The lasting psychological effects of living next to the Berlin wall

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Wall sickness

Almost 20 years after he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, Timothy Brown, “The Berlin Patient,” is essentially cured. A transplant that transferred a rare genetic bone marrow variation to Brown gave him resistance to HIV. It’s difficult to grasp the sheer…

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Hope of AIDS Cure 30 Years Later

A cloud of volcanic ash will force all airports in Berlin to cancel all flights in and out starting at 11 a.m., the German aviation safety agency said Wednesday.

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Volcanic ash closes Berlin airports

People in Berlin are growing used to the sight of wild boar in the streets, as increasing numbers of them come into the city to look for food.

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VIDEO: Berlin suffers wild boar invasion

Exploring Berlin’s forgotten bomb shelters that have not been seen since World War II

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VIDEO: Berlin’s abandoned WWII bunkers

When the Berlin Zoo’s director announced plans to preserve a polar bear’s body, a very human drama unfolded.

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Berlin Journal: For Mourners of Knut, a Stuffed Bear Just Won’t Do

The Berlin zoo’s celebrity polar bear, Knut, drowned after swelling of his brain caused him to collapse and fall into his enclosure’s pool, experts said Friday. (April 1)

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Expert: German celebrity polar bear Knut drowned

Some 200,000 Germans throughout Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne participated in what are thought to be the country’s largest-ever protests against nuclear power. Police reported that more than 100,000 protesters marched in Berlin alone, while…

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Germans Hold Massive Anti-Nuke Rallies

The polar bear Knut may not find peace even in death: He will be stuffed and displayed at the Berlin Natural History Museum, so that people can continue to see him. Vets working to determine Knut’s cause of death-it turned out to be brain illness-were…

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Knut to Be Stuffed, Displayed

The polar bear Knut may not find peace even in death: He will be stuffed and displayed at the Berlin Natural History Museum, so that people can continue to see him. Vets working to determine Knut’s cause of death-it turned out to be brain illness-were…

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Knut to Be Stuffed, Displayed

How true was novelist Isherwood’s portrayal of pre-Nazi Berlin?

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Life is a Cabaret

Paris-inspired booties and an LED watch from a sixth-generation Berlin shoe brand Known for inventing four-in-one and two-in-one zipper shoes, Munich’s Nat-2 shows a simpler side of shoe design with their new desert boot-inspired line created just for girls. The suede Marais booties, named after the Parisian neighborhood, combine classic French subtlety with a flexible fit. At the helm of Nat-2 is creative director Sebastian Thies , whose extensive know-how is due in part to his family’s storied history as innovative shoemakers. Originally founded by “Ferdinand Fischer” in 1856, the company folded during WWII, but was resurrected by Ingeborg Thies, Sebastian’s grandfather and a Fischer by birth. The company was renamed Thies-Fischer KG in 1949 and now produces several brands alongside Nat-2. In addition to their new streamlined shoe, Nat-2 recently introduced “Time”—a collection of plastic watches that reflect the pared-down aesthetic of the more grown-up streetwear scene. The patented 42 LED scroll system that lights the entire watch face up as each minute passes strikes a balance between the “keep it fresh, keep it classy” style that Sebastian has curated over the last three years. Perfect for the quantum computer nerd, the watch comes in several different colors including olive and purple. The Nat-2 Time and Marais sell from the Nat-2 online shop as well as from retailers around the world.

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Nat-2

Actor Michael J Fox will be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Camera awards in Berlin this weekend, organisers announce.

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Fox set for German career award

Artist Agathe Snow teams up with Mykita on a pair of “monumental” sunglasses for her Guggenheim Berlin show Aliens might’ve constructed Egyptian pyramids (or it could be the more likely story of slave labor), but the more urgent question according to artist Agathe Snow is our relationship to these towering structures. She takes up the question in her current show, an homage to monuments at the Guggenheim Berlin dubbed “All Access World.” Corsica-born, NYC-based Snow has already made a name for herself with artfully messy sculptural works and a penchant for interactive art, with this show exploring “a more democratic approach to monument ownership and distribution.” Filled with an array of mobile sculptures, large-scale wall collages, video works and more, the exhibit examines the identifying factors that bind people to places. Accompanying the monumental mixed-media works, a pair of sunglasses designed by Snow and Berlin-based framemaker Mykita plays off the theme with subtle references to iconic landmarks. The neon pink- and black-hued shades feature a handpainted silhouette of either Manhattan’s skyline or the Pyramids of Giza, applied so finely to the inner side of the lenses in gold that the wearer barely notices. The sunglasses, limited to an edition of 200, play off Snow’s idea that visually omnipresent monuments should be “available as products” sold through her fictional company All Access World. Snow explains in an interview with Deutsche Guggenheim magazine , “Monuments are a contradiction. Things that depend on the act of remembering cannot be static. How can you be of a moment in history yet speak of timelessness?” Nailing the point home, the Mykita model that Snow chose for the project (called Cyrus) riffs off the classic Clubmaster style that everyone from JFK to surfers has sported. Assembled entirely by hand at the Mykita workshop, each pair is individually numbered on the temple and comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by Snow. They sell from Museum Shop of the Deutsche Guggenheim (and within the next few weeks at Mykita stores and other dealers) for €370 each.

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You Are Here

Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons, is a fascinating place. The moon, discovered back in 1877, is small — only about 17 miles long — and orbits incredibly close to the surface of its host planet. Phobos, in fact, is so close to Mars that it moves around the planet faster than the planet itself rotates. If you were standing on the surface of Mars, you would see Phobos rise in the west and move across the sky in only a little more than four hours before disappearing to the east. And it’s speeding up. As the orbital radius decreases, Phobos moves closer to the planet’s surface and will one day either smash into Mars or break up into a planetary ring. “[Its] origins are still something of a mystery, and the surface featured on Phobos are not totally understood either,” Phil Plait wrote at Discover last week after these new photographs were taken. “Specifically, all those parallel grooves are pretty weird! The current thinking is that they were actually caused by impacts on Mars! It works like this: some giant rock hits Mars and blasts vast quantities of material up and out, some of which reaches up into space. Phobos plows into this material, and the direct impacts with big chunks can form craters.” These new images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe after it passed within 66 miles of Mars’ surface. View more Pictures of the Day . Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).

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Picture of the Day: Phobos, Mars’ Large and Incredibly Close Moon