Kaffeepause: What's Abuzz in Berlin?: Recent Episodes
American Council on Germany
Join the American Council on Germany for its “Kaffeepause: What’s Abuzz in Berlin?” a regular podcast that takes stock of current events in Germany. Each week, we are joined by a journalist based in Germany to talk about the stories behind the headlines.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol sits down with Annett Meiritz.
Annett Meiritz is an International Correspondent for Handelsblatt in the Berlin office. Previously, she served as the U.S. Correspondent until October 2025. She has worked as Parliamentary Correspondent for Germany’s leading news portal Spiegel Online, based in Berlin. She holds a B.A. degree in Modern History and Media Science and was trained as a journalist at the Berlin Journalism School. She is the co-author of two books on the U.S. — “Guns ‘n Rosé: Conservative Women Conquer the U.S.” (2022) and “The Alliance of the New Right: Make Europe Great Again?” (2025).
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Deutschlandradio Journalist Nadine Lindner.
Nadine Lindner has been a Correspondent in the Berlin studio of “Deutschlandradio” since early 2016. Among other things, Ms. Lindner is responsible for the news coverage of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the German parliament. Ms. Lindner studied Political Science at Leipzig University in Saxony and discovered her enthusiasm for radio at the training station “mephisto 97.6.” After graduating from university, she worked as a freelance journalist for “MDR sputnik” and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well as Deutschlandradio. She completed her journalistic training at Deutschlandradio in Berlin. In 2013, Ms. Lindner moved back to Saxony as a regional correspondent for Deutschlandradio, where she covered the early evolution of the AfD and the anti-asylum movement Pegida. In 2024, she received the prize from the Bundespressekonferenz, the association of capital studio journalists, for her reporting about the AfD and Eastern Germany.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Vladimir Balzer, Moderator at Deutschlandradio.
Vladimir Balzer is an award-winning journalist who 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 Deutschlandfunk’s capital city studio in Berlin. He is known as a commentator for German television, such as ZDF. He also regularly reports for his broadcaster from the U.S.
On this week's 100th Episode of the Kaffeepause podcast, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Brent Goff, Chief Anchor at DW News.
Brent Goff is the Chief Anchor at DW News and Host of “The Day with Brent Goff.” He joined DW in 2000 and has become one of the most recognized on-air personalities. Prior to joining DW, Brent worked as a producer for CNN. He was both a Fulbright Scholar and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Germany. Brent grew up in rural North Carolina, and his first job in TV journalism was at a small TV station in Missouri. He holds an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Paul-Anton Krüger, Editor at SPIEGEL’s capital city office.
Mr. Krüger was the Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung from September 2021 to December 2024. He previously 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 as 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 Jim Tankersley, Berlin Bureau Chief of The New York Times.
Mr.Tankersley 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 Special Edition of the Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by journalists Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger and Anja Wehler-Schöck.
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger was the Foreign Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His writings deal especially with the United States, European, transatlantic, and international politics. He holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science, Economics, and American Studies from Frankfurt University. He joined the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading national daily, in 1986, and served in various capacities, as European, International, and Editorial Page Editor. Mr. Frankenberger was a Member of the Trilateral Commission and of the Scientific Council of the Institute for European Politics in Berlin. He also served on the Advisory Board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin and is associated with several organizations that deal with the transatlantic relationship.
Anja Wehler-Schöck is the International Editor of the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel and a member of its Editorial Board. In 2022, she founded the paper’s international affairs desk, which she subsequently headed until the end of 2024. Prior to that, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IPG Journal, a debate platform on 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. Ms. Wehler-Schöck is a frequent commentator on international affairs, European politics, transatlantic relations, and security policy. From 2005 to 2007, she served as Adjunct Lecturer at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Sciences Po in Paris, France and the Free University of Berlin
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Dr. Melanie Amann, Member of the Editorial Team, DER SPIEGEL.
Dr. Melanie Amann studied Law in Trier, Aix-en-Provence, and Berlin, and received her doctorate from the LMU Munich. From 2003 to 2004, she spent a year at the German School of Journalism in Munich. After working as an editor at the Financial Times Deutschland, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, she moved to SPIEGEL in Berlin in 2013. From February 2019 until September 2025, she headed SPIEGEL’s capital city bureau, together with Sebastian Fischer, Christoph Hickmann, and Martin Knobbe. She was a member of the editorial board from May 2021 until September 2025.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Marc Felix Serrao, Global Report for Axel Springer.
