
in southern Uruzgan province. Mullah Ismail, a Taliban commander in
the region, was killed during the clash.
(AFP, 6/23/09)(AP, 6/24/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Germany Marwa
al-Sherbini (31), a pregnant Muslim woman from Egypt, was stabbed to
death in a Dresden courtroom as her young son (3) watched. She was
involved in a court case against her neighbor for calling her a
terrorist and was set to testify against him when Alex Wiens (28)
stabbed her at least 16 times inside the courtroom. Her husband,
Elwy Okaz, who was in Germany on a research fellowship, came to her
aid and was also stabbed by Wiens and shot in the leg by a security
guard who initially mistook him for the attacker. On Nov 11 Wiens
was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/6/09)(AFP, 11/11/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Germany retired
auto worker John Demjanjuk was formally charged with 27,900 counts
of acting as an accessory to murder, one for every person who died
at Sobibor during the time he is accused of serving as a guard at
the Nazi death camp.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, German automobile
group Daimler said it sold 40 percent of its stake in US electric
car maker Tesla Motors to United Arab Emirate's Aabar Investments
group to boost development of low-emission vehicles.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Munich Re, the
world’s largest reinsurance group, invited 20 large companies to
join it in forming a consortium called Desertec to build a legion of
solar power stations in Africa and Arabia and connect them to
Europe.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.83)
2009 Jul 29, Germany entered
into deflation this month for the first time in 22 years according
to government statistics, with a projected 0.6% decline in prices
compared to one year ago.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 30, A Hamburg court
ordered a German publisher to pay Sweden's Princess Madeleine
euro400,000 ($560,000) in damages for fabricating stories about her.
Sonnenverlag GmbH & Co KG magazines had carried false reports
about the 27-year-old princess being engaged and pregnant, among
other things. Sonnenverlag's parent company, Baden-Baden based
KLAMBT media group, confirmed the ruling.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Aug 3, Karlheinz Schreiber
(75), a German-Canadian arms dealer and key figure in a political
party financing scandal involving former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was
extradited to Germany from Canada to face criminal charges after
losing a decade-long court battle. He was key figure in a
funding scandal which badly damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservatives a decade ago. Schreiber was arrested in Canada about
10 years ago, and is wanted by prosecutors in Augsburg for tax
evasion, fraud and bribery.
(AP, 8/3/09)(Reuters, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Germany shares
in Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, plunged after it approved
a takeover of luxury auto manufacturer Porsche to create a sector
giant.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 19, Germany launched a
campaign to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, making
battery research a priority as it tries to position the country as a
market leader.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 20, Usain Bolt of
Jamaica set a world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meters at the
world championships in Berlin, adding to the gold he won in the 100.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 22, Cologne
prosecutors said they are investigating 100 professors across
Germany on suspicion they took bribes to illegally help students
with their doctorates. The investigation has been going on for more
than a year after it emerged that a law professor at Hannover
University had organized degrees for 61 students whose exam results
were otherwise insufficient.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Germany 6
countries met for talks to try to address concerns about Iran's
nuclear program. The German government said it has received no
official word yet on new proposals that Tehran is pledging to make.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 4, In northern
Afghanistan a US jet blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the
Taliban in Kunduz province, setting off a huge fireball that killed
dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel. As
many as 142 civilians died in the German-ordered NATO airstrike. A
French soldier was killed and nine others injured when their
vehicles were hit by a bomb near Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. A
Polish soldier was killed in the east. A French marine was killed in
an IED attack.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AFP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/17/09)(AP,
10/8/09)(Econ, 1/2/10, p.37)
2009 Sep 8, Deutsche Telekom AG
and France Telecom SA said they intend to combine their British
mobile phone units, shaking up the country's intensely competitive
market and forming the country's biggest mobile operator. Analysts
said Nokia Siemens Networks, the key equipment vendor to British
operations of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, had most to lose
in the merger.
(AP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 10, Berlin won Spain's
prestigious Prince of Asturias prize for its contribution to
promoting peace and harmony.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, GM announced that
it agreed to the sale of 55% of Ruesselsheim-based Adam Opel and
Vauxhall unit to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc.
and Russian lender Sberbank. Detroit-based GM will keep a 35% stake
and continue to work with Opel on developing vehicles, sharing
technology and engineering resources.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Germany 12
officers were injured in late night clashes with left-wing
demonstrators in Hamburg following a far-right rally.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, Europe's biggest
automaker Volkswagen said it planned to invest 4.0 billion euros
(5.8 billion dollars) to boost its presence in China over the next
three years.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Germany
Siegfried Wolf, the co-chief executive of Magna International Inc.,
said as many as 10,500 Opel jobs in Europe could be cut, including
nearly half of them in Germany. Opel employs some 49,000 workers in
Europe and has plants in Germany, Spain, Britain, Poland and
Germany.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 15, The Frankfurt auto
show opened. The French company Renault unveiled a lineup that
includes a purely electric sedan, without a backup internal
combustion engine. Renault says the vehicle will be in showrooms by
2011.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/automobiles/14electric.html)(Econ,
10/17/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 17, In southern
Germany an 18-year-old student armed with an ax and knives lobbed
Molotov cocktails at his Carolinum High School in the Bavarian town
of Ansbach, wounding eight pupils and a teacher before he was shot
and arrested by police. In 2010 the student, identified as Georg R,
was convicted of 47 counts of attempted murder and order to 9 years
in youth detention and psychiatric care.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 4/29/10)
2009 Sep 19, In Germany a
doctor (50) leading a group therapy session gave participants drugs
and other substances that killed two and hospitalized ten. One
person was left comatose and in critical condition.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, German authorities
said al Qaeda threatened Germany with attacks for the second time
this weekend in an online video criticizing the country for its
deployment of troops in Afghanistan. The interior ministry
identified al Qaeda's messenger in the latest video as Bekkay
Harrach (32), a German-Moroccan.
(Reuters, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 22, In western
Germany 5 people were killed in a bus accident at Radevormwald. It
broke through a crash barrier and plunged 65 feet (20 meters) into
the Wupper river.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 27, Germans voted on
whether to give Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term, as the
country faces rising unemployment and threats by Islamic extremists
over Germany's role in Afghanistan. Voters ended the conservative
Merkel's right-left "grand coalition" and gave her a comfortable
center-right majority, thanks to a strong performance by her new
government ally, the business-oriented Free Democrats.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Oct 3, Reinhard Mohn
(b.1921), German book publisher, died. He helped transform media
group Bertelsmann AG from a German book publisher to an
international media company. Mohn took over his family's printing
and publishing business, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, in 1947. In 1971 he
helped oversee the family-owned company's transformation into a
stock corporation and become chairman and chief executive. In 1977,
he established the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation. Bertelsmann's
106,000 employees are scattered across its divisions in more than 50
countries.
(AP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 8, Herta Mueller (56)
won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature in an award seen as a nod to
the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse. She was member of
Romania's ethnic German minority persecuted for her critical
depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain. She made her debut in
1982 with a collection of short stories titled "Niederungen," or
"Nadirs," depicting the harshness of life in a small,
German-speaking village in Romania. It was promptly censored by the
communist government. Some of her works have been translated into
English, French and Spanish, including "The Passport," "The Land of
Green Plums," "Traveling on One Leg" and "The Appointment."
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 13, A German court
convicted two men of supporting a radical Islamic group with links
to al-Qaida and sentenced them to prison terms. It sentenced Omid
Shirkhani, a German of Afghan background, to two years and nine
months in prison; and co-defendant Huseyin Ozgun, a Turk, to a year
and two months. The court found that both had links to Adem Yilmaz,
a Turk living in Germany who is currently on trial over plans to
attack US targets in Germany.
(AP, 10/13/09)
2009 Oct 18, The EU used the
world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt to launch the EU Bookshop's
digital library, making more than 50 years of documents in about 50
languages available for free on the Internet. The files dated back
to 1952 when six countries created the High Authority of the Coal
and Steel Community, the EU's precursor.
(AFP, 10/18/09)
2009 Oct 24, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel finished building a new center-right
government and announced an overhaul of the health care system, more
help for families and annual tax cuts of up to euro24 billion.
(AP, 10/24/09)
2009 Oct 28, Angela Merkel was
sworn for a second term as German chancellor, a month after her
party won national elections.
(AP, 10/28/09)
2009 Oct 28, Germany's Lutheran
Church elected Margot Kaessmann (51), the first woman to lead the
nation's Protestants.
(AP, 10/28/09)
2009 Oct 28, Somali pirates
exchanged fire with a French fishing vessel. They sped away, but
were soon stopped by a Spanish naval helicopter. 7 pirates were
detained on the German naval vessel, FGS Karlsruhe.
(AP, 10/28/09)
2009 Nov 2, President Barack
Obama thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her country's
"sacrifice" in keeping forces in Afghanistan, noting she was being
honored as the first German leader to address a joint session of
Congress.
(AP, 11/3/09)
2009 Nov 3, Nokia Siemens
Networks, a joint venture between Finland's Nokia Corp. and Siemens
AG of Germany, said it will lay off up to 5,700 workers globally as
part of a move to cut annual costs by euro500 million ($740
million).
(AP, 11/3/09)
2009 Nov 4, Germany's
politicians fumed with anger and Opel workers canceled cost
concessions and readied walkouts after General Motors Co. abandoned
the sale of its European subsidiary to parts maker Magna
International and Russian lender Sberbank.
(AP, 11/4/09)
2009 Nov 5, In Germany
thousands of Opel workers, fearing widespread layoffs, walked off
the job to protest General Motors Co.'s decision to abandon the
unit's sale to new owners.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 5, Finland and Sweden
approved a Baltic Sea pipeline project that would ship Russian
natural gas to Germany, clearing two key obstacles for construction
to begin next year.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 10, German soccer
star, goalkeeper Robert Enke (32), threw himself in front of a train
at a level crossing in the small town of Neustadt am Rubenberge,
near Hanover. Earlier, Enke's doctor Valentin Markser revealed the
player had an acute fear of failure and had been treated for
depression since 2003 following a difficult transfer to Barcelona
and subsequent loan to Turkish side Fenerbahce. Hanover police
confirmed Enke left a suicide note.
