RARE PHOTOS: East germany - The Real Truth

I know why many east Germans vote AfD. And no, it’s not an inherited longing for dictatorship

Grievance politics has grown in the east of the country where I was born. But west Germans have hard questions to answer too, says writer Carolin Würfel

The Guardian - UK · Sep 15

How Iran draws citizens into political surveillance

Authoritarian governments have long drawn ordinary citizens into political surveillance. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union encouraged denunciations. East Germany’s secret police service, the Stasi, embedded informants in workplaces and neighbourhoods.

The Conversation · Sep 11

Readers reply: would equal pay create a better society?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers the possibility of one wage for all

The Guardian - UK · Sep 6

After Cape Verde’s heroics against Spain, more great World Cup underdog stories

From Sparwasser being the toast of East Germany to Cameroon’s rumbling of Argentina, the finals are littered with upsets

The Guardian - UK · Jun 16

‘I shared a single bed with my mother for three years’: Sung Tieu on her monument to immigrant workers in Venice

At the German pavilion, the artist has re-created the housing estate where she grew up to tell the forgotten history of migrants, including her parents, hired under a socialist agreement between East Germany and Vietnam – then abandoned

The Guardian - UK · May 12

Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation campaign over nuclear disaster

On April 26, 1986, Soviet engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were conducting a safety test. Doomed by a fatal design flaw and pushed to the limit by human negligence, reactor 4 exploded amid an attempted shutdown during a routine procedure, setting off a chain of events that ultimately…

The Conversation · Apr 22

This Week in History: From the liberation of Nelson Mandela to East Germany’s final gasp

Explore how major events between 9 and 15 February were captured on The Independent’s front pages

The Independent UK · Feb 9

“I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender

The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work

Guitar World · Jan 1

‘No topic is too difficult’: children’s series on life in communist East Germany wins an Emmy

In Fritzi’s Footsteps tells story of a girl growing up in Leipzig who witnesses the fall of the Berlin Wall

The Guardian - UK · Nov 26, 2025

I played communist Germany's only arcade cabinet and you can too, comrade

VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt is my dev to watch for 2026.

PC Gamer · Oct 18, 2025