Marc Felix Serrao joined Axel Springer as a Global Reporter in January 2026. Prior to that, he was the Editor-in-Chief Head for the Neue Züricher Zeitung from 2021 until 2025 and Head of the Berlin office from July 2017 until January 2021. After military service, he studied political science in Berlin. In 2004/05, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in 2006. Mr. Serrao worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2007 to 2016 – first as a trainee, then as deputy head of the society and style department. In 2015, he began a part-time Executive MBA at the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) and the Kellogg School of Management. From 2016 to 2017, he served as the Business editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Dr. Anna Sauerbrey, Foreign Editor at Die Zeit.
Dr. Anna Sauerbrey is the Foreign Editor at the German largest weekly newspaper, Die Zeit. Before assuming this position, she was Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Der Tagesspiegel, a daily newspaper based in Berlin. She has written about German politics in The New York Times and comments on German and international politics on public German radio and television programs. She has also appeared on German television and on CNN and the BBC world service. She is the author of Machtwechsel. Wie eine neue Politikergeneration das Land verändert (Rowohlt Berlin, 2022) a book on the generation of German policymakers succeeding Angela Merkel. Dr. Sauerbrey received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Mainz in 2009. She has also studied Political Science and Journalism. She was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow with the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2013 and has extensively written about transatlantic relations and U.S. domestic politics since. She was a ACG Kellen Fellow in 2018.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Aaron Wiener, Berlin Bureau Chief for the Washington Post.
Aaron Wiener is The Washington Post's Berlin Bureau Chief, covering Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary, as well as broader news out of Europe. He was previously a Housing Reporter and the editor of Retropolis, The Post's history section. Earlier, he was a Senior Editor at Mother Jones, a reporter at Washington City Paper, a Berlin correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and the editor of the Washington Independent. He has been the recipient of several awards, including a 2011 Arthur F Burns Prize for reporting, a 2013 Society of Professional Journalists Dateline Award for news reporting, 20214 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for best blog, 2015 Street Sense Award for commentary, 2015 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for beat reporting, and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for illustrated reporting in 2024.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Columnist for Tagesspiegel.
From late 2000 to 2005, he 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 Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Daniel Brössler, Senior Editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Berlin Bureau.
Daniel Brössler covers the Chancellery and the Foreign Office. Mr. Brössler studied journalism in Munich and Washington and is a graduate of the German School of Journalism. In 1993, he reported for the German Press Agency from Bratislava. In 1996, he took over as head of the dpa office in Warsaw, before moving to the foreign affairs editorial department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich in 1999. There, he was responsible for reporting from Central and Eastern Europe. This was followed by stints as a correspondent in Moscow, Berlin, and Brussels. In 2023, he was awarded the Theodor Wolff Prize.
On this Special Edition of the Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Steven Erlanger, Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in Europe for The New York Times. He is based in Berlin.
In over 40 years of career as a journalist, he has covered news in over 120 countries, from the war in Kosovo to Brexit. In 2002, Mr. Erlanger shared the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on his work on Al Qaeda and again received the prize in 2017 for a series on Russia.
Between 1975 and 1983, he was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. Beginning in 1976, he also worked as an Editor and Correspondent at the Boston Globe. From 1983 through 1987, he was the Globe’s European Correspondent in London. Beginning in 1988, he served as Bureau Chief for the New York Times in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, and Bangkok.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Erlanger has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Robert Livingston Award for international reporting for a series of articles about Eastern Europe in 1981, the German Marshall Fund’s Peter Weitz Prize for excellence and originality in reporting and analyzing European and transatlantic affairs in 2000, and the Karl Klasen Journalists Prize for coverage of Germany and Europe and promoting trans-Atlantic understanding in 2017.
Mr. Erlanger’s writing has been featured in many publications such as The Economist, The Spectator, The New Statesman, The New Republic, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Miriam Hollstein, ACG Fellowship alumna and Chief Political Reporter for Stern.
Before this, she was the Chief Reporter from January 2022 to September 23 at T-Online in Berlin. Prior to this position, she served as 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 correspondent for Welt am Sonntag, and from 2006-2014 was a WELT-Gruppe’s domestic policy editor and reporter. From 2015 to 2020, she worked for 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.
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 Nette Nöstlinger, Politics Reporter for Politico Europe.
In Berlin, where she keeps an eye on all things relevant to an international audience interested in the EU’s biggest economy. Her coverage has ranged from the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to Germany’s fiscal and military U-turn in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was trained at Reuters with stints in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Brussels. She grew up in Antwerp with a Belgian father and an Austrian mother.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Vladimir Balzer, an award-winning journalist and moderator at Deutschlandfunk.
Vladimir Balzer 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 the Capital Studios of Deutschlandfunk in Berlin. He is known as a commentator for German Television, such as ZDF. He also regularly reports for his broadcaster from the U.S.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Paul-Anton Krüger.