(AFP, 11/11/09)
2009 Nov 11, The leaders of
France and Germany appeared together at a ceremony in Paris, for the
first time since World War I, to commemorate the end of the
conflict, saying it is now time to celebrate their countries'
reconciliation and friendship.
(AP, 11/11/09)
2009 Nov 15, German Federal
Criminal Police Office confirmed a Spiegel Online report that it had
posted notices across Afghanistan warning that Jan Schneider (27), a
Kazakhstan-born ethnic German, may plan attacks on German military
or civilian institutions in Afghanistan. Authorities identified the
German convert to Islam as an al-Qaida associate.
(AP, 11/15/09)
2009 Nov 17, Two leading
Rwandan Hutu rebels were arrested in Germany on suspicion of crimes
against humanity and war crimes this year and in 2008 in DR Congo.
The pair, Ignace Murwanashyaka (46) and Straton Musoni (48) are the
leader and deputy leader respectively of the Democratic Liberation
Forces of Rwanda. The FDLR is estimated to have 5,000 to 6,000
fighters, many of whom took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
before crossing into the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 11/17/09)
2009 Nov 18, Germany said it
will extend its mission in Afghanistan for another year, despite the
growing unpopularity of the war at home.
(AP, 11/18/09)
2009 Nov 20, Germany filed
terrorism charges against a Turkish-German dual citizen allegedly
linked to a member of a cell that plotted to attack US targets. The
24-year-old, identified only as Kadir T. in line with German privacy
laws, was charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization
and violating export laws.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Nov 20, German prosecutors
said that around 200 football matches in nine European countries
including at least three Champions League games are implicated in a
new match-fixing scandal.
(AP, 11/20/09)
2009 Dec 8, Ratings agency
Moody's warned of a "fiscal crisis" lasting "several years" in
Britain, France, Germany and the United States, but saw no immediate
threat to their top AAA credit assessments.
(AFP, 12/8/09)
2009 Dec 11, German officials
said Berlin's new airport will be named after Willy Brandt
(1913-1992), the former West German leader who championed East-West
relations and won the Nobel Peace Prize (1971).
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 16, Germany's new
center-right government unveiled a 2010 budget that forecasts record
debt and a 10.5 percent rise in spending.
(AFP, 12/16/09)
2009 Dec 16, Germany said it is
donating euro60 million ($87 million) to a new endowment for
Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve barracks, gas chambers and other
evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp in Poland. The
donation is half the amount experts believe is needed to preserve
the camp.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 27, In Iran
authorities detained two German diplomats and accused them of
playing a role in organizing deadly anti-government protests. Iran's
state media only reported this on Jan 27, 2010. Germany's Foreign
Ministry said it had no knowledge about any diplomats being detained
and dismissed accusations that German officials had a hand in the
demonstrations and clashes that left eight people dead.
(AP, 1/27/10)
2009 Dec 30, It was reported
that Karsten Nohl (28), a German security expert, and group of
researchers posted a how-to guide for cracking the encryption that
keeps the phone calls of millions of people secret. GSM encoding
keeps most of the world's mobile phones safe from prying ears.
(AP, 12/30/09)
2009 Germany’s Hamburg theater
staged an opera about IKEA, “Wunder von Schweden” (Miracle from
Sweden), a biography of IKEA set to Swedish folk tunes.
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.67)
2010 Jan 1, In Germany a
technical problem left card holders unable to use cash machines. It
was caused by microchips in about a quarter of all cards in
circulation being unable to cope with the changeover to 2010. On Jan
8 retailers announced that the problem was mostly corrected.
(AFP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 9, Germans faced the
cancellation of hundreds of flights as fresh snow blew in from the
south, and Britons shivered through the country's longest cold snap
in three decades as icy weather maintained its grip on Europe.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 10, Heavy snowfall
caused havoc in parts of Europe, causing hundreds of traffic
accidents, downing power lines in Poland, halting flights out of
southern France and trapping more than 160 people overnight on a
frozen highway in northeastern coastal Germany.
(AP, 1/10/10)
2010 Jan 10, New data showed
that China has overtaken Germany as the world's top exporter after
December exports jumped 17.7% for their first increase in 14 months.
(AP, 1/10/10)
2010 Jan 18, Israel's Cabinet
convened for the first time in Berlin, the former heart of the Nazi
regime, for a special joint session with the German government
highlighting the two nations' strong bond six decades after the
Holocaust.
(AP, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 21, General Motor
Co.'s Opel unit will cut 8,300 jobs across Europe, including 4,000
in Germany, and close a plant in Antwerp, Belgium, cutting over
2,300 jobs.
(AP, 1/21/10)
2010 Jan, It was reported that
German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and
Forming Technology in Chemnitz have found a way to use
electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) to punch holes into steel.
(Econ, 1/16/10, p.80)
2010 Feb 2, Germany and
Switzerland headed for a fresh spat over banking secrecy after
Berlin decided to buy a disc said to hold details of some 1,500
suspected tax-dodgers with funds in Swiss accounts.
(AFP, 2/2/10)
2010 Feb 6, The German news
magazine Der Spiegel reported that the number of sexual abuse cases
in Germany by Catholic clerics and laymen is much higher than was
previously thought. According to a poll by Spiegel more than 94
clerics and laymen have been suspected of sexual abuse since 1995.
Only 30 have been prosecuted, due to the statute of limitations.
(AP, 2/6/10)
2010 Feb 9, In Germany GM's
Opel unit asked European governments for billions of euros (dollars)
in aid even as it formally presented a restructuring plan that will
result in some 8,300 job cuts in Europe.
(AP, 2/9/10)
2010 Feb 11, Volkswagen
announced it was recalling nearly 200,000 vehicles in Brazil because
of a problem with the rear wheels that could cause them to seize or
fall off.
(AP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 18, In Germany
attorney Ursula Raue said 115 former students have come forward with
charges of sexual abuse at schools run by Germany's Jesuit order.
Victims had named 12 priests and several women among the attackers.
Most of the victims were former students of one of Germany's most
prestigious high schools, Berlin's private Catholic Canisius Kolleg.
(AP, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 19, The German Tax
Union said about 2,500 people in Germany have confessed to tax
evasion to avoid punishment amid a heated debate over whether
authorities should buy stolen data from Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 2/19/10)
2010 Feb 20, German weekly Der
Spiegel reported that Germany's finance ministry has sketched out a
plan in which countries using the euro currency will provide aid
worth between 20 billion and 25 billion euros ($27-$33.7 billion)
for Greece.
(Reuters, 2/20/10)
2010 Feb 22, German airline
Lufthansa went to court in a bid to halt a strike by some 4,000
pilots that disrupted more than one third of its flights. Later in
the day Lufthansa pilots agreed to suspend for two weeks a strike
that grounded about 900 flights, just as rival British Airways'
cabin crew voted to join the fray to protest harsh cost cuts.
(AP, 2/22/10)(Reuters, 2/22/10)
2010 Feb 24, Germany's top
Protestant cleric, Margot Kaessmann (51), resigned after she was
caught driving with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal
limit, an incident that she said had undermined her authority.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 26, German lawmakers
voted 429-111 with 46 abstentions to increase the maximum number of
German troops allowed to serve in Afghanistan to 5,350 from 4,500.
(AP, 2/26/10)
2010 Feb 28, A violent late
winter storm named Xynthia battered France, Spain, Portugal and
Germany with fierce rain and hurricane-strength winds. The storm
smashed sea walls and killed at least 62 people across western
Europe.
(AP, 2/28/10)(AP, 3/1/10)(SFC, 3/2/10, p.A2)
2010 Mar 2, Germany’s Federal
Constitutional Court overturned a law that let anti-terror
authorities retain data on telephone calls and e-mails, saying it
marked a “grave intrusion” into personal privacy rights.
(SFC, 3/3/10, p.A2)
2010 Mar 3, In Germany
Christoph Schmidt-Rose, mayor of Niederzimmern, told local radio
station MDR that people can buy a hole in the town for 50 euros (68
dollars). In return the authorities will repair it.
(AFP, 3/3/10)
2010 Mar 4, A German court
jailed four Islamic militants who dreamed of "mounting a second
September 11" for a thwarted plot to attack US soldiers and
civilians in Germany. The two German converts to Islam, Fritz
Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider, each received 12-year jail terms.
Adem Yilmaz, a Turkish citizen, got 11 years while Atilla Selek, a
German of Turkish origin, was given five years in prison for what
the court called a supporting role in the plot.
(AFP, 3/4/10)
2010 Mar 5, Germany and the
group of countries using the euro ruled out any immediate financial
aid for debt-ridden Greece at the start of a diplomatic tour by PM
George Papandreou.
(AP, 3/5/10)
2010 Mar 6, In Germany 4 men
brandishing handguns and machetes stormed into Berlin's Grand Hyatt
hotel during a million-euro poker tournament and made off with
hundreds of thousands of euros in cash. A man (21), who admitted to
taking part in the raid, turned himself into authorities on March 15
and identified 3 accomplices who remained on the run. Authorities
issued photos of the three: Ahmad el-Awayti (20), of undetermined
nationality; Jihad Chetwie, a 19-year-old German; and Mustafa
Ucarkus, a 20-year-old Turkish citizen. On March 21 police arrested
a 5th suspect, a Lebanese citizen (28), believed to be the organizer
of the attack.
(AFP, 3/7/10)(AP, 3/17/10)(AP, 3/22/10)
2010 Mar 6, An operation in
Germany to remove the gall bladder of Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak was "successful" and he was in hospital convalescing.
(AFP, 3/6/10)
2010 Mar 7, In Germany police
said heavy snowfall over the weekend triggered a deadly avalanche
and caused thousands of accidents, leaving at least seven people
dead and dozens more injured.
