With the far right resurgent in Germany, experts are divided as to whether the dictator’s former mountaintop retreat is better restored or left a ruin

One of the last structural relics of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship was conceived to project indomitable power. Last month it was destroyed in a suspected arson attack. Will it, and should it, be rebuilt?

The historic Nazi mountaintop retreat known as the Eagle’s Nest is perched on an Alpine peak at an altitude of 1,834 metres (6,000ft), with stunning views over southern Germany and Austria. In German, its design is known as Überwältigungsarchitektur, intended to overwhelm and intimidate.

Activists call for people to make their anger known over poor public services including education and housing

Street protests sweeping Europe are expected to spread to Germany and reignite in France on Saturday, with police mobilised to stop potential looting and rioting on the fringes of what organisers hope will be peaceful rallies.

Weeks of, at times violent, student demonstrations have rocked Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and France, where activists on Halloween have again called for people to make their anger over the cost of living and deficient public services felt across the country.

Gernot Döllner criticised for in-person announcement of major investment in US days before midterm elections

The head of the luxury carmaker Audi is under fire in Germany for appearing at a rally with Donald Trump just days before the US midterm elections, to announce billions of dollars of investment in battleground state Georgia.

Gernot Döllner joined Trump on stage after the US president gave a speech criticised by the head of an elected body of employees at Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen, as being full of “racism, sexism, transphobia [and] contempt for democracy”.

Official guidance says ammonia in animal urine should be watered down to stop it corroding bark

A neighbourhood in Vienna has introduced guidelines for dog walking, including the use of bottled tap water to rinse away urine and protect vulnerable trees.

Neubau, an up-and-coming, densely populated district dotted with cafes and galleries, rolled out the Schönes Gassi (nice dog walk) campaign this week.

Fragile coalition suffers another blow as labour minister and co-leader of SPD Bärbel Bas leaves both posts

Germany’s labour minister and co-leader of the centre-left ⁠Social Democrats (SPD), Bärbel Bas, has quit both posts, citing the death of her stepdaughter and subsequent political attacks against her, in a stinging blow to the fragile coalition government.

“After my stepdaughter’s death, I realised that I need time to come to terms with my grief,” Bas said in a statement posted on Facebook, without giving further ⁠details.

Claims that August Hanning exploited intelligence for private clients comes after other troubling espionage scandals

The ex-spymaster August Hanning once criticised Germany’s own intelligence services as “vegetarians” among prowling carnivores, demanding broader powers to keep the country safe in a treacherous world.

Often described as a “godfather” of Germany’s 21st-century security architecture, Hanning is now charged with treasonous espionage and handing state secrets to a foreign power in one of the most spectacular alleged intelligence breaches of the postwar period.

Far-right AfD wins in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and leftwing Die Linke on course for victory in Berlin

Germany’s embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to stay in office and fight for future-proofing economic changes despite heavy losses for his conservatives in two state elections, one to the far right and the other to a leftwing party.

Preliminary results indicated Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tallied just 4.9% in the coastal region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, below ⁠the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament and indicating they may be excluded altogether. It would be the CDU’s worst-ever state score, which Merz called a “disaster”.

Embattled Friedrich Merz faces nervous wait while far-right Alternative für Deutschland party targets further gains

Voters in two German states are going to the polls with the political future of the embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, hanging in the balance and an emboldened far right targeting further gains.

Coming two weeks after a seismic election in Saxony-Anhalt in which the anti-immigration, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) scored its highest ever result in a regional poll, the nativist party is expected to drain support again from Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

France and Germany among countries with low Pisa scores, which show how well 15-year-olds use school learning in life

France’s were its worst ever. Germany’s, too. In the Netherlands, results also tumbled to all-time lows. Even in Finland, Europe’s much-vaunted schools champion and a global leader for decades, scores plummeted.

The 2025 Pisa scores, which assess how effectively 15-year-olds apply school-learned knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics and science to real-life situations, have rocked some of western Europe’s education powerhouses.

German chancellor gets support from state leaders but further far-right gains this weekend could spell the end

Powerful German state leaders from Friedrich Merz’s party have rallied behind him as speculation builds that his days in office may be numbered.

The chancellor’s hold on power has looked increasingly shaky since a bombshell regional election result earlier this month in which the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party routed his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in Saxony-Anhalt.

