With his debut feature “The Lives of Others” (2006), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck did more than just create a gripping drama; he established a globally acclaimed monument to the appraisal of the GDR dictatorship. Winning…
After the victory over Napoleon in 1815, peace did not bring freedom to Europe. Instead, Austrian State Chancellor Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich established a regime of oppression that went down in history as the…
This event marks a historic precedent in the history of Western democracies: Dr. Hans-Georg Maaßen—a constitutional lawyer holding a doctorate, a long-standing senior official in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and from 2012 to…
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” This oft-quoted bon mot by Mark Twain takes on an oppressive relevance in light of current developments within the Berlin Republic. When we discuss the expansion of…
Edward Snowden (1983), a former IT specialist for the CIA and the NSA, triggered the largest espionage scandal in human history in 2013. His fate documents the creeping transition from state secrecy to transnational persecution:…
The masks of the self-proclaimed guardians of democracy have finally fallen. Right at the start of the Berlin summer holidays and shielded from public view by the media distraction of the Football World Cup, the…
When the power structure of a technocratic elite trembles in the physical world, the battle for narrative hegemony increasingly shifts to the digital sphere. Hardly any other regulatory tool in the West is currently pursuing…
The good citizen pays taxes, separates their waste, respects pedestrian crossings, and obeys the law. For a long time, this was the classic division of labor within a free constitutional state. The state enacts rules…
By the end of 2026, all European Union member states are legally mandated under the revised eIDAS 2.0 Regulation to provide their citizens with a “European Digital Identity Wallet” (EUDI Wallet). What is marketed by…
Long before the digital age and the invention of state trojans or algorithmic surveillance, governments had already found a highly effective way to read the private thoughts of their citizens: the letter. During the French…
The era of French occupation in Germany, historically known as the Franzosenzeit, is one of the most paradoxical periods in European history. On one hand, Napoleon Bonaparte brought the revolutionary promises of the Code Civil,…
Today marks exactly ten years since the passing of Dr. iur. Guido Westerwelle on March 18, 2016. In the current political landscape of 2026—characterized by house searches over critical social media posts, the freezing of…