(AP, 3/7/10)
2010 Mar 10, In Germany the
world's largest tourism fair, the ITB, kicked off in Berlin with the
global travel industry hoping for better times following a
crisis-hit 2009.
(AFP, 3/10/10)
2010 Mar 18, Israeli copycat
drugs giant Teva made a major stride into Europe with the
five-billion-dollar purchase of Ratiopharm, formerly owned by a
German billionaire who killed himself.
(AFP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 21, Wolfgang Wagner
(b.1919), custodian of the Bayreuth Festival, died in Germany.
(Econ, 4/3/10,
p.89)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Wagner)
2010 Mar 26, Germany and
Switzerland said they have reached a preliminary deal on an
agreement to exchange information on suspected tax cheats, an
important step toward defusing a long-festering irritant in their
relations.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 28, President Barack
Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan for a firsthand look at
the 8-year-old war he inherited and dramatically escalated. German
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere held talks in Afghanistan on
stuttering progress in training the country's security forces.
Russia accused the US of conniving with Afghanistan's drug producers
by refusing to destroy opium crops, the second time in a week Moscow
has taken a swipe at the West over drug policy.
(AP, 3/28/10)(AFP, 3/28/10)(Reuters, 3/28/10)
2010 Apr 2, In northern
Afghanistan 3 German soldiers were killed in heavy fighting and five
were severely wounded southwest of Kunduz city. German soldiers
traveling to the scene of the deadly firefight with Taliban
insurgents accidentally killed six Afghan troops.
(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Apr 7, Auto giants
Renault, Nissan and Daimler launched a partnership to save billions
of euros and accelerate sales of low-pollution electric cars.
(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 9, In Germany
delegates from 175 countries began a 3-day meeting in Bonn on a new
global warming agreement.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 12, Neofonie, the
German maker of a new tablet PC, the WePad, was reportedly setting
out to rival Apple's iPad with the promise of even more technology
such as a bigger screen, a webcam and USB ports. When it hits stores
starting late July, it will also boast a complete open source office
package.
(AP, 4/12/10)
2010 Apr 15, German authorities
said they have targeted nine suspects, including former staff of
Hewlett-Packard, in a probe into whether the world's top PC maker
paid bribes to win business in Russia.
(Reuters, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 16, A German court
convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson of
incitement for denying the Holocaust in a television interview. The
court ordered the Roman Catholic bishop to pay a fine of
euro10,000 ($13,544).
(AP, 4/16/10)
2010 Apr 21, Germany recognized
14 US soldiers serving in Afghanistan for risking their lives to
help German soldiers in a firefight on April 2, Good Friday,
awarding them the country's Gold Cross medal.
(AP, 4/21/10)
2010 Apr 27, Germany officially
opened its first offshore wind farm in the North Sea after years of
delays and technical problems. The $340 million test field, Alpha
Ventus, consisted of 12 windmills.
(AP, 4/27/10)
2010 May 3, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said her country will provide euro22.4 billion ($29.6
billion) to help bailout Greece over a three-year period, part of a
wider plan aimed at keeping Greece afloat and protecting their
shared euro currency.
(AP, 5/3/10)
2010 May 8, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that
Europe will set up an intervention mechanism to calm markets rattled
by the Greek debt crisis.
(AP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 8, Bishop Walter Mixa,
a leading German bishop who has acknowledged slapping children and
is being investigated for sexual abuse of minors and financial
misconduct, lost his job as Pope Benedict XVI continued cleaning
house.
(AP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 9, In Germany Angela
Merkel's center-right coalition lost control of Germany's most
populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, in an election that also
erased its majority in the upper house of parliament, making the
country harder to run. The defeat followed a stumbling start for
Merkel's new national coalition government, which took power in
October.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 9, A plume of volcanic
ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland, Italy and
Germany, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across
Europe.
(AP, 5/9/10)
2010 May 12, German software
titan SAP agreed to buy database company Sybase, based in Dublin,
Ca., for $5.8 billion.
(SFC, 5/13/10, p.D1)
2010 May 24, In Germany Daryush
Shokof (55), a Berlin resident and Iranian dissident, disappeared in
Cologne, the day he planned to board a train to Paris to promote his
new film "Iran Zendan," or "Iran Prison." The small independent
movie is highly critical of the Iranian regime and shows scenes of
torture and rape in an Iranian prison. It was shown once last month
to a closed audience of friends at a Berlin theater and then posted
on YouTube, but has since been removed. On June 5, almost two weeks
after he went missing, Shokof was found by a group of teenagers,
drenched, exhausted and confused, near the Rhine river in Cologne,
and taken to a hospital.
(AP, 6/11/10)
2010 May 25, In Germany a
private security firm's plan to deploy more than 100 ex-soldiers to
Somalia to work for a warlord triggered intense media coverage and
was harshly criticized by lawmakers, some of them calling it a
possible violation of UN sanctions against the war-ridden East
African country. Thomas Kaeltegaertner, the head of Asgaard German
Security Group, said the company would be in charge of providing
security and protection for persons, buildings and convoys in
Somalia as well as educating Somali security personnel.
(AP, 5/25/10)
2010 May 31, German President
Horst Koehler resigned in a surprise move after being criticized for
reportedly linking military deployments abroad with the country's
economic interests, creating a new headache for Chancellor Angela
Merkel.
(AP, 5/31/10)
2010 Jun 1, In Germany 3
experts working to defuse a bomb from World War II were killed when
the device exploded, injuring six others. Construction workers in
Goettingen had found the 65-year-old explosive device about seven
yards (meters) below the ground on an empty where the city is
currently building a sport arena.
(AP, 6/2/10)
2010 Jun 4, A Dutch court
ordered 10 suspected Somali pirates to be extradited to Germany,
where Hamburg prosecutors want to charge them with hijacking a
German container ship.
(AP, 6/4/10)
2010 Jun 5, Germany and Russia
declared that the five world powers negotiating with Iran support a
fresh set of international sanctions, and Chancellor Angela Merkel
said they could pass soon.
(AP, 6/5/10)
2010 Jun 12, Germany’s federal
prosecutor's office said that Polish authorities have arrested an
alleged Mossad spy from Israel wanted in connection with the slaying
of a Hamas agent in Dubai. A man using the name of Uri Brodsky was
arrested in early June upon his arrival in Poland because of a
European arrest warrant issued by Germany and Germany is now seeking
his extradition.
(AP, 6/12/10)
2010 Jun 19, In Germany tens of
thousands of gays, lesbians and other revelers marched and danced in
downtown Berlin for the German capital's annual gay pride
celebration, which featured a colorful parade through the heart of
the city.
(AP, 6/19/10)
2010 Jun 22, Britain, France
and Germany committed to levying a fee on banks to shield taxpayers
from the cost of resolving financial crises and said they would ask
other countries to join them.
(AP, 6/22/10)
2010 Jun 24, Germany's Supreme
Court issued a landmark ruling that an assisted suicide can not be
punished if it is carried out based on a patient's prior request.
(AP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun 24, The
Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that
European law does not require countries to grant same-sex couples
the right to marry, even if some states have already done so. The
ECHR is part of the Council of Europe, which promotes democracy and
the rule of law among its 47 member states.
(Reuters, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun, Stuxnet, computer
malware, was first detected by VirusBlokAda, a security firm in
Belarus. It was tailored for Siemens supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) systems commonly used to manage water supplies,
oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities. It was able
to recognize a specific facility's control network and then destroy
it. The code had a technology fingerprint of the control system it
was seeking and would go into action automatically when it found its
target. In September German computer security researcher Ralph
Langner said he suspected that Stuxnet's mark was the Bushehr
nuclear facility in Iran. Unspecified problems have been blamed for
a delay in getting the facility fully operational.
(AP, 9/24/10)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.63)
2010 Jul 6, Germany Chancellor
Angela Merkel's government, faced with a ballooning deficit in the
health care system, decided to raise premiums and cut into the
profits of doctors, dentists, hospitals and pharmaceutical
manufacturers. The decision came after months of wrangling within
Merkel's coalition over a fundamental overhaul of the system and
after a series of political blows to the chancellor and plummeting
support in the polls.
(AP, 7/6/10)
2010 Jul 7, Germany's interior
minister Thomas de Maiziere said his country plans to take in two
inmates from the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
(AP, 7/7/10)
2010 Jul 8, In Norway 2
suspected al-Qaida members were arrested for what Norwegian and US
officials said was a terrorist plot linked to similar plans to bomb
New York's subway and blow up a shopping mall in England. A 3rd
suspect was arrested in Germany. Authorities later said the
ringleader of the plot is Mikael Davud (39), an Uighur who came to
Norway in 1999 as part of a UN refugee program and then became a
Norwegian citizen eight years later. Davud was arrested along with
suspected accomplices Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd
(37), and Uzbek national, David Jakobsen (31). Norwegian and Danish
police later said the 3 were likely planning an attack against a
Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 7/8/10)(AP, 8/29/10)(AP, 9/28/10)
2010 Jul 13, German government
sources said industrial group Siemens has won a major contract from
Russian Railways to be signed during a visit by Chancellor Angela
Merkel this week. The 2.2-billion-euro (2.8-billion-dollar) sale of
regional trains is the second major coup for Siemens in Russia this
year.
(AFP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 13, Turkey extradited
a man identified only as Salih S. to Germany to face charges of
supporting a terrorist organization and membership in a terrorist
organization. The German citizen, a member of the radical Islamic
Jihad Union, had trained at a terrorist camp in Pakistan. He was
accused of procuring GPS devices, night vision goggles and other
items for Adem Yilmaz, who was convicted with 3 others earlier this
year of plotting a thwarted attack that a judge said could have
killed large numbers of US soldiers and civilians in Germany.
(AP, 7/14/10)
2010 Jul 14, In Germany new
statistics were released indicating the number of Germans with
immigrant roots has reached more than 16 million, or nearly 20
percent of the population.
(AP, 7/14/10)
2010 Jul 15, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met for talks
and are expected to oversee the signing of an array of deals between
German and Russian companies worth billions of dollars.
