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Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn announces plan for €25m giveaway An Austro-German heiress is setting up a citizens group to decide how she should give away much of the fortune she inherited from her grandmother. Marlene Engelhorn, who is 31 and lives in Vienna, wants 50 Austrians to determine how €25m (£21.5m) of her inheritance should be redistributed. "I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it," she said. "And the state doesn't even want taxes on it." Austria abolished inheritance tax in 2008, one of a handful of European countries that do not impose inheritance tax - or death duties. Ms Engelhorn believes that is unfair. She is a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, the founder of German chemical and pharmaceutical company, BASF, and inherited millions when her grandmother died in September 2022. Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto's wealth was estimated by US magazine Forbes at $4.2bn (£3.3bn; €3....

Nude landlord no excuse for holding back rent, rules German court Frankfurt judges said people would have to lean far out of window to see naked sunbathing in courtyard A German court has said that a landlord sunbathing naked in the courtyard of his building was not a reason for his tenants to reduce their rental payments. The case involved a building in an upmarket residential district of Frankfurt, which included an office floor rented by a human resources company. The company withheld rent because it objected , among other things, to the landlord’s naked sunbathing. In response, the landlord * sued . The Frankfurt state court on Wednesday rejected the company’s reasoning , finding that “the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard”. It said in a statement that it couldn’t see an “inadmissible, deliberately improper effect on the property”. Judges were ruling on an appeal against a lower court decision th...

Source:  Julia Joppien on Unsplash German cities to trial free public transport to cut pollution   Plan to be tested in five cities in effort to meet EU air pollution targets and avoid big fines   “Car nation” Germany has surprised neighbours with a radical proposal to reduce road traffic by mak ing public transport free, as Berlin scrambles to meet EU air pollution targets and avoid big fines . The move comes just over two years after Volkswagen’s devastating “dieselgate” emissions cheating scandal unleashed a wave of anger at the auto industry, a keystone of German prosperity. “We are considering public transport free of charge in order to reduce the number of private cars,” three ministers including the environment minister, Barbara Hendricks, wrote to EU environment commissioner Karmenu Vella in the letter seen by AFP Tuesday. “Effectively fighting air pollution without any further unnecessary delays is of the highest priority for Germany,” ...

80 years on , Picasso's powerful anti-war Guernica still resonates Exactly 80 years ago, in a crowded market square, the small Basque town of Guernica was bombed by Nazi aircraft at the behest of General Francisco Franco. Days later Picasso heard about the attack and painted Guernica in a Paris attic, a haunting work of art that has become a universal howl against the ravages of war , from 1937 Spain to 2017 Syria. The canvas mixes stark images of agonising humans and animals to depict the horror of the bombing of the small Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937 during Spain's civil war. Luis Ortiz Alfau, a 100-year-old Spaniard, was there that day "to pick up the dead and the injured," he told AFP. " Around 4:00 pm, three planes started arriving every 15 minutes, they were German and Italian planes," said the former soldier on the Republican side. "They dropped explosive bombs , then incendiary bombs, and the town started to b...

Image source: Wikipedia (Sven Storbeck) It's the end of the road for VW campervans: Safety rule changes in Brazil stop production of 1960s iconic vehicle Brazil the last place in the world still making the motoring icon Volkswagen said production will end on December 31 because of new vehicle safety regulations in the country Rules state every vehicle must have air bags and anti-lock braking systems Commemorative special series with a production run of 600 will be made More than 10 million vans have been produced worldwide since the van was introduced in Germany 63 years ago, 1.5 million of those in Brazil It carried hippies through the Sixties before becoming a workhorse across the developing world. But the long journey of the VW camper van is finally coming to an end. Brazil is the last place in the world still producing the vehicle known by aficionados as the ‘bus’, but Volkswagen has said production will end there on December 31. More than 10million of them have...

Photo Source: User- Golderak voanews.com (Wikipedia)   Germany's 'psychic' pets concern animal rights group Germany has upset animal rights activists with its latest attempts to predict the outcome of Euro 2012. Two years after the death of popular pundit Paul the octopus, a range of pets are now being deployed to "predict" which football team will win. However, Yvonne the cow, Kasimir the alpaca and Xaver the bulldog have upset German animal rights activists. The country's Tierschutzbund group said it was worried animal oracles had been overused during the tournament. Television and radio stations across the country have been employing animals to predict results in the tournament, with varying degrees of success. Marius Tunte of Tierschutzbund told the BBC: "These days, everybody who has an animal seems to put it in front of a camera. "Every station has its own animal." The group said the use of animals as psychics threatened the dig...

Germany admits Spanish cucumbers are not to blame for E coli outbreak Source of outbreak that has killed 16 people remains a mystery as row spreads across Europe and Spain counts cost of ban on its vegetables The mystery E coli outbreak that has killed 16 people escalated into a pan-European row on Tuesday as Germany admitted that tainted Spanish cucumbers were not the source of the outbreak after all. Spain's minister for agriculture of the Andalusian regional government, Clara Aguilera, ate a homegrown cucumber on live television as she railed against a suggestion by Hamburg scientists last week that Iberian cucumbers were likely to blame for the outbreak, which claimed its first non-German victim on Thursday when a Swedish woman died shortly after returning from Germany. "Germany accused Spain of being responsible for the E coli contamination in Germany, and it did it with no proof, causing irreparable damage to the Spanish production sector," said Spain's agricult...

