Kaffeepause: What's Abuzz in Berlin?

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Jochen Buchsteiner, Political Correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Jochen Buchsteiner has been Political Correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin since 2023. Prior to that, he spent 20 years as the FAZ’s foreign correspondent in New Delhi, Jakarta, and London. After studying Political Science and Rhetoric in Berlin and Tübingen, he began his career in journalism at the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. From 1993 until 2001, he was foreign policy editor and parliamentary correspondent in Hamburg, Bonn, and Berlin for Die Zeit. He is the author of two books: „Die Stunde der Asiaten“ (2005) and „Die Flucht der Briten aus der europäischen Utopie“ (2018).

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Paul-Anton Krüger, Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.Paul-Anton Krüger has been the Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung since the 2021 federal election. Previously he reported on political affairs and served as Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Department, focusing on the Middle East and international security for three years. Before that, he spent four years in Cairo and was a correspondent covering large parts of the Arab world and Iran.After graduating from the Alte Landesschule in Korbach, he studied journalism in Berlin and Munich. In August 2005, he joined the Süddeutsche Zeitung as a volunteer, worked as an editor from 2008, and as head of the foreign policy department from 2011. In the fall of 2007, Mr. Krüger was a guest editor at the Chicago Tribune as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, the German-American journalism scholarship of the International Journalism Programs e.V.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by ACG Young Leader Alumna Dana Heide, Correspondent for Handelsblatt. Ms. Heide (2018 ACG Young Leader) has been a Berlin-based correspondent for the Handelsblatt since the summer of 2022. She covers the Economics Ministry, focusing on digital policy, innovation, and small and medium-sized companies, and also covers the Free Democrats (FDP). In the past she has written about energy and climate policy, and has acted as head of the ‘companies and markets' section at Handelsblatt Online. She joined the Handelsblatt in 2011 and reported from Berlin from 2015 to 2019. Ms. Heide served as the paper’s China Correspondent from 2019 to 2022. Ms. Heide studied Economics in Bremen and attended the Georg von Holtzbrinck School of Journalism. She worked as a freelance correspondent in San Sebastián, Spain. In 2016, she was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow at The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Erika Solomon, Berlin Correspondent for The New York Times. Ms.Solomon has been a Berlin Correspondent for The New York Times since April 2022. Prior to that, she served as a correspondent for The Financial Times, reporting from the Middle East and then Germany. Ms. Solomon spent over a decade reporting from the Middle East – first for Reuters and then the FT – covering the Arab Spring and its aftermath, from the street protests in Yemen and Bahrain to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. In 2019, she moved to Germany where she covered migration in Europe as well as the German federal elections in 2021.  Ms. Solomon earned a degree in History and Literature from Harvard University in 2008. She then moved to Damascus on an Arabic fellowship before pivoting to journalism. She speaks Arabic, German, and Spanish. She also once was a competitive horse rider and loves to bake cakes.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Dr. Anna Sauerbrey, Foreign Editor for the weekly DIE ZEIT and 2018 ACG Kellen Fellow.Previously, Dr. Sauerbrey headed the opinion pages of Der Tagesspiegel and Tagesspiegel Causa, the paper’s online magazine. She studied History, Political Science, and Journalism in Mainz and Bordeaux. From 2005 to 2009, she was a research assistant in the History Department at the University of Mainz. She worked as an intern at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and ZDF, among others, and as a freelancer for the Mainzer Rhein-Zeitung for several years. In 2009, Dr. Sauerbrey completed a traineeship at Der Tagesspiegel and became a staff member of its opinion/editorial department. In 2013, she was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow at the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2018, she was awarded an Anna-Marie and Stephen M. Kellen Fellowship for Berlin-based journalists by the ACG to research religion’s role in American politics.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Miriam Hollstein, Chief Reporter for Stern in Berlin and 2008 ACG McCloy Fellow.Prior to this position, Ms. Hollstein served as the Chief Reporter for t-online in Berlin from February 2022 until September 2023 and the Chief Political Reporter for FUNKE Zentralredaktion from November 2020 to December 2021. She wrote for the Berliner Zeitung while still a student and worked as an editor for Internationale Politik. She worked as a foreign reporter for the Welt am Sonntag and, from 2006 to 2014, was a WELT-Gruppe’s domestic policy editor and reporter. From 2015 to 2020, she worked for the Bild am Sonntag, first as a domestic policy and then from 2018 as chief reporter of politics. Her reporting brought her into regular contact with the office of the German Chancellor. She has been in her role at Stern since September 2023. In 2009, she published the first graphic biography of Angela Merkel, entitled “Miss Tschörmanie,” together with illustrator Heiko Sakurai. She appears regularly on the German news program “Phoenix,” where she speaks on political and societal issues. She regularly travels internationally for reporting assignments. In addition, she was a 2005 Marshall Memorial Fellow, a 2008 ACG McCloy Fellow, and was recognized in 2015 by the DEFA Stiftung (German Film Corporation Foundation) for her contribution to preserving German film heritage.