(AP, 7/15/10)
2010 Jul 18, In Germany some 3
million people sat at a 37-mile long table on the A40 between
Dortmund and Bochum for a cultural celebration titled "Still Life."
(AP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jul 19, Germany’s domestic
intelligence service started a program for Islamic radicals who want
to quit extremism.
(SFC, 7/20/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 19, The Wall Street
Journal reported that Tehran has used a small Iranian-owned bank in
Germany to circumvent sanctions slapped on firms blacklisted for
involvement in the Islamic republic's missile programs.
(AFP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jul 23, Seven out of 91
banks failed European stress tests, which were organized in hope of
reviving investor confidence in Europe's embattled banking sector.
German state-owned lender Hypo Real Estate, five regional savings
banks in Spain and ATEBank of Greece failed the test of whether they
could resist a new financial shock. All have been ordered to
recapitalize or take state aid.
(AFP, 7/24/10)
2010 Jul 24, The German
government said it is offering asylum to 50 Iranian dissidents who
took part in the massive street protests that erupted after
elections there last year.
(AP, 7/24/10)
2010 Jul 24, In Germany a
stampede at the Love Parade techno music festival in Duisberg ended
with at least 19 young people dead and more than 300 injured. Within
days the death toll rose to 21 as more died from their injuries.
(Reuters,
7/25/10)(http://tinyurl.com/27m7e9l)(Reuters, 7/28/10)
2010 Jul 24, Theo Albrecht
(88), the secretive co-founder of Germany's worldwide discount
supermarket chain Aldi, a co-owner of Trader Joe's in the United
States and one of Europe's richest men, died in Essen.
(AP, 7/30/10)
2010 Jul 25, Former Nazi SS
officer Erich Steidtmann (95), suspected but never convicted of
involvement in World War II massacres, died from a heart attack at
his home in Hannover. Steidtmann was investigated several times for
his alleged involvement in killings at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 and
two massacres in the Polish city of Lublin.
(AP, 7/28/10)
2010 Jul 28, German prosecutors
said Samuel Kunz (88) was informed last week of his indictment on
charges including participation in the murder of 430,000 Jews at the
Belzec death camp in occupied Poland, where he allegedly served as a
guard from January 1942 to July 1943. Kunz (b.1921) was also charged
with murder over "personal excesses" in which he allegedly shot a
total of 10 Jews in two other incidents.
(AP, 7/28/10)
2010 Aug 9, In central Europe
swollen rivers surged north after carving a swath of destruction
across Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. At least 11 people
were reported killed.
(AP, 8/9/10)(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Aug 18, In Germany a
former Rwandan mayor living in Germany was charged for allegedly
organizing massacres and inciting killings during the African
country's 1994 genocide. Prosecutors alleged that the former Hutu
mayor, identified as Onesphore R. (53), called for pogroms against
the Tutsi minority on three occasions. Prosecutors asserted that the
man ordered and coordinated three massacres between April 11 and 15,
1994, in which at least 3,730 Tutsis were killed.
(AP, 8/18/10)
2010 Aug 19, German federal
prosecutors said they have charged two men with violating an arms
embargo by working to export equipment that Iran wanted for its
missile program. Heinz Ulrich K. (65) of Germany was charged with
breaking export laws and Iranian Mohsen A. (52) with incitement to
break them.
(AP, 8/19/10)
2010 Aug 26, In Germany Nadja
Benaissa (28), a member of girl group No Angels, broke down in tears
after a German court handed her a two-year suspended sentence for
infecting a former sex partner with the AIDS HIV virus.
(AFP, 8/26/10)
2010 Sep 3, A court in Essen,
Germany, that has been overseeing months of wrangling over the rent
to be paid for 120 Karstadt stores, agreed that investor Nicolas
Berggruen (49) could snap up the iconic chain, saving it from
bankruptcy and safeguarding 25,000 jobs.
(AFP, 9/3/10)
2010 Sep 6, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel faced one of the biggest battles of her time in office
after announcing plans to put off the date when Europe's biggest
economy abandons nuclear power. Merkel said the operation of the
country’s 17 nuclear plants would be extended to promote energy
security. Under current law the last nuclear plant was to be closed
by 2022.
(AFP, 9/6/10)(SFC, 9/7/10, p.A2)
2010 Sep 7, Germany police
raided buildings used by the country’s largest neo-Nazi group in an
effort to find evidence to support banning it. The sweep targeted 30
buildings and houses across the country belonging to members of the
Aid Organization for National Political Victims and their Relatives
(HNG).
(AP, 9/7/10)
2010 Sep 8, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel praised the bravery of illustrator Kurt Westergaard
(75), a Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, at
an award ceremony honoring his achievements for freedom of speech.
(AP, 9/9/10)
2010 Sep 12, Germany's top
bank, Deutsche Bank, announced a rights issue worth around 10
billion euros ($13 billion), saying it sought fresh capital to take
over retail bank Postbank.
(AFP, 9/12/10)
2010 Sep 16, Germany's Jesuits
announced a plan to pay the victims of sexual abuse in the order's
schools a "symbolic compensation" of at least euro5,000 ($6,500)
each, saying the gesture is meant to be "financially painful" to the
Roman Catholic organization.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 16, Germany's top
security official said two former inmates of the US military prison
at Guantanamo Bay have arrived in the country to begin new lives
there.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 18, In Germany tens of
thousands demonstrated in Berlin against the government's proposal
to extend the life of Germany's nuclear power plants for another
decade or more.
(AFP, 9/18/10)
2010 Sep 19, In southwestern
Germany a female attorney (41) went on a shooting spree in Loerrach
killing her 5-year-old son, her estranged husband and a male nurse
before killing herself in an exchange of fire with police.
(AP, 9/20/10)
2010 Sep 22, Germany’s
ThyssenKrupp said it would freeze all new business with Iran with
immediate effect and terminate existing contracts there as soon as
possible in response to ever-harsher sanctions against the Islamic
Republic.
(Reuters, 9/22/10)
2010 Sep 26, In Germany a
Polish tour bus crashed on its way home from a Spanish holiday,
killing 13 people. 32 remained hospitalized the next day.
(AP, 9/27/10)
2010 Sep 29, Security sources
and media reports said Western intelligence agencies have uncovered
an Al-Qaeda plot to launch attacks in Britain, France and Germany by
extremists based in Pakistan.
(AFP, 9/29/10)
2010 Oct 1, Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel called for calm after riot police used what
critics called "Rambo" tactics to disperse thousands of opponents of
a contentious rail project.
(AFP, 10/1/10)
2010 Oct 7, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai hosted the inaugural session of a new peace council set
up to guide efforts to reconcile with the Taliban and other
insurgent groups. In the north a Taliban suicide attack killed a
German soldier and wounded six others in Baghlan province. The death
brought to 44 the number of German troops killed in the Afghan war.
A senior Taliban leader, accused of commanding an "assassination
cell" in Kandahar city, was captured. 4 militants were killed and
one captured by an Afghan-NATO force in eastern Wardak province's
Chaki Wardak district. A joint force also recovered and destroyed
almost 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of narcotics during two operations in
Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces.
(AP, 10/7/10)(AFP, 10/7/10)(AP, 10/8/10)
2010 Oct 10, Iran arrested two
German nationals in Tabriz as they approached the home of Sakineh
Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman whose sentence of death-by-stoning on an
adultery conviction has drawn international condemnation. Ashtiani's
son, Sajjad Qaderzadeh, and lawyer Houtan Kian were arrested along
with two the German nationals, who were seeking to interview the
son. On Feb 5, 2012, reporter Marcus Hellwig told the Sunday
newspaper Bild am Sonntag that he was regularly beaten up during the
first 10 "brutal" days in captivity until a German diplomat
intervened. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle traveled to
Tehran for a rare meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. Westerwelle brought Hellwig and his German photographer
Jens Koch home after 5 months imprisonment.
(AP, 10/12/10)(AP, 11/4/10)(AP, 2/5/12)
2010 Oct 12, At the United
Nations Colombia, Germany, India, Portugal and South Africa were
elected to join the big guns on the UN Security Council for two
years, starting in January.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20101012/ts_csm/331624)(Reuters,
10/13/10)
2010 Oct 16, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel told a meeting of young members of her conservative
Christian Democratic Union that while immigrants are welcome,
they must learn the language and accept the country's cultural
norms. "This multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side
by side and live happily with each other has failed. Utterly
failed."
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 16, German Economy
Minister Rainer Bruederle said Germany will help Japan gain access
to vital rare earth minerals which are being withheld by China in a
territorial dispute.
(AFP, 10/16/10)
2010 Oct 18, Germany, yielding
to French pressure, softened its stance on stricter eurozone budget
rules, angering governments that counted on Berlin to force through
sanctions for nations living beyond their means.
(AP, 10/18/10)
2010 Oct 19, Deutsch Bahn’s
high-speed train, ICE-3, became the first German train to pass
through the Channel tunnel on its way to London’s St Pancras
station.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.77)
2010 Oct 26, Germany's Defense
Minister said the country will begin a major restructuring of the
military next year as it moves from a Cold War conscript army to one
better positioned to face today's threats, while also cutting costs.
(AP, 10/26/10)
2010 Nov 5, In France
environmentalists handcuffed themselves in front of a train carrying
what activists claim is "the most radioactive ever" cargo of nuclear
waste. The shipment was returning German waste for storage after it
was treated in France by the Areva group.
(AFP, 11/6/10)(SFC, 11/6/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 6, A train carrying
what activists claim is "the most radioactive ever" cargo of nuclear
waste ran the gauntlet of hundreds of protesters as it crossed the
Rhine from France to Germany. The shipment was returning German
waste for storage after it was treated in France by the Areva group.
(AFP, 11/6/10)
2010 Nov 7, In Germany
activists rappelled down from a high bridge, broke through police
lines and chained themselves to train tracks, trying to halt a
shipment of nuclear waste as they protested Chancellor Angela
Merkel's plans to keep using nuclear energy.
