Free Republic

A group of German authors, comedians and academics have added fuel to the flames of an increasingly bad-tempered culture war over language bias by calling for a fightback against “ridiculous linguistic constructions” designed to make German more gender-neutral. In an open letter published by the Dortmund-based German Language Association, signatories including the philosopher Rüdiger Safranski, novelist Peter Schneider, comedian Dieter Hallervorden and the former head of the country’s domestic intelligence Hans-Georg Maassen, hit back against calls for more gender-neutral generic nouns..(snip) ...The protest letter, headed “An end to gender nonsense!” and published shortly before International Women’s Day, argues that the...

Sinan Selen, a 46-year-old Istanbul-born counter-terrorism expert, will be the first Muslim to fill a top leadership position within Germany's intelligence community. Throughout his government career, Selen has been resolute in confronting Islamic fundamentalists in Germany. He also led efforts at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to monitor the Turkish nationalist Milli Görüs, an influential Islamist movement strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society. The leadership changes at the BfV were spurred by a cellphone video that purportedly showed right-wing mobs attacking migrants over the murder of a German citizen in Chemnitz by...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will allegedly fire the head of the country’s domestic intelligence service after he countered claims of “migrant hunts” during one of the many Chemnitz protests. Government sources claim that the German leader has decided to relieve Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) chief Hans-Georg Maassen of his post following a number of incidents including his rejection of a video that allegedly showed angry demonstrators in Chemnitz “hunting” migrants following the murder of Daniel Hillig, Die Welt reports. The sources claim that Merkel decided the fate of the spy chief over the weekend, telling...