Source:  Ansgar Scheffold on Unsplash Spain's unemployed rush to fill jobs in Germany The telephones to the European employment service Eures have been ringing off the hook this week. The calls are from unemployed Spaniards urgently seeking jobs - in Germany. Eures' German branch has requested applications from Spanish engineers, medics, teachers and tourism professionals. Other skilled workers, who speak German, can also apply. "All our lines have been jammed !" says Carmen de Eguilior Alvarez, a Eures adviser in Madrid. "There's huge interest, because of the crisis here." Spain's economy is still struggling to emerge from recession. The collapse of the construction sector wiped out more than 2 million jobs and there is still little sign of recovery. This week, unemployment touched a 13-year high with new figures showing 20.33% of the workforce unemployed. So traditionally home-loving Spaniards are being forced to expand their ...

Source: Joakim Honkasalo en Unsplash German minister rebukes press for football 'war' terms Germany's interior minister has criticised the UK's tabloid press for referring to the war in their coverage of the England-Germany World Cup match. The two teams are set to meet at South Africa's Bloemfontein Stadium on Sunday. Phrases used by the papers included " jeering jerries " and "fight". But Thomas de Maiziere told the BBC that such journalism belonged in the past and urged Germans to ignore the provocative language. BBC Berlin correspondent Steve Rosenberg said in the run-up to crucial England-Germany football matches, tabloid paper articles sometimes read more like despatches from the front than from a football tournament. Among others that have attracted attention include the Daily Star's headline on Saturday which stated: "It's war - we will fight jeering Jerries on the pitches" and featured Wayne Rooney i...

  Source: note thanun on Unsplash Noisy children no longer verboten in Berlin  Children in the German capital Berlin are to be exempt from strict laws on noise pollution. An amendment to the city's law now makes it "fundamentally and socially tolerable" for members of the younger generation to make a racket. Berlin has become the first of Germany's 16 federal states to adopt such legislation. But all Berliners - children included - must continue to respect the official quiet time at night and all day Sunday. Until now, only church bells, emergency sirens, snow ploughs and tractors have fallen outside the stringent rules on excessive noise in Germany. In Berlin alone , hundreds of complaints are made each year about noise levels in kindergartens and children's playgrounds. Some day-care facilities have even been forced to close after local residents have gone to court in search of a quiet life.  Now Berlin's local government, the senate, has...

Source:  Nick Fewings en Unsplash Berlin marks  20 years since the fall of the wall Tens of thousands of people, including dissidents, songwriters, priests and political leaders who helped to engineer the collapse of communism in the former eastern bloc, braved a cold, persistent drizzle today to mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, retraced the first steps she and tens of thousands of other east Germans made to the west 20 years ago, as celebrations across Europe included memorial services, candlelit vigils  and – the highlight of the day – a scheduled toppling of 1,000 giant dominoes along an almost one-mile stretch of the wall's route. Crowds who thronged the graffiti-covered iron bridge at Bornholmer Strasse in northeast Berlin, some of them hanging from its girders , shouted “Gorby! Gorby!” as they had on Nov. 9, 1989, in recognition of the role of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last...

Source: Eddie Palmore on Unsplash Adidas and Puma end 60-year feud The German sportswear companies Puma and Adidas are to end a feud started 60 years ago by their founding brothers. Adi and Rudolf Dassler started making sports shoes together in their mother's wash-room in the 1920s. They * fell out  during World War II, probably over political differences, and founded firms on either side of a river in southern Germany. On Monday 21 September, employees of both companies will shake hands and then play a football match. It is a big deal in the cobblestoned Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, where two of the world's largest sportswear companies are based. First joint activities When the brothers * set up  their separate companies in 1948 the town was also split , with residents loyal to one or other of the only major employees. In a joint release , the two companies said they were * making up  to support the Peace One Day organisation, which has its annua...

Accident-free zone: The German town which scrapped all traffic lights and road signs If you find yourself crossing the road in the German town of Bohmte, look both ways – and then perhaps check again. It has scrapped all its traffic lights and road signs in a radical experiment designed to make the streets safer. Yesterday, the local council said the scheme was a complete success. In the four weeks since the signs were ripped up , there has not been a single accident. Officials wanted to test the theory that the 13,000 drivers who use the town every day would take extra care and show each other greater consideration if they were not told what to do. They secured a £1.8million grant from the European Union to set up the scheme in the town near Hanover. Four weeks ago, Bohmte banned traffic lights and warning signs, including those instructing drivers to give way or stop. Only two rules remain – drivers cannot go above 30 mph, the German speed limit for city driving, and ...