(AP, 11/7/10)
2010 Nov 8, In Germany a
shipment of nuclear waste arrived at a railway depot in Dannenberg
after a nearly three-day trip from France that was regularly
disrupted by protests. The waste was set to be loaded onto trucks
for the final 12-mile (20-km) leg of the trip to a storage site at
Gorleben.
(AP, 11/8/10)
2010 Nov 13, In Germany a fire
at the Karlsruhe zoo killed 26 animals including Shetland ponies,
goats, sheep and a llama.
(AP, 11/13/10)
2010 Nov 15, In Germany a girl
(14) was slain in Bodenfelde. On Nov 19 a boy (13) was slain nearby.
On June 27, 2011, Jan O. (26), whose last name was withheld in
accordance with German privacy laws, was convicted in Goettingen
state court of two counts of murder for the slayings and sentenced
to life in prison. Jan O., dubbed the "cannibal killer," had
confessed to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of one of his
teenage victims.
(www.thelocal.de/society/20101127-31449.html)(AP,
6/27/11)
2010 Nov 17, Germany said it
had strong evidence Islamist militants were planning attacks in the
next two weeks and ordered security at potential targets such as
train stations and airports to be tightened.
(Reuters, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 18, In Germany Samuel
Kunz (89), one of the world's most-wanted Nazi suspects, died near
Bonn. He was under indictment on allegations he was involved in
killing hundreds of thousands of Jews at a concentration camp in
occupied Poland. Kunz was indicted in July on ten counts of murder
and 430,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he trained
at the SS Trawniki camp in occupied Poland and was sent from there
to the Belzec death camp as a guard from January 1942 through July
1943.
(AP, 11/22/10)
2010 Nov 22, Germany’s defense
minister announced that Germany will end conscription in July and
switch to a slimmed-down volunteer military service focused on
missions abroad.
(SFC, 11/23/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 23, Police in Belgium,
Germany and the Netherlands arrested at least 10 people on suspicion
of planning an Islamist militant attack in Belgium.
(Reuters, 11/23/10)
2010 Nov 23, A US federal jury
in Oakland, Ca., said SAP AG must pay Oracle Corp. $1.3 billion for
copyright infringement. In 2011 A US District Judge called the award
excessive and reduced it to $272 million.
(SFC, 11/24/10, p.A1)(SFC, 9/2/11, p.D1)
2010 Nov 28, More than 250,000
classified US State Department documents were released by online
whistleblower WikiLeaks. Among the leaked memos was information that
Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to
Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during its 2006 war with Israel.
Memos said the "IRC shipments of medical supplies served also to
facilitate weapons shipments." Documents also detailed concerns by
US officials in Baghdad about Iran’s influence on Iraq. Memos also
said King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had repeatedly urged the United
States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program to stop Tehran
from developing a nuclear weapon. One cable revealed that the US
kept nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and
Turkey.
(AP, 11/28/10)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.35)
2010 Dec 2, Heavy snow caused
travel chaos across much of northern Europe, keeping London's
Gatwick airport closed for a second day and disrupting road and rail
travel in France, Germany and Switzerland. Freezing temperatures and
often blinding snowfall killed 12 people, 10 in Poland and 2 in
Germany. Poland had already reported 8 dead due to the cold. Some of
the worst floods in a century devastated parts of the Balkans.
Authorities declared a state of emergency in Bosnia, Serbia and
Montenegro.
(Reuters, 12/2/10)(AP, 12/2/10)
2010 Dec 8, German prosecutors
filed war crimes charges against two Rwandan men suspected of
issuing orders to a mostly ethnic Hutu militia involved in killings
of Congolese civilians. Ignace Murwanashyaka (47) and Straton Musoni
(49) were charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and
membership in a foreign terrorist group. Murwanashyaka allegedly
served as FDLR's president from 2001 and Musoni served as vice
president from 2004, and the pair controlled the militia group from
Germany.
(AP, 12/17/10)
2010 Dec 10, A German battalion
in a French-German military brigade officially took up arms at a
ceremony in eastern France attended by the two countries' defense
ministers. This was the first time since World War II that German
combat troops were stationed in France, part of a conscious effort
to show the two EU powers have forever buried former hatreds.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 18, Germany’s weekly
Der Spiegel reported that local tax authorities recovered 1.6
billion euros this year from citizens who had stashed their cash in
secret accounts in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
(AFP, 12/18/10)
2010 Dec 18, In eastern
Afghanistan NATO troops killed more than 20 insurgents in fighting
after a patrol came under fire. German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid
an unannounced visit to northern Afghanistan to boost German troops'
morale for a war that is deeply unpopular at home and to meet with
the Afghan president. a leader of the Haqqani network was killed in
an operation by international forces and their Afghan counterparts
in the eastern Khost province.
(AP, 12/18/10)(Reuters, 12/18/10)(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 21, US tax authorities
announced that Deutsche Bank has admitted criminal wrongdoing and
agreed to pay more than $550 million in connection with its
participation in tax shelters from 1996-2002 that enabled the rich
to temporarily avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in US
taxes.
(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 28, German engineering
group Siemens said it has won a contract that could be worth some
€600 million ($790 million) to supply 258 wind turbines to a US
power company.
(AFP, 12/28/10)
2010 In Germany an 800-page
history of the country’s foreign ministry was published: “Das Amt
und die Vergangenheit.” It was commissioned by the ministry and
authored by Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe
Zimmermann.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.57)
2010 Ruth H. Sanders authored
“German: A Biography of a Language.”
(Econ, 8/7/10, p.86)
2010 Thilo Sarrazin (65), a
board member of Germany's august central bank, authored “Deutschland
schafft sich ab” (Germany Is Abolishing Itself or "Germany Is Doing
Away with Itself), a book claiming German society was being made
"dumber" by Muslim immigrants including Turks and others from the
former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. It became a runaway
best-seller, and cost him his job.
(AP,
9/15/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thilo_Sarrazin)
2010 Simon Winder, British
writer, authored “Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and
Their History.”
(SFC, 4/16/10, p.F4)
2010 In Abu Dhabi German
entrepreneur Thomas Geissler, creator of the "Gold to Go" brand and
chief executive of Ex Oriente Lux, installed a money machine at the
Emirates Palace hotel that dispenses pure gold. The
cash-for-gold machines were first tested in Germany in 2009.
(Reuters, 5/13/10)
2011 Jan 7, German authorities
stopped more than 4,700 farms from selling their meat and eggs as a
precautionary measure after animal feed was found to be contaminated
with cancer-causing chemicals. Authorities believed that some
150,000 tons of feed for poultry and swine containing industrial fat
has been fed to livestock across Germany. The fat contained dioxins
and should not have been in the food.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 8, A spokesman for
Germany's Agriculture Ministry said an overly high concentration of
cancer-causing dioxin has for the first time been detected in
samples of meat following the discovery that farm animals were fed
contaminated feed.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 10, In Germany melted
record December snowfalls across the country caused rivers from the
Rhine in the west to the Oder in the east to burst their banks,
flooding fields and towns, turning streets into waterways, and
leaving one person feared dead.
(AP, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 11, German authorities
ordered 140 pigs slaughtered after tests showed high levels of
cancer-causing dioxin in swine at a farm near Verden that purchased
tainted animal feed.
(SFC, 1/12/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 13, In Germany a
tanker loaded with sulfuric acid capsized on the Rhine river near
St. Goarshausen and two crew members were missing. There were no
indications that the load was leaking.
(AP, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 26, Germany's
development ministry said it will halt all payments to a $21.7
billion global health fund until it gets answers about corruption
allegations.
(AP, 1/26/11)
2011 Jan 30, In eastern Germany
a head-on collision between a cargo train and a passenger train
killed 10 people and injured 23 others. Authorities said they
believe the death toll in one of the country's worst train accidents
ever could still rise.
(AP, 1/30/11)
2011 Feb 2, German riot police
clearing out one of Berlin's last squats, Liebig 14, clashed with
protesters in pitched battles, reviving memories of fights that
brought down a local government in 1990. Liebigstrasse 14, occupied
in 1990, had 10 flats, artists’ studios and 25 tenants.
(Reuters, 2/2/11)(Econ, 2/12/11, p.59)
2011 Feb 5, British PM David
Cameron, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, condemned
Britain's long-standing policy of multiculturalism as a failure,
calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown
extremism. He also said Europe must stamp out intolerance of Western
values within its own Muslim communities and far-right groups if it
is to defeat the roots of terrorism.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Germany state
prosecutors in Wuerzburg said a retired German priest (77) has been
charged with 50 counts of fraud over the theft of 1 million euros'
($1.4 million) worth of church donations. The former Roman Catholic
priest was detained in May on suspicion of taking donations and
collection money from his church in Bavaria.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 15, In Germany the
trial of Detlef S. (48) opened in Koblenz. The man has admitted to
fathering seven children with his step-daughter but denied charges
that he sexually abused her for more than two decades. He also stood
accused of abusing his own daughter and step-son, and forcing both
daughters into prostitution.
(Reuters, 2/15/11)
2011 Feb 16, Google CEO Eric
Schmidt unveiled the one-stop payment service, called One Pass, at
Berlin's Humboldt University. The announcement came a day after
Apple rolled out a long-awaited subscription service for
applications designed for its iPhone and iPad. Apple is demanding a
30 percent cut of all subscriptions sold on those mobile apps while
Google is charging 10 percent. Schmidt also announced that Google
was funding a Berlin-based institute in conjunction with Humboldt
University. It would examine the evolution of the Internet and its
impact on society.
(AP, 2/16/11)
2011 Feb 18, Germany’s defense
minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (39) apologized for individual
errors in his doctoral dissertation. He was accused of copying parts
of the dissertation he wrote for his university doctorate without
correctly attributing them.
(Reuters, 2/19/11)
2011 Feb 19, German police
fired tear gas and water cannons to keep apart groups of far-right
supporters and thousands of counterdemonstrators trying to hinder
their rally in Dresden. The annual protest rally constitutes one of
Europe's biggest far-right gatherings, usually held earlier in
February to commemorate the anniversary of a deadly Allied bombing
at the end of World War II.