He has been an Editor at SPIEGEL’s capital city office since January 2025. He was the Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung from September 2021 to December 2024. He previously 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 as 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 Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Anja Wehler-Schöck, International Editor at Der Tagesspiegel.
She has been 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 on 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 Julian Heissler, International Correspondent of WirtschaftsWoche.
Before returning to Berlin, he reported from 2018 to 2025 from Washington, DC, as the magazine’s US Correspondent. Prior to this, he spent several years in Berlin writing about German federal politics for various media outlets. He studied Communication Studies, Political Science, and Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin and completed the Master’s program in Journalism at the Hamburg Media School. He also reported from various countries including China, Israel, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Finland. His book Dream and Nightmare: America and the Many Faces of Freedom was published in October 2023, and his most recent book Amerikas Oligarchen was published in October 2025.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Matthias Deiß, Deputy Director of ARD’s Capital City Studio in Berlin and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of television.
In this capacity, he is a regular moderator of Bericht aus Berlin (Report from Berlin). 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. Mr. Deiß has received numerous awards — including the Media Prize of the German Bundestag, the “Prix Europa,” and was named CNN’s Journalist of the Year in 2013. He studied Journalism 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 Malte Lehming, Opinion Writer for Tagesspiegel.
Malte Lehming works as a writer for the Tagesspiegel, where he heads the opinion page. From late 2000 to 2005, he 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 Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Vladimir Balzer, Award Winning Journalist and Moderator for Deutschlandradio.
Mr. Balzer 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 Clay Risen, a Reporter and Editor at The New York Times.
Mr. Risen is also the author of Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. He reported for the Times from Berlin for the month of May. Mr. Risen has been at The New York Times since 2010. Before writing obituaries, he was a Senior Editor on the 2020 politics team, and before that an Editor on the Opinion desk, most recently as the deputy Op-Ed editor. Before joining the Times, he worked at The New Republic and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He has written eight books, some about U.S. history, some about whiskey. They include American Rye and The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century. He holds a degree in International Relations from Georgetown University and a Master’s in Social Science from the University of Chicago.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Gordon Repinski, Executive Editor for Politico in Germany.
Mr.Repinski joins from The Pioneer, where he served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief responsible for the newsletter and podcast “Hauptstadt – DAS Briefing”. Before that, he worked as deputy chief editor and head of the politics department at the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland and was a correspondent for Der Spiegel in Berlin and Washington D.C. He embarked on his journalistic career after training at the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich, starting at the national newspaper taz. Mr. Repinski was a recipient of the Arthur F. Burns Award for transatlantic reporting in 2011. In his new role, he will report to Jamil Anderlini, Editor-in-Chief of POLITICO in Europe.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Anja Wehler-Schöck, International Editor of the German newspaper Tagesspiegel and member of its Editorial Board.
In 2022, she founded the paper’s international affairs desk, which she subsequently headed until the end of 2024. Prior to that, she served as editor-in-chief of IPG Journal, a debate forum for international and European policy. Previously, she worked as Political Counselor at the German Embassy in Washington, DC and headed the Amman office of the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) as Country Director for Jordan and Iraq. She has published extensively and is a frequent commentator on international affairs, European politics, transatlantic relations and security policy. From 2005 to 2007, she served as Adjunct Lecturer at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Sciences Po in Paris, France and the Free University of Berlin.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Sabine Rennefanz, award-winning journalist, author, and columnist for DER SPIEGEL.
Ms. Rennefanz has written extensively about the fall of the wall, the transformation and the challenges of the unified Germany. Her book „Eisenkinder. Die stille Wut der Wendegeneration“ — a coming-of-age-memoir about the 1989/90 change — was a bestseller in 2013 and is going to be republished next year. She was born in 1974 close to the Polish border.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Dr. Melanie Amann, Member of the Editorial Team at SPIEGEL.
She studied Law in Trier, Aix-en-Provence, and Berlin, and received her doctorate from the LMU Munich. From 2003 to 2004, she spent a year at the German School of Journalism in Munich. After working as an editor at the Financial Times Deutschland, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, she moved to SPIEGEL in Berlin in 2013. From February 2019 until September 2025, she headed SPIEGEL's capital city bureau, together with Sebastian Fischer, Christoph Hickmann and Martin Knobbe. She was a member of the editorial board from May 2021 until September 2025.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Marc Felix Serrao, Editor-in-Chief in Germany for the Neue Züricher Zeitung.
Marc Felix Serrao has been the Head of the Berlin office since July 2017 and Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Züricher Zeitung in Germany since 2021. After military service, he studied political science in Berlin. In 2004/05, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in 2006.
