There are many regional dialects in Germany. Why? Because the Germans are proud of their regional histories.
How the Thirty Years war affected Germany
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was a brutal conflict that saw most major European powers use Germany as a battleground to sort out their assorted dynastic, religious, economic and territorial issues. The toll this took on the country was massive, and reverberated for long after; let’s take a look at some of the damage it did.
The Thirty Years War has earned a reputation for being a particularly nasty conflict: unlike most wars of the day, and arguably no wars until the 20th century, it saw massive civilian casualties, with parts of Germany losing more than half of their population. It’s estimated that of a German population of about 20 million in 1600, by 1650 only about 13 million were alive.
What Can Germans Teach Us About Privacy?
Asking delicate questions in Berlin, the capital of personal data protection
In Berlin this week, I’ll be trying to better understand how Germans are thinking about the surveillance debate that has roiled the free world in recent months. Conventional wisdom has it that citizens of this country are particularly attuned to the importance of privacy due to Stasi excesses during Communist rule.
Has the resonance of the issue been overstated, as some observers suggested after the recent parliamentary election, when Chancellor Angela Merkel triumphed even as privacy advocates in the Pirate Party seemed to lose ground?
German Philosophers
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Philosophers of all time. This list of famous German philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
Against the German pettiness in data protection!
High time to start the argument for changes – the topic must not remain taboo.
Criticism of the US would be more credible if we, at least in Europe, had the same understanding of privacy and data protection. But that is by no means the case, as not only surveys show.
If all EU members had converted the 1995 data protection directive into national law in the same way and if all national supervisory authorities had interpreted the regulations in the same way, then most American “data octopuses” would hardly have settled in Ireland. 28 member states of the European Union, that also meant: 28 different views of data protection! So there was no question of Europe speaking with one voice to the US.
German data storage laws ‘threaten free trade’
Germany’s data storage laws are comparable to those of Russia and China, according to a top US tech think tank. Forcing companies to store data locally hinders the global digital economy, the ITIF argues.
Germany is up there with Russia, China, Turkey, and Indonesia on a list of countries that pursue protectionist policies that damage global technological innovation, according to a leading US think tank.
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released a report this week arguing that Germany’s data storage law, which was updated in 2015 to tighten cybersecurity, was a potentially damaging hindrance to free trade.
The 2015 law change forced telecom companies to store metadata locally in Germany, rather than anywhere else – even in the European Union. This amendment “potentially violates rules that protect the freedom of services… and the free flow of personal data” protected by EU laws, the ITIF said in its report entitled “The Worst Innovation Mercantilist Policies of 2016.”
But some German economists were skeptical. Barbara Engels, digitization specialist at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IWK), seemed surprised by the ITIF’s accusation. “I don’t see a problem the way this institute does,” she told DW. “I don’t really see exactly how it should hinder innovation.”
German Writers
German writers have been among the most influential in European history.
German watchdog says Amazon cloud vulnerable to US snooping
US legislation means Washington could seek access to sensitive police data that Germany plans to store with Amazon Web Services.
April, 2019. BERLIN — Amazon’s cloud hosting services are not suitable for storing German police data due to a risk of U.S. snooping, Germany’s top data protection officer told POLITICO.
Ulrich Kelber, Germany’s federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, said that U.S. authorities could invoke the CLOUD Act to demand access to data held by Amazon Web Services — creating a risk for German government bodies that store data with them.
The CLOUD Act, passed last year by Donald Trump’s administration, allows American authorities to compel U.S.-based tech companies to provide requested data, regardless of whether that data is stored in the U.S. or abroad.
German Chemists
It is said that Germans created modern chemistry.
Germany is the first EU Member State to enact new Data Protection Act to align with the GDPR
On 5 July 2017, almost a year before the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679, the “GDPR”) will be applied, the new German Federal Data Protection Act (‘Bundesdatenschutzgesetz’) passed the final stage of the legislative process, the so-called German Data Protection Amendment Act (the “GDPAA”). It has been countersigned by the German Federal President and published in the Federal Law Gazette.
The GDPAA will, with one exception outlined below, enter into force on 25 May 2018, and will substantially change the current German Federal Data Protection Act in order to align it to the GDPR, to make use of its derogations, and to implement the Law Enforcement Directive (EU/2016/680).
Although the GDPR directly applies across the EU and its provisions prevail over national law, Member States retain the ability to introduce their own national legislation based on certain derogations provided for by the GDPR. These derogations include national security, prevention and detection of crime, and also apply in certain other important situations – the so-called ‘opening clauses’.