(AP, 2/19/11)
2011 Feb 19, An Iranian court
threw out a 20-month prison sentence for two German journalists
arrested after interviewing the son of a woman condemned to die by
stoning. Journalist Marcus Hellwig and photographer Jens Koch were
released and departed for home.
(AP, 2/19/11)(AFP, 2/19/11)(AP, 2/5/12)
2011 Feb 22, German authorities
arrested two Germans suspected of involvement with the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist group suspected of links to
al-Qaida.
(AP, 2/23/11)
2011 Feb 23, France and Germany
threatened to hit Libya with EU sanctions for Moammar Gadhafi's
fierce crackdown on protesters, while the European Union said the
violence in Libya could constitute "crimes against humanity" and
urged an independent probe into it.
(AP, 2/23/11)
2011 Mar 1, German Defense
Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after admitting to
copying part of a doctoral dissertation, stunning Angela Merkel and
depriving her conservatives of their brightest star.
(Reuters, 3/1/11)
2011 Mar 1, Volkswagen showed a
concept version of its iconic microbus van, known by its German
nickname, the Bulli, at the Geneva Auto Show. Among the six-seater's
modern twists: It's powered by an electric motor and uses an iPad to
control the entertainment system, climate control and other
functions.
(AP, 3/1/11)
2011 Mar 2, In Germany a gunman
shot dead 2 US airmen at Frankfurt airport. The gunman was
identified as Arid Uka (21), a Kosovo national who was working on a
short-term contract at the Frankfurt international postal center.
The airmen were later identified as Senior Airman Nick Alden (25) of
South Carolina and Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback (21) of
Virginia. On Feb 10, 2012,Uka was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison.
(AP, 3/2/11)(Reuters, 3/3/11)(AP, 3/10/11)
2011 Mar 3, In Germany a former
folk music star (65) was sentenced to 9 years in prison for abusing
hundreds of underage girls in Thailand by having unprotected sex
with them while being HIV-positive. The member of Godewind was
accused of 403 cases of unprotected sex the occurred in Pataya
between 2005-2009.
(SFC, 3/4/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 12, In Germany tens of
thousands demonstrated against plans to extend the life of the
country’s nuclear power stations, as an explosion at a Japanese
nuclear plant sharpened the dispute.
(SSFC, 3/13/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 14, German prosecutors
formally charged Rami Makanesi, a 25-year-old German-Syrian, with
membership in a terrorist organization on allegations he trained
with an al-Qaida-linked group in Pakistan. Makanesi was arrested by
Pakistani security services last June and extradited to Germany in
August. On May 9 he was convicted of membership in a terrorist group
and given a prison sentence of four years and nine months.
(AP, 3/14/11)(AP, 5/9/11)
2011 Mar 15, Chancellor Angela
Merkel said Germany will take seven of its 17 reactors offline for
three months while the country reconsiders plans to extend the life
of its nuclear power plants.
(AP, 3/15/11)
2011 Mar 19, In Germany Knut, a
four-year-old celebrity bear, died in front of hundreds of visitors,
taking keepers, animal experts and fans by surprise. Experts later
said he drowned after swelling of his brain caused him to collapse
and fall into his enclosure's pool.
(AP, 3/20/11)(AP, 4/1/11)
2011 Mar 20, AT&T said it
had agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Germany's Deutsche Telekom in a
$39-billion blockbuster deal enabling it to overtake Verizon as the
biggest US wireless provider.
(AFP, 3/20/11)
2011 Mar 22, A German court
jailed Detlef Spies, a former lorry driver, for 14 and a half years
for sexually abusing his daughter, stepson and stepdaughter, with
whom he fathered eight children. Spies was arrested on August 10,
2010.
(AFP, 3/22/11)
2011 Mar 23, Germany approved
legislation whereby citizens, who were sexually abused as children,
will now have up to 30 years after their 21st birthday to bring
their alleged attackers before the courts.
(AP, 3/23/11)
2011 Mar 26, In Germany some
200,000 people turned out in the largest cities to protest against
the use of nuclear power in the wake of Japan's Fukushima reactor
disaster.
(AP, 3/26/11)
2011 Mar 28, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel pledged to press ahead with a review of nuclear
power's future after her coalition suffered a "very painful" defeat
in a weekend state election dominated by Japan's nuclear crisis. The
anti-nuclear Greens doubled their voter share to 24.2% in
Baden-Wuerttenberg state.
(AP, 3/28/11)(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A3)
2011 Apr 2, In Germany several
thousand people took part in nation-wide demonstrations demanding an
end to nuclear power.
(SSFC, 4/3/11, p.A4)
2011 Apr 6, The German
government said it is providing an extra euro14 million ($19.9
million) in funding for child immunization in the developing world
as part of an agreement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
(AP, 4/6/11)
2011 Apr 8, German federal
prosecutors announced the espionage charges against the 64-year-old,
identified only as L. in line with German privacy laws. Prosecutors
allege that L. passed information on Munich's Uighur community to
Chinese intelligence between April 2008 and October 2009. They said
a week ago that they were pressing similar charges against a Chinese
national of Uighur origin.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 8, In northern Germany
a sandstorm caused a highway pileup that left at least 8 people dead
and 41 others injured.
(SFC, 4/9/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 11, In San Francisco
the annual Goldman Environmental prize was awarded 6 people from
around the world. The winners included Hilton Kelly for his efforts
to cut pollution in Port Arthur, Texas; Francisco Pineda for
resisting mining in El Salvador; Ursula Sladek of Germany for
creating for reducing her community’s reliance on nuclear power;
Prigi Arisandi for her efforts to protect Indonesia’s Surabaya
River; Dmitry Lisitsyn for his efforts to protect the Russia’s
Sakhalin island; and Raoul du Toit for defending wildlife in
Zimbabwe.
(SFC, 4/11/11, p.A12)
2011 Apr 17, Iran’s Kayhan
daily reported that an Iranian military commander has accused German
engineering company Siemens of helping the United States and Israel
launch the Stuxnet virus, a cyber attack on its nuclear facilities.
(Reuters, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 29, In Germany 3
suspected members of the al-Qaida terror organization were arrested.
The suspects had been under surveillance since April 15.
(AP, 4/29/11)
2011 May 1, Germany’s labor
market opened to citizens of the eight east European countries the
joined the EU in 2004.
(Econ, 4/30/11, p.54)
2011 May 3, Germany and several
other countries launched a campaign to create a human rights logo
that would serve as a universal symbol like the peace sign or a
heart signifying love.
(AP, 5/3/11)
2011 May 5, A German-Syrian
man, Rami Makanesi, admitted in a Frankfurt court to belonging to a
terrorist group and training in an al-Qaida paramilitary camp in
Pakistan. He faced up to five years in prison under a plea deal.
(AP, 5/5/11)
2011 May 12, In Germany retired
US autoworker John Demjanjuk (91) was convicted of thousands of
counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp and
sentenced on to five years in prison, a groundbreaking verdict that
closed one chapter in a decades-long legal battle. Judges ordered
him released pending appeal.
(AP, 5/12/11)
2011 May 15, Germany’s Welt am
Sonntag newspaper said the government is prepared to pay a billion
euros ($ 1.4 billion) in subsidies over the next two years to help
its industry develop electric cars.
(AFP, 5/15/11)
2011 May 28, German government
officials said two more people have died of a bacterial outbreak
allegedly caused by contaminated Spanish cucumbers, bringing the
number of deaths to nine. Almost 300 people were sick with
haemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, in recent days. HUS is a rare
complication arising from an infection most commonly associated with
E. coli, a bacterium found in undercooked beef or contaminated food.
Almost a dozen people with HUS have been hospitalized in Sweden in
the past two weeks after travel to Germany. In Denmark, eight people
are hospitalized with E.coli infection that could be linked to the
outbreak. The E. coli was later identified as type O104:H4.
(AP, 5/28/11)(AP, 5/29/11)(Econ, 6/4/11, p.63)
2011 May 30, Germany's
governing coalition said it will shut down all the country's nuclear
power plants by 2022. The decision, prompted by Japan's nuclear
disaster, will make Germany the first major industrialized nation to
go nuclear-free in years.
(AP, 5/30/11)
2011 May 30, Russia banned the
import of all vegetables from Germany and Spain and warned the
sanction could soon be applied to the rest of Europe because of the
deadly E. coli bacteria scare. German officials suspect the deadly
strain, which has already killed 12 people, may have come from
organic cucumbers imported from Spain.
(AFP, 5/30/11)
2011 May 31, Analysts said
Germany's plan to shut all its nuclear power plants by 2022 will add
up to 40 million tons of CO2 dioxide emissions annually as the
country turns to fossil fuels.
(Reuters, 5/31/11)
2011 May 31, The death from a
food-borne bacterial outbreak in Germany rose to 16 with nearly 400
people suffering severe symptoms. Scientists were unsure of which
produce and which country was responsible for the unusual E. coli
germ.
(SFC, 6/1/11, p.A2)
2011 May, In Austria a
26-year-old, identified only as Yusuf O., was detained on a German
arrest warrant. The German national of Turkish descent was suspected
of involvement with the German Taliban Mujahideen, a fundamentalist
group that prosecutors say seeks to carry out attacks in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and found a "religious fundamentalist society" there.
(AP, 6/18/11)
2011 Jun 2, Spain's prime
minister hit out at the European Commission and Germany for singling
out the country's produce as a possible source of a deadly bacterial
outbreak in Europe, and said the government would demand
explanations and reparations. The World Health Organization said the
E. coli bacteria responsible for a mysterious outbreak that has left
18 people dead and sickened hundreds is a new strain that has never
been seen before. The illness had now spread to at least 10 European
countries and fanned uncertainty about eating tomatoes, cucumbers
and lettuce.