Mr. Serrao worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2007 to 2016 – first as a trainee, then as deputy head of the society and style department. In 2015, he began a part-time Executive MBA at the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) and the Kellogg School of Management. From 2016 to 2017, he served as the Business editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Nette Nöstlinger, Political Reporter for Politico Europe.
Nette Nöstlinger is a Politics Reporter for Politico Europe in Berlin, where she keeps an eye on all things relevant to an international audience interested in the EU’s biggest economy. Her coverage has ranged from the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to Germany’s fiscal and military U-turn in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was trained at Reuters with stints in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Brussels. She grew up in Antwerp with a Belgian father and an Austrian mother.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by ACG Fellowship alumna Miriam Hollstein, Chief Political Reporter for Stern.
Miriam Hollstein serves as the Chief Political Reporter for Stern. Before this, she was the Chief Report from January 2022 to Septepmber 23 atT-Online in Berlin. Prior to this position, she served as 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 2006-2014 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. Since March 2020, she has worked as a freelance writer and moderator.
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 Anja Wehler-Schöck, International Editor for Der Tagesspiegel.
Anja Wehler-Schöck joined the Editorial Board of Der Tagesspiegel as the International Editor in January 2025. She has been 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 Paul-Anton Krüger, Editor for Der Spiegel.
Paul-Anton Krüger has been an Editor at SPIEGEL’s capital city office since January 2025. He was the Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung from September 2021 to December 2024. He previously 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 as 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 Deutsche Welle's Washington Bureau Chief, Ines Pohl.
Ines Pohl served as the Editor in Chief of Deutsche Welle from 2017-2020. During her three-year tenure, she focused on increasing DW’s social media presence and the exclusive content of all 30 language services. She joined DW in 2015 as a correspondent in the Washington Bureau. As a journalist, she is particularly interested in questions of democratic legitimacy and transition and is passionate about human rights and the role of democratic structures in developing countries. Ms. Pohl strongly advocates using social media to enhance the connection between audiences and journalists in the digital age.
She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2005, where she spent the year focused on immigration and the impact of religion and leadership. She currently serves on the board of trustees for Reporters without Borders and Youth Against AIDS. From 2009-2015, Ms. Pohl was the editor-in-chief of Die Tageszeitung "taz," a national daily German newspaper, where she launched a new weekend edition and restructured www.taz.de, now one of Germany’s popular news sites.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Nette Nöstlinger, Political Reporter for Politico Europe.
Nette Nöstlinger is a Politics Reporter for Politico Europe in Berlin, where she keeps an eye on all things relevant to an international audience interested in the EU’s biggest economy. Her coverage has ranged from the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to Germany’s fiscal and military U-turn in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was trained at Reuters with stints in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Brussels. She grew up in Antwerp with a Belgian father and an Austrian mother.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Columnist 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 Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Stephan Detjen, Chief Correspondent for Deutschlandradio and the head of the station’s capital city studio in Berlin.
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 former Foreign Editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Nadine Lindner, Correspondent with Deutschlandradio.
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger was the Foreign Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His writings deal especially with the United States, European, transatlantic, and international politics. He holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science, Economics, and American Studies from Frankfurt University. He joined the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading national daily, in 1986, and served in various capacities, as European, International, and Editorial Page Editor. Mr. Frankenberger was a Member of the Trilateral Commission and of the Scientific Council of the Institute for European Politics in Berlin. He also served on the Advisory Board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin and is associated with several organizations that deal with the transatlantic relationship.
Nadine Lindner has been a Correspondent in the Berlin studio of “Deutschlandradio” since early 2016 and is responsible, among other things, for covering the AfD and transport policy. Before that, she was a Correspondent in the Free State of Saxony for two and a half years and followed the rise of Pegida there. She studied Political Science, Journalism, and African Studies in Leipzig and discovered her enthusiasm for radio there at the training station “mephisto 97.6.” After graduating from university, she worked as a freelance journalist for “MDR sputnik” and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well as Deutschlandradio.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by ACG Fellowship alumna Miriam Hollstein, Chief Political Reporter for Stern.
Before this, she was the Chief Reporter from January 2022 to Septepmber 23 at T-Online in Berlin. Prior to this position, she served as 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 2006-2014 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. Since March 2020, she has worked as a freelance writer and moderator.
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 award-winning journalist and ACG fellow Vladimir Balzer.
Vladimir Balzer is a moderator at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. He grew up in Leipzig and studied German, art history, and journalism in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He studied abroad in Italy and the United States. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily programs “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” and “Studio 9” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Marc Felix Serrao, Editor-in-Chief in Germany for the Neue Züricher Zeitung.
Marc Felix Serrao has been the Head of the Berlin office since July 2017 and Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Züricher Zeitung in Germany since 2021. After military service, he studied political science in Berlin. In 2004/05, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in 2006.
