Amberg is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in the Upper Palatinate, roughly halfway between Regensburg and Bayreuth. In 2020, over 42,000 people lived in the town.
Lothar de Maizière is a German Christian Democratic politician. In 1990, he served as the only premier of the German Democratic Republic to be democratically elected freely and fairly by the people. He was also the last leader of an independent East Germany.
Volker Beck is a German politician. From 1994 to 2017, he was a member of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, for the Green Party. Beck served as the Green Party Speaker for Legal Affairs from 1994–2002, and as the Green Party Chief Whip in the Bundestag till 2013. He was spokesman of the Green Parliamentary Group for interior affairs and religion. In 2014 he was elected President of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag.
Wolfgang Schäuble is a German lawyer and politician whose political career has spanned almost five decades. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he is one of the longest-serving politicians in German history. Schäuble served as President of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.
Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2011 and 2013 to 2018, as well as Federal Minister of Defence from 2011 to 2013. He previously served as Head of the Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the First Merkel cabinet from 2005 to 2009. Since 2009, he has been a member of the Bundestag for Meißen.
Olaf Scholz is a German politician serving as chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor of Germany under Angela Merkel and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 and deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019. Following the 2021 German federal election, Scholz's federal government is a traffic light coalition composed of his SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The old states of Germany are the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that unified with the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) with its re-established 5 states upon German reunification on October 3, 1990.
Alternative for Germany is a right-wing populist political party in Germany. A right-wing party, AfD is known for its opposition to the European Union and immigration to Germany. It is positioned on the radical right, a subset of the far-right, within the family of European political parties.
Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi terrorist organisation that was founded in 1992. It originated in the United Kingdom, with ties to movements in Canada and the United States and, since its founding, it has spread to other countries such as Germany. Combat 18 members have been suspected of being involved and directly responsible in the deaths of numerous immigrants, non-whites, a German politician, and other C18 members.
The German Police Trade Union is a trade union in Germany. Representing 94,000 police employees, it is the second largest union for police employees in Germany, following the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP). It is affiliated with the German Civil Service Federation.
Crimes may be committed both against and by immigrants in Germany. Crimes involving foreigners have been a longstanding theme in public debates in Germany. In November 2015, a report that was released by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) stated that "While the number of refugees is rising very dynamically, the development of crime does not increase to the same extent." Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) noted that "refugees are on average as little or often delinquent as comparison groups of the local population." A 2018 statistical study by researchers at the University of Magdeburg using 2009-2015 data argued that, where analysis is restricted to crimes involving at least one German victim and one refugee suspect and crimes by immigrants against other immigrants are excluded, there is no relationship between the scale of refugee inflow and the crime rate. In 2018 the interior ministry under Horst Seehofer (CSU) published, for the first time, an analysis of the Federal Police Statistic, which includes all those who came via the asylum system to Germany. The report found that the immigrant group, which makes up about 2% of the overall population, contains 8.5% of all suspects, after violations against Germany's alien law are excluded.
Maria Ladenburger was a 19-year-old medical student from Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, who was found raped and drowned on 16 October 2016 in the river Dreisam. On 3 December 2016, Freiburg police arrested Hussein Khavari, who had been identified by a hair found at the crime scene, and a CCTV recording from inside a tram. DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene and he was ultimately convicted.
The SPD party member vote on the 2018 coalition agreement of Germany took place from 20 February to 2 March 2018. The membership of the center-left SPD decided via postal vote whether to accept a coalition agreement with Germany's center-right CDU and CSU. The result, 66.02% in favor of the Yes campaign, was published on 4 March 2018. It was decisive for Angela Merkel's plan to get re-elected as chancellor of Germany on 14 March in the German Bundestag.
Franziska Giffey is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as Governing Mayor of Berlin since December 2021. She is the first woman elected to the position of Mayor of Berlin. She served as Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 until 2021. She was the Mayor of Neukölln in Berlin from April 2015 to March 2018. In December 2020, Giffey was nominated to be the SPD's mayoral candidate in the 2021 Berlin State election, in which the SPD remained the largest party.
Armin Schuster is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as the president of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) since 2020.
The Halle synagogue shooting occurred on 9 October 2019 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and continued in nearby Landsberg. After unsuccessfully trying to enter the synagogue in Halle during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the attacker, later identified as 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, fatally shot two people nearby and later injured two others.
Karl Nehammer is an Austrian politician serving as Chancellor of Austria since 6 December 2021. He is a member of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) who served as Minister of the Interior from 2020 to 2021, General Secretary of the ÖVP from 2018 to 2020, and a member of the National Council from 2017 to 2020.
The Missions Abroad and Special Operations is a specialized unit within the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The ASE is composed of specially selected and trained BKA personnel that typically operate in high-threat environments.
Nancy Faeser is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), serving as Federal Minister of the Interior and Community in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet since 2021. She served as a member of the State Parliament of Hesse from the 2003 elections until 2021. In 2019, she became the party's leader in Hesse, succeeding Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel.
The government of Germany has initially responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country with preventive measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 in the country. With the nationwide spread of the disease from March 2020, preventive measures were replaced by containment measures, including a lockdown from March. The Bundestag made the determination of an epidemic situation of national significance on 25 March. This created a legal framework for the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the 16 German states to agree on nationwide pandemic restrictions. The Grundgesetz mandates that infection protection measures are the responsibility of the states, however, and implementation of measures sometimes differed considerably across states as a result. Some observers considered the chancellor and state premier meetings as effectively circumventing parliament, while others disagreed. Criticism over the diminished role of parliament in pandemic management persisted from across the political spectrum.
