Germany news: Police raid properties linked to bomb threats

The Hamburg Regional Court has ordered 10 activists from the climate action group Last Generation to pay a sum of over €400,000 (roughly $463,208) to an airline, over their 2023 protest which briefly blocked Hamburg Airport.

Four women and six men are involved in the incident, where they cut through a fence at the airport on July 13, 2023. Four of them then glued themselves near the runways.

Eurowings, a subsidy of German flag-carrier Lufthansa, filed the lawsuit.

The verdict was announced on Tuesday and can be appealed.

If the defendants block an airport again, they can be detained for up to six months.

Berlin will name the square in front of the state parliament after Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, who died in May at the age of 103, according to the DPA news agency.

Friedländer, an honorary citizen of Berlin, will be commemorated at the entrance to the Berlin House of Representatives.

Parliament President Cornelia Seibeld and Governing Mayor Kai Wegner have scheduled a press conference for Wednesday morning to announce the naming, DPA reported. Also attending will be Stefanie Remlinger, the mayor of Berlin-Mitte, where the parliament building is located.

Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil unveiled a special commemorative stamp honoring Friedländer on Tuesday, joined by representatives of the Jewish community and local students.

Friedländer, born in 1921 to a Jewish family, survived deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After liberation, she emigrated to the United States with her husband.

She returned to Berlin at age 88 and became a prominent eyewitness to the Holocaust, sharing her story in schools and public events. Her message — "Be human" — became her signature appeal. She was laid to rest at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weissensee.

Late passengers twice ran onto the tarmac at Cologne/Bonn Airport last week, federal police revealed on Tuesday.

Three British nationals heading back to the United Kingdom opened an emergency exit door on Saturday, setting off an alarm before being stopped by security staff.

The day before, two Romanian passengers broke the glass on an emergency switch to force open a door after missing boarding for their flight to Bucharest. The men, aged 28 and 47, ran onto the apron but were detained by an airport security employee until federal police arrived. Criminal proceedings for trespassing have been launched against them.

The three British travelers have not yet been charged. An airport spokesman said unauthorized use of emergency exits is strictly prohibited, adding that the airport is considering legal action.

None of the passengers involved were allowed to board their flights.

A police spokesman said the fact that the two breaches happened on consecutive days was "undoubtedly striking."

A court in Poland was incorrect in a decision not to recognize a marriage between two Polish citizens in Germany, the European Court of Justice has ruled.

The Polish court did not recognize the German marriage as Polish law prohibits same-sex unions.

Read more about the story here.

Cross country skier Victoria Carl, part of Germany's gold medal-winning team in the last Winter Olympics in Beijing, has given up on participating in February's Games in Italy after failing a doping test earlier in the year. 

It's still not clear exactly what sanction Carl will face, but with just three months left until the Olympics and after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rejected a proposed compromise between Carl and Germany's NADA anti-doping agency, the 30-year-old said she assumed she would at least miss that event and the upcoming winter season. 

"It is still difficult for me to accept that an oversight and a mistaken medical treatment is now leading to the collapse of my Olympic dream," Carl said. 

Carl failed a urine test in April of this year, with the case becoming public knowledge in the summer. 

She tested positive for clenbuterol, a medication used for respiratory problems like asthma that has regulatory approval in Europe but not in the US. It's a banned substance in sports because of perceived muscle-building and fat-burning qualities in higher doses. 

"I was sick, I had powerful coughing fits and took the medication on doctor's instructions. I made everything public, I was not aware that it contained a prohibited substance," Carl said. 

Carl won gold with compatriot Katharina Henning in 2022 in the team cross country skiing, and also was part of the four-woman relay team that took silver. 

German cross country ski coach Peter Schlickenrieder said it was "obviously bitter" when an athlete's goal for which they had "worked tirelessly over decades" fell apart in this way. He had already said last month that he feared the 2030 Olympics, by which point Carl would be 34 years old, would be a more realistic goal for her to compete again.

A court officer was killed while doing his work in Bexbach in the western state of Saarland early on Tuesday, the state Justice Ministry announced. 

The ministry did not immediately publish details of what happened, only saying that the 58-year-old man had been violently killed while on duty and pointing to ongoing investigations. 

The prosecution service in Saarbrücken also did not immediately comment further. 

Saarland's state premier, Anke Rehlinger, said she was deeply moved by "this terrible news." 

"As far as the details of the crime are concerned, everything necessary and required will be done to clarify the matter thoroughly and swiftly. Further information will be provided to you in due course," Rehlinger told reporters.

Saarland's Justice Minister Petra Berg described the man — who worked in a role akin to a bailiff or marshal, to use British and American terminology — as a "highly valued colleague" in the state's legal system.

The trial of seven alleged left-wing extremists, accused of aggravated assault and in some cases attempted murder committed in Germany and in Hungary, opened in the eastern German city of Dresden on Tuesday. 

They're accused of being part of a subset of the "Antifa Ost" extremist group, which was  recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US, that called itself the "Hammerbande" or "Hammer Gang." 