Mr. Serrao worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2007 to 2016 – first as a trainee, then as deputy head of the society and style department. In 2015, he began a part-time Executive MBA at the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) and the Kellogg School of Management. From 2016 to 2017, he served as the Business editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Paul-Anton Krüger, Editor for Der Spiegel.
Mr. Krüger has been an Editor at SPIEGEL's capital city office since January 2025. He was the Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung from September 2021 to December 2024. He previously 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 as 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 Special Edition of the Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, former Foreign Editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Nadine Lindner, Correspondent with Deutschlandradio.
Mr. Frankenberger's writings deal especially with the United States, European, transatlantic, and international politics. He holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science, Economics, and American Studies from Frankfurt University. He joined the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading national daily, in 1986, and served in various capacities, as European, International, and Editorial Page Editor. Mr. Frankenberger was a Member of the Trilateral Commission and of the Scientific Council of the Institute for European Politics in Berlin. He also served on the Advisory Board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy in Berlin and is associated with several organizations that deal with the transatlantic relationship.
Ms. Lindner has been a Correspondent in the Berlin studio of "Deutschlandradio" since early 2016 and is responsible, among other things, for covering the AfD and transport policy. Before that, she was a Correspondent in the Free State of Saxony for two and a half years and followed the rise of Pegida there. She studied Political Science, Journalism, and African Studies in Leipzig and discovered her enthusiasm for radio there at the training station "mephisto 97.6." After graduating from university, she worked as a freelance journalist for "MDR sputnik" and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well as Deutschlandradio.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by 2018 Kellen Fellow Dr. Anna Sauerbrey, Foreign Editor for Die Zeit.
Before assuming this position, Dr. Sauerbrey was Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Der Tagesspiegel, a daily newspaper based in Berlin. She has written about German politics in The New York Times and comments on German and international politics on public German radio and television programs. She has also appeared on CNN and the BBC world service. She is the author of Machtwechsel. Wie eine neue Politikergeneration das Land verändert (Rowohlt Berlin, 2022) a book on the generation of German policymakers succeeding Angela Merkel.
Dr. Sauerbrey received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Mainz in 2009. She has also studied Political Science and Journalism. She was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow with the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2013 and has extensively written about transatlantic relations and U.S. domestic politics since. In 2018, she was awarded an Anna-Maria and Stephen M. Kellen Fellowship for Berlin-based Journalists by the American Council on Germany.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Political Editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius.
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 award-winning journalist and ACG fellow Vladimir Balzer.
Vladimir Balzer is a moderator at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. He grew up in Leipzig and studied German, art history, and journalism in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He studied abroad in Italy and the United States. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily programs “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” and “Studio 9” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Anja Wehler-Schöck, International Editor for Der Tagesspiegel.
She has been 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 Special Edition of the regular Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Cameron Abadi, deputy editor at Foreign Policy, and Rüdiger Lentz, senior political advisor for the firm of Rud Pedersen. The two experts discussed the first three years of the Ampelkoalition and the outlook for Germany’s snap election in February.
Cameron Abadi is a deputy editor at Foreign Policy and co-host of FP’s Ones and Tooze podcast. He previously worked at the New Republic and Foreign Affairs and as a correspondent in Germany and Iran. His writing has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and Der Spiegel. He lives with his family in Berlin.
Rüdiger Lentz is currently working as a senior political advisor for the Nordic public affairs firm of Rud Pedersen in Berlin. Before that, he was the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Germany from 2013 to 2020. From 2009 until 2013, he served as the Executive Director of the German American Heritage Foundation and Museum in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he worked as a TV correspondent and magazine journalist for Der Spiegel, ARD Television, Rias Berlin, and Deutsche Welle for over three decades. During his tenure as Bureau Chief for Deutsche Welle in Washington, D.C., he was a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, the School of Foreign Service in Washington, and a regular guest on BBC, CNN, and C-Span. Mr. Lentz has been a long-time member of the Atlantik-Brücke and is a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a founding member of the German American Business Council (GABC) in Washington, D.C., and the Chairman of the Shepard Stone Foundation in Berlin.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by ACG Fellowship alumna Miriam Hollstein, Chief Political Reporter for Stern.
Before this, Ms. Hollstein was the Chief Report from January 2022 to Septepmber 23 at T-Online in Berlin. Prior to this position, she served as 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 2006-2014 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. Since March 2020, she has worked as a freelance writer and moderator.
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 Melissa Eddy, Berlin Correspondent for the The New York Times. Ms. Eddy spoke in her own personal compacity.