(AP, 6/2/11)
2011
Jun 5, The German government said they believed a deadly outbreak of
E.coli that killed as many as 22 people appeared to be linked to an
organic farm near the city of Hamburg, where bean sprouts were
grown. The farm was ordered to shut down immediately and its produce
was recalled from markets.
(AP, 6/5/11)
2011 Jun 6,
German officials retracted their assertion that the E.coli epidemic
was caused by bean sprouts from an organic farm. They said there was
not enough data to determine if the farm was in fact the source of
the deadly outbreak, which sickened people all over Europe and
resulted in twenty-two deaths.
(AP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 7, Pres. Obama honored
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, by presenting her with the Medal of
Freedom. Merkel, chancellor since 2005, grew up under Communism and
lived to see the rise of democracy in her country; she is Germany’s
first woman leader.
(LAT, 6/7/2011)
2011 Jun 9, German authorities
reported that 3 more people have died from E. coli raising the toll
to 29 in less than 6 weeks.
(SFC, 6/10/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 10, Laboratory tests
have determined that the E. coli epidemic in Germany and parts of
Europe was in fact caused by contaminated bean sprouts from an
organic farm. German authorities had been forced to retract their
assertion that the sprouts were to blame, but now, high-tech
laboratory testing proved that the sprouts were the culprit in the
outbreak that has killed 31 people and sickened nearly 3,000
Germans.
(AP, 6/10/11)(SFC, 6/11/11, p.A3)
2011
Jun 13, At a photo opportunity in Hessen, Germany, a quick-thinking
pilot of the Goodyear Blimp saved lives as he lost his own in a
fiery crash. Pilot Mike Nerandzic was in the air allowing
journalists to take pictures for a road safety campaign when the
blimp began to experience problems. Nerandzic flew low enough for
journalists in the blimp to escape, but then the blimp burst into
flames; the pilot managed to direct it away from onlookers and
camera crews before it crashed, killing him.
(Yahoo News, 6/14/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5vamoyy)
2011 Jun 16, In France a 7th
child was hospitalized with an E. coli infection after eating meat
that manufacturers said could come from Germany, where an outbreak
of the bacteria has killed 37 people.
(AFP, 6/16/11)
2011 Jun 20, RIKEN and Fujitsu
took first place on the 37th TOP500 list at the 26th International
Supercomputing Conference (ISC'11) held in Hamburg, Germany. This
ranking is based on a performance measurement of the "K
computer(1)," currently under their joint development.
(www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2011/20110620-02.html)
2011 Jun 23, Germany's national
disease control center said the death toll from Europe's E. coli
outbreak has risen to 43, up from 39 a day earlier. One person has
died in Sweden.
(AP, 6/23/11)
2011 Jun 25, In Paris tens of
thousands turned out for a gay pride parade. In Germany thousands
packed downtown Berlin for the 33rd annual CSD (Christopher Street
Day) festival, an annual European LGBT celebration and demonstration
held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBT people.
(SSFC, 6/26/11, p.A10)
2011 Jun 27, Germany's national
disease control center said the death toll from the E. coli outbreak
has risen to 47 including one person in Sweden.
(AP, 6/27/11)
2011 Jun 30, The German
parliament approved government plan to shut down nuclear power
plants by 2022.
(AP, 6/30/11)
2011 Jul 2, In Germany Wladimir
Klitschko of the Ukraine became the undisputed world heavyweight
champion by beating Great Britain's David Haye on a unanimous points
decision at Hamburg's football stadium.
(AFP, 7/2/11)
2011 Jul 2, Der Spiegel
reported that Germany has agreed to sell 200 Leopard tanks to Saudi
Arabia.
(http://asian-defence.blogspot.com/2011/07/saudi-arabia-to-buy-200-leopard-2a7.html)
2011 Jul 5, The EU announced
action against Egyptian bean and seed imports, after tests indicated
that a 15-ton batch of Egyptian fenugreek seeds imported in 2009 to
Germany and then distributed elsewhere was at the root of an E.coli
outbreak that killed 50 people.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 12, In Germany a plane
being used by Thailand's Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn was been
impounded as part of a long-running battle over payments for a
building project in Thailand. The Thai government allegedly owed the
now-bankrupt German construction firm Walter Bau AG builder 30
million euros because of a contract agreed to more than 20 years ago
to build and operate a toll highway to Bangkok's Don Muang airport.
On July 20 a German court ordered the release of the impounded jet
upon receipt of a hefty bank guarantee. On July 21 Thailand's
foreign minister ruled out paying a multi-million dollar bank
guarantee to secure the release of the prince's jet.
(AP, 7/13/11)(AFP, 7/20/11)(AFP, 7/21/11)
2011 Jul 12, In Italy Giovanni
Strangio, the ringleader of a gangland style massacre of six people
in Germany, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the
Aug 15, 2007, attack that highlighted the international reach of
Italy's Calabrian mafia. He was one of eight people convicted and
given Italy's stiffest sentence for their roles in the violent feud
that culminated in Duisburg. Three other people were convicted and
sentenced to terms ranging from nine to 12 years, while three more
were acquitted.
(AP, 7/12/11)
2011 Jul 13, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel visited Angola and sparked controversy over an offer
to sell six to eight patrol vessels to Luanda.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 14, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met the president of oil-and-gas rich Nigeria after
her trip to Angola the previous day sparked controversy over an
offer to sell patrol boats.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 14, Chinese dissident
artist Ai Weiwei said he had accepted a job at an art university in
Germany, as he battles charges of massive tax evasion after nearly
three months in police detention.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 14, Switzerland
suspended imports of some seeds, beans and sprouts from Egypt, after
the EU blamed Egyptian fenugreek seeds for E.coli outbreaks in
Germany and France. The temporary ban would expire in October 31,
2011, in line with the EU's suspension.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 15, Christian Emde
(28) and Robert Baum (24) were arrested in the English port town of
Dover. In 2012 the 2 German men pleaded guilty to possessing
information useful for terrorist acts. Emde was sentenced to 16
months in jail, Baum to 12 months.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2011 Jul 24, Germany said that
it is loaning Libya's rebel leadership €100 million ($144 million)
to help with the country's rebuilding and humanitarian needs.
(AP, 7/24/11)
2011 Aug 1, In Germany a Berlin
state court ordered breweries to stop advertising beer as something
good for peoples’ looks and health.
(SFC, 8/2/11, p.A2)
2011 Aug 17, In Germany vandals
set fire to 18 cars parked in residential Berlin neighborhoods
overnight. Vandals had torched 11 cars the previous evening. Police
believed the arsons were politically motivated. Chancellor Angela
Merkel's Cabinet approved a four-year extension for a package of
terrorism-fighting measures enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks.
(AP, 8/17/11)
2011 Aug 16, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel called for
greater economic and political unity among the 17 nations that share
the euro.
(AP, 8/17/11)
2011 Aug 18, In Germany 9 cars
were torched in Berlin in the third consecutive night of arson
attacks that have outraged Germans and drawn condemnation from
Chancellor Angela Merkel. police offered a euro5,000 ($7,180) reward
to anyone who helps them find the perpetrators.
(AP, 8/18/11)
2011 Aug 23, German police said
11 more cars were burned overnight in Berlin, the latest in a string
of attacks that have seen more-than 300 cars damaged since the
beginning of the year. 401 cars were torched in 2009 and 250 in
2010.
(AP, 8/23/11)(Econ, 8/27/11, p.45)
2011 Sep 1, The German city of
Bonn was reported to have started collecting taxes from prostitutes
with an automated pay station. The tick machine printed receipts for
nightly flat fees of 6 euros for the privilege of streetwalking.
(SFC, 9/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 3, German police in
the western city of Dortmund moved in after members of a roughly
1,000-strong group of "left-wing extremists" attacked officers and
police vehicles. Thousands of demonstrators had turned out in
Dortmund to protest against a planned march by far-right supporters.
Police said about 400 people turned out for the far-right event.
(AP, 9/3/11)
2011 Sep 13, In Germany
Nuremberg prosecutors said they have charged a 69-year-old man with
497 counts of rape over allegations that he abused his daughter for
34 years and fathered three sons by her.
(AP, 9/13/11)
2011 Sep 22, Pope Benedict XVI
warned Germans of the danger of ignoring religion as he began the
first state visit to his homeland, seeking to stem the tide of
Catholics leaving the church while acknowledging the damage caused
by the clerical sex abuse scandal.
(AP, 9/22/11)
2011 Sep 27, In Germany an
artist identified as Wolfgang B. (60), admitted in court that he
faked 14 modern paintings that sold for millions of dollars. 4
people were accused of fraud totaling $22 million in the case in
Cologne.
(SFC, 9/28/11, p.A4)
2011 Sep 30, Namibian tribal
leaders took possession of the skulls of 20 of their countrymen,
taken by German colonial forces more than a century ago for racial
experiments. The 9 Herero and 11 Nama skulls, four females and 16
male, had arrived in Berlin, between 1909-1914. Germany's colonial
power in Africa included the bloody suppression of a Herero and Nama
uprising between 1904 and 1908 that left tens of thousands dead.
(AP, 9/30/11)
2011 Oct 10, In Germany an
arson attack on Berlin's busy central train station was thwarted
after railway employees discovered a device set to explode. The
tabloid Bild reported that a leftist group calling itself the "Hekla
Reception Committee — Initiative for more Eruptions in Society," in
an apparent reference to Iceland's Hekla volcano, claimed
responsibility. It said this was a protest against Germany's
military engagement in Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/10/11)
2011 Oct 11, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met with her Vietnamese counterpart, PM Nguyen Tan
Dung, as part of a two-day visit to boost trade ties with the
Communist country.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 11, In Germany an
attempted arson attack on a railway link in Berlin with three
separate explosives devices was thwarted. It was the third in two
days targeting railway operations in and around the capital.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 13, German police
found bottles filled with a potentially explosive mix of liquid and
powder beside train tracks in southwestern Berlin, the 16th firebomb
discovered in four days.