Six men and one woman, aged between 28 and 49, are in court, accused of membership in or support of a criminal group. 

Chief prosecutor Alexandra Geilhorn said while reading out the charges that they were "methodical and organized" in seeking out people they deemed to be right-wing extremists and attacking them. They often used hammers. In some cases, those attacked sustained severe injuries.

The prosecution alleges that the group was formed by late 2017 or early 2018 at the latest, and that members were involved in eight attacks in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and several more in Hungary in 2023.

The attacks in Hungary targeted participants in the far-right "Day of Honor" demonstration marking the failed February 1945 efforts of Nazi German and Hungarian troops to break the Soviet Red Army siege of Budapest in the latter stages of World War II.

According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, in some cases the defendants had at least "accepted" without remorse that the death of those attacked was a possibility.

Supporters of the accused gathered both inside and outside the Dresden Upper District Court on Tuesday, with cries like "Free all Antifas" audible in the chamber.

Court dates for the trial are currently scheduled through April of 2027. It's the second large prosecution of alleged Hammerbande members in recent years. Lina E. and three co-defendants were convicted in 2023.

A man given a 9-year juvenile prison sentence last March for a 2022 homicide has been exonerated on appeal at the Traunstein District Court in Bavaria.

Presiding judge Heike Will spoke of an "unexpectedly fast end to proceedings" on Tuesday, ruling there was insufficient evidence to convict the defendant of killing a female medical student identified as Hanna.

This followed a psychologist declaring that the prosecution's star witness, an older inmate who had testified that the defendant, identified as Sebastian T., had admitted during a game of cards to killing Hanna, had not given credible testimony in the initial trial.

Germany's highest federal court for such matters had declared a mistrial and called for a renewed hearing in Bavaria in response to this development in September.

The prosecution also recommended the man's release, though it still believes that Hanna's death was homicide. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, argued that Sebastian T.'s innocence had again been demonstrated, after he had denied the murder at all stages of the trial.

The young woman Hanna's body was found in the River Prien on October 3, 2022, after attending a disco in Aschau in the Bavarian Alps known as the "Eiskeller" or "Ice Cellar." 

The defense argued accidental death was most likely, and that the wounds to her head and upper body were probably sustained as she was dragged several kilometers by the river's current.

The defendant, now aged 23, had already been released from custody prior to the retrial. He had been convicted in March 2024. The court in Traunstein ordered that he be compensated for the 31 months spent in prison. 

German authorities searched properties across four states as they investigated a case concerning hundreds of emails threatening bomb attacks against schools, train stations and other public spaces.

The raids in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the northern state of Lower Saxony, and the central states of Saxony-Anhalt and Hesse, targeted four individuals, including two juveniles, police and prosecutors said.

The suspects are accused of "being responsible for hundreds of threatening emails with fake nationwide bomb threats against schools, central railway stations, shopping centers and other urban and public facilities."

According to federal prosecutors, the aim of the emails was to "disturb the public peace by threatening to commit criminal offenses... to trigger the greatest possible number of police operations and to create the greatest possible uncertainty among the population." 

The German economy stagnated in the third quarter of 2025 compared with the previous three months, data from the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) showed Tuesday.

The data was consistent with an initial estimate. 

"Economic activity was hampered in the third quarter by weak exports, while investments increased slightly," Destatis President Ruth Brand said in a statement.

The German economy, as well as the broader euro zone economy, has been struggling, with quarterly GDP figures having been sluggish, and the country having recorded contractions in both 2023 and 2024.

Experts say the US tariff shock and increased competition with China make things difficult for an export-oriented economy like Germany.

In the third quarter of this year, the European Union and the US signed a tariff agreement. 

A German television show for children about life in the former East Germany clinched an International Emmy in New York on Monday evening.

The six-part series, which is partly animated, titled "On Fritzi's Trail - What Was it like in the GDR" won in the "Kids: Factual & Entertainment" category.

The German title is "Auf Fritzis Spuren - Wie war das so in der DDR?" and the show is about life in East Germany shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In his acceptance speech, writer and producer Ralf Kukula said he still remembered the final days of East Germany, saying: "36 years later, I'm standing here and I'm thinking it is absolutely crazy."

The TV show beat competitors from Brazil, UK and South Africa. The International Emmy is a US award that celebrates the best in global television.

 

There are many events in Berlin today, ranging from forums with discussions on the war in Ukraine and the situation in Syria to forums with a focus on the German economy.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and the Development Minister Reem Alabali-Radovan are at theBerlin Foreign Policy Forum this morning.

The UN rights chief Volker Turk is also set for a discussion at the forum, and DW is present, too. 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is back from a business summit in Angola and is set to speak at a major annual conference this afternoon in Berlin.

The conference, called German Employers' Day, brings together discussions on trends in the economy.

Merz then has to leave quickly because he is set to join a "Coalition of the Willing" conference call that is scheduled for this afternoon. 

The German Federal Statistics Office confirmed that third-quarter gross domestic product remained unchanged compared with the previous quarter.

Plus, it's a busy day in Berlin, with many events, like the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum and German Employers' Day.