Melissa Eddy is a correspondent based in Berlin who covers German politics, social issues, and culture for The New York Times. Her most recent work has delved into the challenges of integrating one million refugees, the spate of Islamist terror attacks, and the legacy of a trove of Nazi-looted art.She has covered Germany’s green energy transformation and Chancellor Angela Merkel since she entered office in 2005. A Minnesota native fluent in German and French, she came to Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 1996. Before joining The International Herald Tribune, now the international edition of The New York Times, in 2015, she was a correspondent for The Associated Press in Frankfurt, Vienna, and the Balkans
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Opinion Writer for Tagesspiegel.
Malte Lehming works as a writer for the Tagesspiegel, where he heads the opinion page. From late 2000 to 2005, he 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 Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Marc Felix Serrao, Editor-in-Chief in Germany for the Neue Züricher Zeitung.
Mr. Serrao has been the Head of the Berlin office since July 2017 and Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Züricher Zeitung in Germany since 2021. After military service, he studied political science in Berlin. In 2004/05, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in 2006.
Mr. Serrao worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2007 to 2016 - first as a trainee, then as deputy head of the society and style department. In 2015, he began a part-time Executive MBA at the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) and the Kellogg School of Management. From 2016 to 2017, he served as the Business editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Stephan Detjen, Chief Correspondent for Deutschlandradio. He also heads the station's capital city studio in Berlin. Previously, he 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 50th episode of the Kaffeepause podcast, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by award-winning journalist and ACG fellow Vladimir Balzer.
Mr. Balzer is a moderator at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. He grew up in Leipzig and studied German, art history, and journalism in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He studied abroad in Italy and the United States. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily programs “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” and “Studio 9” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany.
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 Steven Erlanger, Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in Europe for The New York Times.
He is based in Berlin. As of earlier this year, he is based in Berlin. In over 40 years of career as a journalist, he has covered news in over 120 countries, from the war in Kosovo to Brexit. In 2002, Mr. Erlanger shared the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on his work on Al Qaeda and again received the prize in 2017 for a series on Russia.
Between 1975 and 1983, he was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. Beginning in 1976, he also worked as an Editor and Correspondent at the Boston Globe. From 1983 through 1987, he was the Globe’s European Correspondent in London. Beginning in 1988, he served as Bureau Chief for The New York Times in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, and Bangkok.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Erlanger has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Robert Livingston Award for international reporting for a series of articles about Eastern Europe in 1981, the German Marshall Fund’s Peter Weitz Prize for excellence and originality in reporting and analyzing European and transatlantic affairs in 2000, and the Karl Klasen Journalists Prize for coverage of Germany and Europe and promoting trans-Atlantic understanding in 2017.
Mr. Erlanger’s writing has been featured in many publications such as The Economist, The Spectator, The New Statesman, The New Republic, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
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.
Previously Mr. Krüger 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 Marc Felix Serrao, Head of the Berlin office and Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Züricher Zeitung in Germany.
After military service, he studied political science in Berlin. In 2004 and 2005, he was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in 2006 and became a freelance journalist for various media outlets. He worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2007 to 2016 - first as a trainee, then as Deputy Head of the Society and Style Department. In 2015 and 2016 he was a part-time student at the Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) and the Kellogg School of Management. In 2016 and 2017, he was the Business Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Daniela Vates, Chief Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland.
RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland is a Hannover-based corporate newsroom that provides journalistic content to more than 60 daily newspapers across the country – including Frankfurter Rundschau, Leipziger Volkszeitung, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, and Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung – and reaches nearly seven million readers daily. Before joining RND, she was a political correspondent for the Berliner Zeitung and Reuters. Ms. Vates has reported from Berlin since 1999 – and from the then German capital Bonn for a couple of years before that. She covers German domestic politics and foreign policy. She studied Journalism and Political Science in Munich and the United States and is a graduate of the Deutsche Journalistenschule (DJS) in Munich.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by award-winning journalist and moderator at Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Vladimir Balzer.
Mr. Balzer grew up in Leipzig and studied German, art history, and journalism in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He studied abroad in Italy and the United States. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily programs “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” and “Studio 9” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Dr. Daniel Friedrich Sturm.
Dr. Daniel Friedrich Sturm has been the head of the Tagesspiegel’s Berlin office since April 2023 and reports primarily on the German Chancellor and the SPD. Previously, he was an Editor for Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag and was their U.S. Correspondent from 2018 to 2023. Mr. Sturm began his journalistic career at the age of 15 as a local reporter for the Münstersche Zeitung. He studied political science at the University of Bonn. He was awarded the Willy Brandt Prize for his dissertation on the SPD and the unification of Germany in 1989/90. He has been observing and describing the Social Democrats for many years and has written several books about them.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by ACG Alumna Sonja Gillert, Head of Audio and Podcaster for Die Welt.
