Kaffeepause: What's Abuzz in Berlin?

On this week's Special Edition of Kaffeepause, we head to Washington D.C., where Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Gregor Schwung, U.S. Correspondent for Die Welt.Gregor Schwung is the U.S. correspondent for WELT. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics in Heidelberg before moving to Berlin to pursue a master’s degree in North American Studies. From 2017 to 2020, he produced the podcast Politik mit Schwung and, in 2020, worked as a freelance reporter for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. From 2021 to 2022, he completed his journalism training at the FreeTech Axel Springer Academy of Journalism and Technology. In 2023, he joined the foreign policy department at WELT and WELT AM SONNTAG as an editor. He subsequently reported from Washington as a U.S. correspondent in fall 2024 and the first half of 2025, before serving as a foreign policy correspondent in Berlin from July 2025 to June 2026. Since July 2026, he has been back in Washington as WELT’s U.S. correspondent.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Jim Tankersley, Berlin Bureau Chief for The New York Times.Jim Tankers oversees the coverage of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and writes about broader trends across Europe. That includes stories about foreign policy, society, politics, migration, energy, and more. Previously, he covered economic and tax policy for the Times. In more than a decade covering politics and economics in Washington, he has written extensively about the stagnation of the American middle class and the decline of economic opportunity in wide swaths of the country. Mr. Tankersley was previously policy and politics editor at Vox and before that, an economics reporter for The Washington Post. He covered the 2008 presidential campaign for The Chicago Tribune and began his career working for The Oregonian, The Rocky Mountain News, and The Toledo Blade. He and a Blade colleague won the 2007 Livingston Award for Young Journalists for a series of stories exploring how and why the Ohio economy declined so dramatically over a generation. He was part of a Blade team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for public service. In 2018, he and two Times colleagues won the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing award for economics journalism, for a series on the effects of President Trump's trade policies on American companies and workers.A native of McMinnville, Ore., Mr. Tankersley is a Stanford graduate and a former editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Vladimir Balzer, Moderator at Deutschlandradio.Vladimir Balzer is an award-winning radio journalist and moderator at Deutschlandradio. He grew up in Leipzig and studied in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily program “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany. In 2023, he started as a correspondent at Deutschlandradio’s main studio in Berlin. He is known as a commentator for German Television, such as ZDF. He also regularly reports for his broadcaster from the United States.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Marc Felix Serrao, Global Reporter for Axel Springer.Marc Felix Serrao is a correspondent with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. Based in Berlin, he focuses on German politics and the pressures reshaping liberal democracy in Europe. Marc previously worked at Süddeutsche Zeitung (2007–2016) and served as business editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (2016–2017). He later led the Berlin bureau of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung before becoming Editor-in-Chief of NZZ Germany (2021–2025). He studied political science at Freie Universität Berlin, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University, and completed an Executive MBA at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and the Kellogg School of Management.

On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Luise Evers, Geopolitical Journalist for the Berliner Zeitung and Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.Luise Evers covers geopolitics for the Berliner Zeitung and the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Her reporting focuses on international security, the Middle East, and technology. She studied Communication in Berlin and earned her Master’s Degree in Security and Diplomacy from Tel Aviv University. She has also spent time working abroad, including in Amsterdam, Athens, and New York. She learned the craft of journalism at the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa). Before turning to journalism, Ms. Evers worked at the Bundeswehr’s Cyber Innovation Hub and as a staffer in the Bundestag. She lives in Berlin.