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Stefan Kornelius, Political Editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Previously, Mr. Kornelius served as Foreign Editor of the paper for nearly 20 years. In his reporting career, he has covered Germany’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl, and defense issues in Europe. He served as Berlin Bureau Chief, and from 1996 to 1999 he was the paper’s Washington correspondent. Prior to that, he was a correspondent in Bonn. His biography of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, entitled Angela Merkel, the Chancellor and her World, has been translated into 13 languages. Mr. Kornelius is a graduate of the Henri-Nannen-Journalistenschule and studied in Bonn and at the London School of Economics.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Stephan Detjen, Chief Correspondent for Deutschlandradio and Director of the Berlin Studio.Previously, Mr. Detjen worked as Deutschlandfunk’s Editor-in-Chief in Cologne and as a legal policy correspondent in Karlsruhe, among other positions. Mr. Detjen is a member of the board of the Bundespressekonferenz and was a member of the foundation board for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade from 2013 to 2018. He studied Law and History in Munich, Aix-en-Provence, and Speyer.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Opinion Writer for Tagesspiegel.From late 2000 to 2005, Mr. Lehming was the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the Tagesspiegel in 1991 as foreign policy editor — focusing on security policy, transatlantic relations, and the Middle East. From 1989 to 1991, he worked as a personal assistant and speechwriter for former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Mr. Lehming studied philosophy, German literature, and European history in Hamburg.

On this week's Special Edition of the regular Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by CORRECTIV Editor-in-Chief Justus von Daniels. In late November, senior representatives from Germany's Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gathered for a secret meeting with neo-Nazis and other like-minded individuals to discuss Germany's migration policy and who should count as being German. They developed a plan to expel millions of people from Germany. Critics have compared the meeting to the Wannsee Conference.The story broke on January 10, when journalists from CORRECTIV released a report on the meeting and its attendees. Since then, many German cities have seen anti-fascist protests. Government leaders – including the Chancellor – have spoken out against the meeting, and some have called for the expulsion of the AfD from the Bundestag. Dr. Justus von Daniels (2016 Kellen Fellow) serves as Editor-in-Chief for the news organization CORRECTIV and was a member of the investigative team behind the story. In 2015, he joined CORRECTIV as an investigative reporter. He has contributed to multiple award-winning projects. In 2015 and 2016, he was the only journalist who sat in front of the door during secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. He would get kicked out of the building only to come back again, until finally, the negotiators talked to him. Since 2019, he has been Editor-in-Chief of CORRECTIV, alongside Olaya Argüeso. In addition to investigating the secret channels of lobbyists and illegal party donations, he developed the idea of citizen research, which led to the development of the crowdsourcing tool CrowdNewsroom. Dr. von Daniels studied law and completed a legal traineeship. He received the Humboldt Prize for his dissertation about Jewish Law at Humboldt University in Berlin. He spent two years as a postdoc at Princeton University and in New York as a German research community scholar. In 2016, he was awarded a Kellen Fellowship by the American Council on Germany.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Matthew Karnitschnig, Chief Europe Correspondent for Politico.Mr. Karnitschnig joined the publication in 2015 from the Wall Street Journal, where he spent 15 years in a variety of positions as a reporter and editor in the U.S. and Europe. In a career spanning two decades, Mr. Karnitschnig has been on the front lines of some of the defining political and economic stories of our time. In 2008, he covered the fall of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis that ensued. He was part of a team of Journal reporters that won a Gerald Loeb award and was named a Pulitzer finalist for National Reporting in 2009. He subsequently spearheaded the WSJ’s coverage of the eurozone debt crisis as the paper’s Germany bureau chief and European economics editor. He led the team that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 2011 and won an Overseas Press Club award in 2012. Mr. Karnitschnig previously worked as a journalist for BusinessWeek, Reuters, and Bloomberg. The son of an Austrian father and an American mother, he grew up in Arizona, where he got his start reporting as a stringer for the Phoenix Gazette during high school.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Matthias Deiß, Deputy Director of ARD’s Hauptstadtstudio in Berlin and deputy editor-in-chief of television.From 2018 to 2021, he served as the editorial director for ARD’s political magazine Kontraste. Before this, he worked from 2012 to 2017 as a TV correspondent with ARD. He studied communications and political science at the University of Munich and at the German School of Journalism in Munich. In 2008, he participated in the ACG's Young Leaders Conference.