Free Republic

More than 150 kilometres of concrete, wire and guard towers ringed West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. But it’s not easy to carve up a city - and construction of the Wall threw up many freak instances. [....] "The owners had to pass through the death strip to reach their plots -- and for that there was an iron door in the Wall with a doorbell,...."

IRAN is facing an "international conspiracy" to over throw the Khomeinist re gime with a "velvet revolution," the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) claimed yesterday. The latest mascot of the plotters is supposed to be Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota now charged with espionage in Tehran. A US citizen with an Iranian father and a Japanese mother, the 31-year-old Roxana has worked in Iran on and off for years as a freelance reporter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for Saberi's immediate release and safe return to the US. IRNA claims that the plot was first...

Lena Dunham is reportedly threatening to sue the right-wing website which last week accused her of sexually abusing her little sister Grace when they were children. In the wake of the allegations, the creator and star of HBO's Girls, has cancelled two stops on her book tour scheduled this week in Belgium and Germany for health issues. On Monday, she tweeted that she was 'deeply sorry' to miss the Antwerp Book Fair and a signing in Berlin, adding that she's 'so grateful for your energy and support'.

RUGEN, Germany. Americans groove on the exhilaration of argument and accusation as the midterm elections finally approach, but here in Germany there's the bitter remembrance of what it was like to have none of the above. Trading barbs and insults is the American way of campaigning, but East Germans recall fear, not free speech, as reams of barbed wire and blocks of cement turned into a wall and lookouts with guards who were ordered to shoot any of their own people trying to flee their encircled prison of a country. An American visitor quickly becomes aware of sharp contrasts in...

For more than a decade, Berlin has been governed by an openly homosexual mayor. But is the city, renowned for its tolerance, ready for a leader from a Palestinian background? It may have to be. […] … Berlin SPD parliamentary leader Raed Saleh only needs to open his mouth to stand out from the crowd. Saleh came to Berlin at the age of five with his Palestinian parents, and although his German is beyond reproach, he speaks the language with a distinct Arabic twang. “Berlin is a city of diversity; a city of 100 different accents,” Saleh told DW. “People...

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Fire authorities suspect “political motivations” for a late night blaze in a mosque in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. More than 60 firefighters were called to the scene of a burning construction site at the Mevlana Mosque. No one was at the site when the fire broke out and no one was injured. …

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Edvin Blomdahl is seven-years-old. He also cycled from Sweden to Berlin, a journey of 370 kilometres, in four days. "We actually thought we would take a week to make the trip, but then we didn't have time. We thought we might have to take the train for part of it," the boy's mother, Linda Blomdahl Petersson, told The Local. "But then on the first day we biked 103 kilometres, and we thought, 'This may actually work'. When we booked the trip it felt like a half crazy idea." The family took their bikes to the Swedish town of Trelleborg, cycled...

A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin on Monday night. Police said it was too soon to say whether it was part of a political protest. Amid tensions in Berlin over pro-Gaza protests and a rise in anti-Semitism, the 46-year-old doused himself in a flammable liquid and then set himself alight with a cigarette lighter at 11.45pm on Monday. Police said the man, who is of Arab descent, only suffered minor injuries outside the Israeli embassy in south-west Berlin. A police spokesman told The Local his feet and legs were burnt and he was now...

A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin on Monday night. Police said it was too soon to say whether it was part of a political protest. Amid tensions in Berlin over pro-Gaza protests and a rise in anti-Semitism, the 46-year-old doused himself in a flammable liquid and then set himself alight with a cigarette lighter at 11.45pm on Monday. Police said the man, who is of Arab descent, only suffered minor injuries outside the Israeli embassy in south-west Berlin. …

After Jean-Claude Juncker’s election to the Commission Presidency in Strasbourg on Tuesday (15 July), excitement in Germany was felt across party lines. “(It’s) A good sign for Europe’s capacity to act,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented. “He will receive our total support,” said the country’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. For the first time, European citizens have had direct influence on the appointment of the EU top job—and they successfully asserted their choice, Steinmeier said optimistically. Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, spoke of a “historic day for European Democracy”. …

Rocks were thrown at police in Berlin during a protest by some 1,000 demonstrators—most of them Palestinians—against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. As many as 10 demonstrators were arrested for breach of the peace and trying to forcibly free others already arrested in Saturday’s protest, a police spokesman said. One police officer was struck by a rock but was not injured. The march was unregistered; demonstrations in Berlin require a police permit. …

On June 26, 1948, the first American C-47 cargo aircraft were launched to supply West Berlin in what would eventually be known as the Berlin Airlift, following the Soviet Union's closure of water and land corridors between the western Allies sectors of occupied Germany and Berlin. Planes from the American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African Air Forces would eventually participate in the Airlift, flying over 200,000 flights over the next 11 months before the blockade was lifted.

A project named "The House of One," looking to create the world's first ever church, mosque and synagogue in Berlin, Germany, where people of different faiths can worship under one roof, is currently raising donations. "Under one roof: one synagogue, one mosque, one church. We want to use these rooms for our own traditions and prayers. And together we want to use the room in the middle for dialogue and discussion and also for people without faith," explained Pastor Gregor Hohberg, a Protestant parish priest, according to a BBC News report. "Berlin is a city where people come together from...

A €43.5 million project to construct a building where Jews, Muslims and Christians can pray together under one roof in the center of Berlin moved a step closer on Tuesday. Called the House of One, the building would become the first in the world built together by the three religions to pray in. It will house a church, synagogue and a mosque. …

Germany’s first burial area for lesbians will open on Sunday in Berlin. One of the founders told The Local that the leafy resting spot is for homosexual women to be buried as they lived—with those of the same sex. “We are the first real generation of emancipated, feminist, open lesbians, and we need somewhere to be buried,” said Dr. Astrid Osterland from Safia, an association for older, mostly gay women. Hitting back at criticism of the burial area in the Georgen-Parochial-Friedhof, Osterland explained that the project had “absolutely nothing against men”. They are welcome to have their urns here, but...

German woman, dead six months, found in front of TV BERLIN (Reuters) - The corpse of a 66-year-old German woman who died more than six months ago was found in her apartment, in front of a television set that was still on, the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper reported on Tuesday. The woman, in the town of Oberursel near Frankfurt, died of natural causes in a nightgown while watching TV. There was a program guide from September nearby, the newspaper said, describing the body as "partially mummified". Police said residents in the 30-apartment block had noticed an unpleasant smell in the...

Cars were set alight and stink bombs set off after a far-left demo against “state repression” descended into chaos in Berlin over the weekend. Two policemen were injured and 17 protesters arrested in the 12-hour long police operation across the city, which saw almost 2,000 officers deployed. Organizers said they were protesting against heavy-handed police tactics such as those seen in Hamburg in early January, where disturbances led to a long crackdown and police restricted zone. Over the course of the weekend, an estimated 1,300 people took to the streets in Kreuzberg, Moabit and Friedrichshain including feminists, members of the...

Leadership comes in many forms and with many levels of risk, but history gives us a few moments when leaders stood alone and were proven right. [...] In late June 1948 the Soviets cut all road, rail and water access to Berlin, a city controlled by the Western Allies yet surrounded by Soviet-controlled territories. The Soviet’s goal: take Berlin from the Allies by forcing the US-UK-French alliance into one of two options: try to protect a city of 2.1 million starving Germans, or war. The Soviets expected the West to surrender the city quickly. [...] The US was in the...