A weekly round-up of news stories that piqued our interest or made us scratch our heads.
Hitler salutes! The district court of Chemnitz sentenced a 33-year-old to an eight-month suspended sentence and a fine of €2000 for raising his arm in a Hitler salute (and violence against a policeman!) during the anti-refugee protest two weeks ago. Meanwhile 12 bronze wolves, some shown as rabid beasts performing a Hitler salute – have been displayed in front of Chemnitz's iconic Karl Marx statute on Thursday. The installation by artist Rainer Opolka is supposed to be a reference to (neo)Nazis and current-day right-wing radicals who like to refer to themselves as "wolves". You've got until next Thursday to check it out (Chemnitz is a nice three-hour car ride down south!)
Ultimate democracy in Görli An election where nearly anyone can run and vote? From September 20 to 27th, anyone over the age 14 can both vote and nominate themselves for candidacy in Görlitzer Park's first Parkrat (park council) election. Technically this means you, me or any of the park's dealers, illegals or bored teenagers (the youngest was the ripe old age of 15!). Meet the candidates yourself on the first day of the election (Sep 20) and then you still have a week to cast your vote at the wagon in front of Café Edelweiß. The eleven Parkräte with the most votes will be announced on September 27 and will be working in close cooperation with the current park manager Cengiz Demirci.
The crooked cop of Wedding On Wednesday, Marek G., a Wedding police officer was charged with corruption, leaking confidential police information and narcotics trade. The cop allegedly raked in around €44,000 from four bar and restaurant owners over the last two years for warning them in advance of police crackdowns. As if that wasn’t enough bad cop behaviour, he also ran a private poker club in a Pankow apartment building called Magic Card, where he regularly rented out rooms to store cocaine.
Mauer-fail Russian art initiative DAU-freiheit's aspirations to re-build "The" Wall in Mitte may fall to the wayside. According to Mitte's mayor Stephan von Dassel, the artists handed in the request for their extensive project way too late, leaving the Berlin administration
Bodies on display Körperwelten is here to stay announced Rurik von Hagens, son of the exhibition founder on Monday. The museum-cum-tourist attraction infamous for its exhibiting of 'plastinated' skinned human corpses has been fighting with the Mitte council since its opening in 2015. One issue has been the unknown origin of some of the museum’s six corpses and over 120 body parts, which initiator Gunther von Hagens promised to trace back. He definitely won’t have to deal with that for one future addition: Von Hagen, suffering from Parkinson's, wants to become part of Körperwelten after his death.
Missing Idol Noticed that your German millennial friends were all posting about the same guy earlier this week? German singer and celeb Daniel Küblböck reportedly jumped off-board a cruise ship off the coast of Newfoundland on September 9. Küblböck first rose to fame in the first season of Deutschland sucht den Superstar (the German American Idol). The star's been in and out of the news ever since but ex-DSDS juror Dieter Bohlen really stole the spotlight in an Instagram post about Küblböck in which he wears a jumper with "Be One with the Ocean" on it. Reality TV: a place for taste!
Ashes to newsflashes Erich and Margot Honecker’s grandson Roberto Yáñez wants to bring his grandparents' 'ashes' back to Berlin, or so he says. While East Germany's last head of state and his wife were supposed to have been buried in Chile where they lived in exile until their respective deaths in 1994 and 2016, Yáñez now claims differently in a rather juicy passage of his new book, I Was the Last Citizen of the GDR, which came out Monday. Apparently, their urns were kept at the house of a family friend, waiting to return to Berlin. Yáñez wants his grandparents to be buried at home, “at their comrades’ side."
Morbid division of labour A Berlin undertaker accidentally mixed up two corpses. The family of Bernd G. believed to have given their father and husband a decent funeral. But two days later came a phone call that left them devastated: the family buried a stranger, while G.'s corpse had already been cremated somewhere else. As it turns out, the unfortunate mistake was made by the company that picks up the bodies from funeral home Berolina (no relation to the app) – apparently without checking the coffins.