Many fear chancellor is wrong man for the job at a time when Germany’s defences against far right are crumbling

A cataclysm. A 9.0 earthquake. A five-alarm fire. A bitter rejection of Germany’s joyous reunification three decades ago, and a threat to the democratic postwar order.

Sizing up the repercussions of last weekend’s win for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in the former communist state of Saxony-Anhalt, German commentators expressed a sense of doom, panic and helplessness in the political establishment.

German chancellor attacks Alternative für Deutschland after far-right party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt election

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has accused the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) of seeking “ethnic cleansing” with its “remigration” drive, after the nativist party’s seismic weekend victory in a state election.

In his first public confrontation with the AfD since Sunday’s shock outcome in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz said at a raucous parliamentary debate that the far-right party would take an axe to one of the pillars of the German economy with a racist campaign of mass deportations.

Alarm that Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania may fall next after party’s Saxony-Anhalt election victory

• ‘It breaks my heart’: victory sparks dismay

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Thousands of Germans have staged protests against the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) after the party’s watershed victory in a state election, warning it posed a danger in two more polls this month.

Demonstrators at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate held a peaceful pro-democracy rally denouncing the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian AfD, which has called for mass deportations of asylum seekers and a rollback of state support for renewable energy and public broadcasting.

Friedrich Merz said his conservative CDU was shaken ‘to its very foundations’ after far-right victory in Saxony-Anhalt

A “shocked” and chastened Friedrich Merz has vowed to stay in office despite the far right’s triumph in a state election that has brought anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin politicians within striking distance of power.

The German chancellor, appearing ashen-faced in front of reporters in Berlin, said on Monday that the landslide victory by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt had shaken his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) “to its very foundations”.

Aftershocks of party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt will ripple across Germany, with two more state elections this month

Germany is reeling from the biggest far-right victory in a state election since the Nazi period after voters in Saxony-Anhalt in the former communist east gave the anti-immigration, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party a thumping first-place finish of 44%, just short of an absolute majority.

He is famed for creating a golden loo that was stolen and a $6m banana that was eaten. But, says the sculptor ahead of a major new show in Germany, there’s more to his work than pranks and provocation

Maurizio Cattelan, the art world’s merriest prankster, pauses when asked which object in his sprawling new Berlin show is most likely to be defaced, stolen or eaten, then emits a foghorn of a laugh. “There is no need to vandalise anything,” says the trim, soulful Italian, explaining that he has already taken care of all that, given how the work cuts villains, imposters and straw men down to size. “But,” he says, referring to the show’s more daring works, “maybe we need someone to resuscitate people.”

Cattelan, who speaks in a lilting English, grins broadly, a mischievous glint in his brown eyes. Speaking on the subterranean level of Mies van der Rohe’s weightless Neue Nationalgalerie (NNG) in Berlin, he darts between the impish and the profound in conversation, mirroring the dizzying range of his work. The silver-haired sculptor is best known for duct-taping a banana to a wall in 2019 and calling it Comedian, in a droll commentary on the excesses of the art market. The joke became even funnier when it sold for $6.2m, then hilarious when its buyer took a bite out of his purchase and swallowed it.

The long-running drama reaches Hitler’s rise to power in its final season as its creators reflect on the unsettling parallels between Weimar Germany and the present day

It’s the global hit TV series that pulled audiences straight into the chaotic hedonism of 1920s Germany, dramatising the brilliance and brittleness of a newly built democratic system with unprecedented ambition.

But in the 13 years that the German makers of Babylon Berlin have worked on the show, modern democracies from the US to Hungary to South Korea have come under pressure in ways the creators say they could never have imagined when they started.

Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours

Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.

Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.

Germany seeking to extradite suspect from Romania over guns it is feared could have been used ⁠in assassinations

Germany is seeking to extradite a suspect from Romania over the discovery of an underground stash of weapons in a forest near Berlin that German media reports have linked to Russian intelligence.

Two weeks after German authorities found a drone carrying explosives at Leipzig airport, the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, confirmed federal prosecutors had opened an investigation related to the secret cache of guns “on suspicion of preparing a serious act of violence that threatens national security”.

Reforms comply with wishlist of intelligence services which say Germany lags behind allies and enemies

The German government has approved a draft law aimed at lifting many of the restraints on its spy agencies imposed during the postwar period as the country reels from two attacks in a month that have exposed serious security gaps.

The controversial changes, which must still pass parliament, largely comply with a wishlist pulled together by the foreign and domestic intelligence services, which have long complained Germany lags behind its allies and enemies.