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Melanie Amann, Co-Editor-in-Chief for Der Spiegel. She is a German journalist and lawyer and heads Der Spiegel's Berlin office. She was born in Bonn and raised in Siegburg. She studied law at the University of Trier, Aix-Marseille III, and at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by James Angelos. Mr. Angelos is a journalist based in Berlin and serves as Politico’s Germany editor. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. Prior to reporting from Europe, he wrote for the New York Times City section.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Anja Wehler-Schöck, Head of International Politics at der Tagesspiegel since August 2022. Prior to that, she worked as editor-in-chief of the IPG Journal, a debate platform for issues of international and European politics. She previously worked as a social affairs officer at the German Embassy in Washington and headed the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's office for Jordan and Iraq in Amman from 2012 to 2017.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Berlin Correspondent for Die Zeit, Petra Pinzler (2010 Kellen Fellow).Ms. Pinzler writes on the EU and foreign policy as well as economic affairs and development. She has been with Die Zeit since 1994, first as an economics editor based in Hamburg, then from 1998 to 2002 as a US correspondent based in Washington, DC. In 2001, she was a Bucerius Fellow at the de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. From 2002 to 2007, she was the paper’s European Correspondent based in Brussels. She studied economics and politics at the University of Cologne and journalism at the Cologne Journalism School. Ms. Pinzler has won a number of awards for her work including the Robert Bosch Foundation Journalism Prize in 1999, the Karl Klasen Prize in 2003, and the Journalism Prize for Development Policy in 2006. In 2010, she was awarded a Kellen Fellowship from the American Council on Germany.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by the Germany correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Bojan Pancevski. As the WSJ's Germany correspondent, he covers all aspects of Europe’s largest economy and its influence on the rest of the continent and beyond. He also covers Europe at large across major themes. Before joining the WSJ, he covered Europe for the Times and the Sunday Times of London from Brussels and Vienna, focusing on a broad range of subjects including the war in eastern Ukraine, the 2015 migration crisis, the rise of the Islamic State in Europe, Russian meddling in Europe and Britain’s departure from the European Union.

On this week's Special Edition of the regular Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by former German Ambassador to Poland Rolf Nikel.Ambassador Rolf Nikel has served as the Vice President of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) since September 2020, when he was elected to this office by DGAP’s general assembly. Before joining DGAP, Amb. Nikel spent more than 40 years working for the German Foreign Office. From July 2014 until the end of June 2020, he was Germany’s ambassador to Poland. From 2011 to 2014, he was the Federal Government Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control. Prior to that, he served in the Federal Chancellery – as deputy head of its foreign and security policy division (2006 to 2011) and head of its United Nations and Global Issues Group (2005 to 2006). During his diplomatic career, he also worked at German embassies in Moscow, Nairobi, Paris, and Washington, DC, where he headed the political department. Rolf Nikel studied political science, economics, and international law in Frankfurt; Durham, North Carolina; and Paris. He was also a fellow at Harvard University.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by journalist Alfred Schmit.Alfred Schmit works as a journalist in Berlin. Since December 2018, he has been a radio correspondent in ARD’s capital studio in Berlin. Previously, he worked as London correspondent for ARD radio, for SWR Radio in the Economics department in Stuttgart and as newswriter for the German national TV news, tagesschau, in Hamburg. Mr. Schmit’s topics primarily include economics, finance, and consumer issues. Previously, the radio journalist worked at DEUTSCHE WELLE as presenter for the English-language section and a correspondent’s deputy in Bonn. A political scientist by training, he graduated from the Universität Heidelberg and completed journalism training at the Institute for the Promotion of Young Journalists in Munich (ifp). Mr. Schmit also spent a year studying in the United States at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Michael Watzke, Bavarian Correspondent for Deutschlandradio. Michael Watzke has been the Bavarian Correspondent for Deutschlandradio since 2010. He first embarked on a career in journalism by working on the school paper (Die Waage) in Remscheid and later worked as a free-lancer for the Rheinischen Post and at WDR’s regional studio in Wuppertal. He studied Journalism at the German Journalist School in Munich and Political Science and Communications at the LMU Munich and at American University in Washington DC. After completing his studies, Mr. Watzke worked as a journalist, editor, and moderator and, from 2002 until 2010, as Lead Reporter for Antenne Bayern. He was awarded an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship in 2014 and worked at WNYC.