Sonja Gillert (2019 ACG Young Leader) is the head of audio for Welt. Previously, she served as an editor in the paper’s foreign policy department in Berlin. In 2015, she spent three months in China with the Media Ambassador China Germany Program. In 2017 she was selected to attend the two-month Arthur F. Burns Fellowship for Journalists to conduct research in the United States. In 2023, she completed an ACG Kellen Fellowship during which researched the influence of school boards and politics.
She attended the journalist training program at Axel Springer Academy in Berlin and formerly worked as a freelance journalist at three of Germany’s major radio stations. She studied in Bonn and St. Andrews, Scotland, and earned her MA in Political Science and German Literature in 2009 at Bonn University. She currently sits on the Board of the Freunde des American Council on Germany e.V.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Henrike Roßbach, Deputy Head and Correspondent for the Parliamentary Office for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Ms. Roßbach has been a correspondent in the parliamentary office since the beginning of 2018. She reports on the FDP and the federal government’s financial and tax policies, and (together with her colleagues) observes and describes the political landscape. Prior to this, she was an economics correspondent in the parliamentary editorial department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for eight years, as well as the economics editor of the FAZ in Frankfurt. She studied economics at the University of Cologne and is also a graduate of the Cologne School of Journalism. During her studies, she spent a year in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Bojan Pancevski, Germany Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
Bojan Pancevski is The Wall Street Journal’s Germany correspondent, covering 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 wide 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 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.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Brent Goff, Chief Anchor at DW News and Host of "The Day with Brent Goff."
Mr. Goff joined DW in 2000 and has become one of the most recognized on-air personalities. Prior to joining DW, Brent worked as a producer for CNN. He was both a Fulbright Scholar and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Germany. Brent grew up in rural North Carolina, and his first job in TV journalism was at a small TV station in Missouri. He holds an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
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.
Mr. 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 Steven Erlanger, Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, a position he assumed in 2017.
As of earlier this year, Mr. Erlanger is based in Berlin. In over 40 years of career as a journalist, he has covered news in over 120 countries, from the war in Kosovo to Brexit. In 2002, Mr. Erlanger shared the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on his work on Al Qaeda and again received the prize in 2017 for a series on Russia.
Between 1975 and 1983, he was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. Beginning in 1976, he also worked as an Editor and Correspondent at the Boston Globe. From 1983 through 1987, he was the Globe’s European Correspondent in London. Beginning in 1988, he served as Bureau Chief for the New York Times in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, and Bangkok.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Erlanger has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Robert Livingston Award for international reporting for a series of articles about Eastern Europe in 1981, the German Marshall Fund’s Peter Weitz Prize for excellence and originality in reporting and analyzing European and transatlantic affairs in 2000, and the Karl Klasen Journalists Prize for coverage of Germany and Europe and promoting trans-Atlantic understanding in 2017. Mr. Erlanger’s writing has been featured in many publications such as The Economist, The Spectator, The New Statesman, The New Republic, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Dr. Steven E. Sokol is joined by Simon Book, Editor for Der Spiegel and 2016 ACG Kellen Fellow.
Simon Book serves as an Editor in the Economics Department for Der Spiegel. He joined Spiegel in July 2020 and is responsible for the topics of trade and consumer goods. Before that, he was a reporter for Handelsblatt from 2013 to 2016 and WirtschaftsWoche from 2016 to 2020. He studied in Passau and was trained at the German School of Journalism. In 2016, he received a Kellen Fellowship from the American Council on Germany, during which time he researched transatlantic trade policy.
On this week’s Kaffeepause, Steve 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 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, Steve Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Opinion Writer for Tagesspiegel.
From late 2000 to 2005, he 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 Kaffeepause, Steve Sokol is joined by Loveday Morris, The Washington Post's Berlin bureau chief.
Before moving to Germany in 2019, Ms. Morris spent a decade reporting in the Middle East, most recently in Jerusalem. She previously spent three years in Iraq as Baghdad bureau chief covering the country's battles against the Islamic State, from Fallujah to Ramadi and Mosul. She started with The Post as a Beirut correspondent in 2013, largely covering Syria's civil war. Before that, she freelanced from the region for publications, including the United Kingdom's Independent newspaper. She began her career at Bloomberg News, covering financial news in London, before moving to the Middle East for the National newspaper in Abu Dhabi.
On this week’s Kaffeepause, Steve Sokol is joined by Melanie Amann, Co-Editor-in-Chief for Der Spiegel.
Ms. Amann is a German journalist and lawyer. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the leading German weekly newspaper, Der Spiegel, and heads the publication’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, Steve Sokol is joined by Bojan Pancevski, Germany Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Pancevski 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 significant 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 Kaffeepause, Steve Sokol is joined by journalist Alfred Schmit.
