The Lives of Others is a gripping thriller focusing on the role of the East German secret police – the notorious Stasi – in mid-1980s Berlin.
Why was the Die Linke election campaign so successful? What were the main issues that it raised?
The media have been gloating about the plight of the left in the wake of the German federal elections a fortnight ago. "A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of socialism's slow collapse", announced the New York Times last week.
French Resistance: Did the 'Army of Crime' die for France?
The French Resistance is often presented as a national liberation struggle. Both Communists and the followers of right wing General de Gaulle saw it as a nationalist movement against German occupation. It is only relatively recently that historians have written about the non-French fighters.
A group of leading BNP members from the Midlands have been pictured speaking at a recent neo-Nazi rally in Germany. BNP organiser Mike Bell headed a group of British fascists, joining others from across Europe at a rock festival organised by the German fascist NPD group. This shows that the BNP is serious about building a network of fascist groups across Europe.
The radical left Die Linke party made significant gains in the German state elections last month.
"There's a rumour going around that states cannot go bankrupt," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently at a private bank event in Frankfurt. "This rumour is not true."
Gordon Brown has been stung by remarks from Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, who described Britain's response to the economic crisis as "crass Keynesianism".
The German playwright Bertolt Brecht once asked, "What is the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of owning a bank?"
The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) betrayed the ideas it had fought for for over 50 years when it decided to support the slaughter of the First World War.