(AP, 10/13/11)
2011 Oct 14, In Germany
Greenpeace launched a new Rainbow Warrior. The $33 million schooner
replaces its battered 50-year-old boat, which saw numerous
encounters with whalers, seal hunters and illegal loggers. The first
Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French intelligence agents in a New
Zealand harbor in 1985 for opposing nuclear testing. The second
Rainbow Warrior was retired this year to become a hospital ship in
Bangladesh.
(AP, 10/14/11)
2011 Oct 19, The German
Aerospace Center said its retired ROSAT satellite, the size of a
minivan, is hurtling toward the atmosphere and pieces of it could
crash into the Earth as early as Oct 21. The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric
ton) satellite was launched in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being
used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing
the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.
(AP, 10/19/11)
2011 Oct 23, Germany’s retired
research ROSAT satellite crashed into Earth at 0150 GMT somewhere in
the Bay of Bengal between India and Myanmar.
(AP, 10/25/11)
2011 Oct 27, A German court in
Cologne sentenced art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi (60) to 6 years in
jail for painting 14 works, which were sold as masterpieces for at
least $14 million. His three accomplices received a total of 9 years
in jail. The court dropped investigations into at least 40 more
suspected fakes because of statutes of limitations.
(SFC, 10/28/11, p.A2)(SFC, 11/10/11, p.A8)
2011 Nov 4, In Germany Uwe
Boehnhardt 34) and Uwe Mundlos (38), founders of the National
Socialist Underground, died in an apparent murder-suicide as
authorities closed in on them in Eisenach. Beate Zschape, their
female comrade, turned herself in after torching the group’s home in
Zwicke, Saxony.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground)(Eon,
11/19/11, p.57)
2011 Nov 4, British Airways
owner IAG said it has agreed to buy Lufthansa's UK unit bmi in a bid
to squeeze more growth from its capacity constrained Heathrow hub
and expand services to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.
(Reuters, 11/4/11)
2011 Nov 10, In Germany some
300 police officers searched the headquarters of Heckler & Koch
amid allegations the German arms maker bribed Mexican officials in
connection with arms deliveries between 2005 and 2010. Heckler &
Koch was also under investigation following the discovery of its
assault rifles in Libya.
(AP, 11/10/11)
2011 Nov 11, Polish police
arrested 210 people during Independence Day marches that turned
violent, and that nearly half of them were Germans. 40 police
officers were injured and 14 police cars destroyed. Far-right
protesters, football hooligans and anarchists from Germany were
blamed.
(AP, 11/12/11)
2011 Nov 12, In Germany some
9,000 people rallied in Frankfurt near the EU’s Central Bank office
calling for an end to excesses of financial speculation and urging
the government to dismantle big banks.
(SSFC, 11/13/11, p.A8)
2011 Nov 13, German police
arrested a new suspect, Holger G. (37), following the discovery of
an extremist group, labeled the National Socialist Underground,
believed to have killed 10 people in what the country's top security
official called "a new form of far right terrorism." Prosecutors
suspect the group, which was discovered only last week, of having
murdered eight people of Turkish origin, one Greek national and a
German policewoman over the past decade.
(AP, 11/13/11)
2011 Nov 14, German prosecutors
formally arrested Beate Z. (36), a woman suspected of co-founding a
far-right terror organization that authorities say murdered 10
people, amid mounting criticism of security authorities for their
failure to act sooner. She turned herself in last week.
(AP, 11/14/11)
2011 Nov 18, In Germany a
52-vehicle pileup on the A31 autobahn near the town of Gronau in the
northwest left three people dead and 35 injured.
(AP, 11/19/11)
2011 Nov 23, Global stocks fell
again following figures a day earlier that showed the US economy
grew less than anticipated in the third quarter and the surprising
news that Germany failed to raise as much money as it was looking
for in an auction of its supposedly top-rated debt.
(AP, 11/23/11)
2011 Nov 25, A shipment of
nuclear waste reprocessed in France crossed into Germany on its way
to a controversial storage site near the town of Dannenberg that
protesters say is unsafe.
(AP, 11/25/11)
2011 Nov 25, In Mali gunmen
killed a German man in Timbuktu and seized three men from the
Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden. Officials the next day ordered
a plane to evacuate foreigners from the tourist destination.
(AP, 11/26/11)
2011 Nov 29, German police
arrested Ralf Wohlleben (36), a right-wing extremist on suspicion he
helped arm a small group of neo-Nazis accused of a string of
killings of minorities and a policewoman.
(AP, 11/29/11)
2011 Nov 30, A senior German
official said the government has approved the subsidized sale of
another Dolphin-type military submarine to Israel. Israel already
has 3 Dolphin submarines from Germany, one half-funded and two
entirely funded by Berlin.
(AP, 11/30/11)
2011 Nov 30, Germany's top
administrative court ruled that students don't have the right to
pray while in school if a conflict is created. This upheld a
decision by a lower court which had denied that right to a Muslim
student who had demanded a private prayer room at his Berlin high
school.
(AP, 11/30/11)
2011 Dec 1, Berlin-based
Transparency International (TI) said corruption is hampering efforts
to tackle the eurozone debt crisis, as Greece (80) and Italy (69)
scored badly in a list of nations seen to be the most sleaze-ridden.
Nepal ranked 154th out of 183 countries. New Zealand ranked the
cleanest, while the US ranked 24th. Afghanistan ranked 180.
(AFP,
12/1/11)(cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/)(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 2, Britain’s PM David
Cameron held emergency talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy,
while France and Germany tried to drum up support for a new EU
treaty to enforce budget discipline.
(AFP, 12/2/11)
2011 Dec 5, In Bonn, Germany, a
global conference on Afghanistan's future opened. It was
overshadowed by the absence of key regional player Pakistan. The US
and other nations vowed to keep supporting Afghanistan after most
foreign forces leave the country in 2014.
(AP, 12/5/11)
2011 Dec 5, France and Germany
reached a compromise agreement to seek mandatory limits on budget
deficits among debt-laden European governments.
(SFC, 12/6/11, p.A9)
2011 Dec 8, A German man (27)
was arrested by a police special-ops team in the western city of
Bochum on charges he was part of an al-Qaida bomb plot in Europe.
Suspect Halil S. is accused of being part of the so-called
"Duesseldorf Cell." The group was allegedly plotting the bombing
before its three main members were swept up by police in April.
Another suspect, identified only as Florian M., was arrested in Kiel
on charges of involvement with Halil S.'s criminal activities.
(AP, 12/8/11)
2011 Dec 8, German authorities
said a letter bomb has been intercepted by Deutsche Bank employees
intended to chief executive Josef Ackerman. They it was apparently
sent by an Italian anarchist organization.
(SFC, 12/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Dec 9, Germany, the United
States and nine other nations signed an agreement that expands
access to the International Tracing Service (ITS), a unique
Holocaust-era archive.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 10, In Germany a man
dressed as Santa drugged a girl (15) at a Berlin Christmas market. 9
other people at various Berlin Christmas markets have fallen prey to
similar attack.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 19, The Air Berlin
group, Germany's 2nd-largest airline, said United Arab Emirates
airline, Etihad, is to pay 72.9 million euros ($95 million) to
become its biggest shareholder.
(AP, 12/19/11)
2011 Dec 19, Members of an
Australian class action lawsuit, who blame a German pharmaceutical
company's anti-morning sickness drug, Thalidomide, for causing birth
defects, won the right to have their case heard in their own
country. The class action against Grunenthal is open to Australians
born between Jan. 1, 1958, and Dec. 31, 1970, who were injured after
their mothers took thalidomide while pregnant.
(AP, 12/19/11)
2011 Dec 26, A
British-registered ship, the M/S Thor Liberty, held in a Finnish
port after authorities discovered 69 surface-to-air missiles and 160
tons of explosives onboard, received permission to travel again, but
without those materials or its captain. The Patriot missiles were an
official shipment from Germany to South Korea. Finnish authorities
said the explosives were a legitimate shipment for China, but the
missiles lacked proper transit documents, and the explosives weren't
safely stored. On Jan 4 the Finnish government authorized the
transport.
(AP, 12/26/11)(AP, 1/4/12)
2012 Jan 1, In central Germany
a Syrian man was been fatally shot by two people who fired at him as
his car stopped at a traffic light in Sarstedt town.
(AP, 1/2/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Germany a few
hundred protesters gathered outside the president's palace in Berlin
to call for President Christian Wulff to quit amid a scandal
involving a loan and a furious call to a newspaper.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 11, In Germany a
54-year-old defendant shot and killed a prosecutor (31) during his
trial in the Munich area. The alleged shooter, a resident of Dachau,
was on trial over claims he paid his employees improper wages.
(AP, 1/11/12)
2012 Jan 12, In Germany a
46-year-old priest, who has been suspended, went on trial at the
state court in Braunschweig. The Roman Catholic priest has admitted
to 280 counts of sexually abusing three boys over a several-year
period.
(AP, 1/13/12)
2012 Jan 25, German police
raided the homes of four alleged supporters of the Nationalist
Socialist Underground group, a neo-Nazi group linked to the killings
of nine immigrants and a policewoman over the past decade.
(AP, 1/25/12)
2012 Jan 25, Corporate leaders
gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was the opening speaker.
(Econ, 1/21/12, p.76)(Econ, 1/28/12, p.51)
2012 Jan 26, A German court
convicted a Roman Catholic priest (46) of some 250 counts of
sexually abusing children over a several-year period and sentenced
him to six years in prison. He was found guilty of abusing three
boys aged 9 to 15 between 2004 and 2011.
(AP, 1/26/12)
2012 Feb 3, The UN's highest
court confirmed that Germany has legal immunity from being sued in
foreign courts by victims of World War II Nazi atrocities.
(AP, 2/3/12)
2012 Feb 4, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel wrapped up a 3-day visit to China where she tried to
reassure her hosts on the strength of the euro and Europe's ability
to overcome its debt crisis. She expressed regret that Chinese
police blocked a human rights lawyer from meeting her and said the
Communist government should have the confidence to allow dissent.
(AFP, 2/4/12)(AP, 2/4/12)
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End of file.