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, Steve Sokol is joined by Henrike Roßbach, Deputy Head and Correspondent for the Parliamentary Office for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
She has been a correspondent in the parliamentary office since the beginning of 2018. She reports on the FDP and the federal government’s financial and tax policies, and (together with her colleagues) observes and describes the political landscape. Prior to this, she was an economics correspondent in the parliamentary editorial department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for eight years, as well as the economics editor of the FAZ in Frankfurt. She studied economics at the University of Cologne and is also a graduate of the Cologne School of Journalism. During her studies, she spent a year in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO.
On this week’s Kaffeepause, Steve Sokol is joined by Karina Mößbauer, Chief Reporter of the Politics Department/Parliament Office for BILD.
Karina Mößbauer has been the Chief Reporter for the Politics Department and Parliament Office for BILD since 2015. In this role, she reports on the CDU/CSU and FDP and is also responsible for defense and security policy. In 2020, she produced and hosted BILD's flagship weekly political debate show, "Die richtigen Fragen" (The Right Questions). In 2017 and 2018, she developed, produced, and hosted BILD's "Fahrt ins Wochenende" (Driving into the Weekend), during which she would interview politicians on their last commute before the weekend. In 2017, she served as the U.S. Correspondent. She holds a master's degree in International Journalism from Westminster University in London and a bachelor's degree in Communication and Politics from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.
On this week’s Kaffeepause, Steve Sokol is joined by Miriam Hollstein, Chief Reporter for T-Online in Berlin and 2008 ACG McCloy Fellow.
Prior to this position, Ms. Hollstein served as 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 2006-2014 was a WELT-Gruppe’s domestic policy editor and reporter. From 2015-2020 she worked for the Bild am Sonntag, first as 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. Since March 2020 she works as a freelance writer and moderator.
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. Ms. Hollstein 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 the preservation of German film heritage.
On this week's Kaffeepause, Rob Fenstermacher, Chief Content Officer at the ACG, is filling in for Steve Sokol. Rob is joined by Dr. Anna Sauerbrey, Foreign Editor for the weekly DIE ZEIT and a 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, Steve Sokol is joined by Paul-Anton Krüger, Parliamentary Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Mr. 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, Steve Sokol is joined by Malte Lehming, Opinion Writer for Der Tagesspiegel.
From late 2000 to 2005, Malte Lehming was the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief. He joined Der 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.
Steven Erlanger is the Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, a position he assumed in 2017. He is based in Brussels.
Mr. Erlanger was previously the Bureau Chief in London from 2013 to 2017; in Paris from 2008 to 2013; in Jerusalem from 2004 to 2008; in Berlin from 2001 to 2002; in Prague from 1999 to 2001; in Moscow from 1994 to 1996; and in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1988 to 1991. Mr. Erlanger has also served as the newspaper’s Editor of cultural news from 2002 to 2004, as the Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in Washington from 1996 to 1999, and as a Moscow Correspondent from 1992 to 1994. He joined The Times in 1987 as a metro reporter. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Erlanger worked for The Boston Globe for 11 years. At The Globe, he was a European Correspondent, based in London from 1983 to 1987, and the Deputy National and Foreign Editor for three years before that. He also served as Assistant National Editor and Assistant Foreign Editor and reported from Eastern Europe, Canada, and revolutionary Iran. From 1975 to 1983, Mr. Erlanger was a teaching fellow at Harvard University, first in the College and then at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He also was the assistant editor of the Nieman Reports, the journal of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, in 1975.
Mr. Erlanger shared the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for a series about Russia, and was part of a team awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his work on Al Qaeda. In 2016, Mr. Erlanger was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government for his long career in journalism. He shared and received the American Society of News Editors’ Jesse Laventhol Prize for deadline reporting in 2001 for his work in the former Yugoslavia. He received the German Marshall Fund’s Peter Weitz Prize in 2000 for excellence and originality in reporting and analyzing European and transatlantic affairs and the Robert Livingston Award for International Reporting in 1981 for a series of articles about Eastern Europe.
Mr. Erlanger graduated from the Taft School in Watertown, Conn., and received an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard College in 1974. He majored in political philosophy in the government department. He also studied Russian as a senior fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford.
On this week’s Kaffeepause, Steve is joined by Matthew Karnitschnig, POLITICO’s Chief Europe Correspondent. Based in Berlin, he 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, Steve Sokol is joined by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Andreas Kluth. Between March 2017 and February 2019, Andreas was Editor-in-Chief of Handelsblatt Global, the English-language edition of Germany’s leading business newspaper. For the two decades before that, he wrote for The Economist — in London, Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and Berlin.