Common Ground Berlin

In A.D. 321, an edict drawn up by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great appointed Jewish people to the Cologne town council. This decree is the oldest known document showing Jewish life thriving north of the Alps.

But what does it mean to be Jewish in Germany today? 

In this episode, guest host Stephanie Wolf speaks with Anti-Defamation League’s Assistant Director for European Affairs, Dalia Grinfeld, and visual and performance artist Rachel Libeskind.

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed and Stephanie Wolf.

Today marks the birthday of Mildred Harnack, an American academic and spy who was murdered by the Nazis in Berlin and who is the subject of Rebecca Donner’s New York Times bestseller “All The Frequent Troubles Of Our Days.”

In this episode, Common Ground host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson talks to Donner about her great-great-aunt's life, the state of women in the Third Reich, and how sexism distorted her legacy. Plus, Donner reads a few of her favorite passages. 

We also hear from German historian Arnd Bauerkaemper and president of the American Women’s Club in Berlin Shweta Gupta. 

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed. 

In this joint episode by the Common Ground and Out of Order podcasts, host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and GMF Senior Transatlantic Fellow Sudha David-Wilp examine the struggle to elect the first new chancellor in 16 years and what Germany’s top three political parties in opinion surveys are doing about it.

Featuring:

Tobias Hans of the CDU, minister president of Saarland;

Katarina Barley, SPD European Parliament Member;

Katharina Schulze, parliamentary leader of the Greens in the Bavarian state parliament.

This show is produced by Corinna Blutguth, Dina Elsayed and Stephanie Wolf.

The pandemic has dramatically changed our lives for nearly 18 months now. The learning curve of how to deal with COVID-19 has been steep and definitive answers remain elusive. So were the experts right about the vaccines? What about booster shots? And should children be inoculated against the coronavirus? Host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson speaks with German Ethics Council Chair Alena Buyx; Korinna Hennig, science editor and co-host of public broadcaster NDR’s weekly podcast: “The Coronavirus Update;” and New York Times health and science writer Apoorva Mandavilli.

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed. 

If you like music and dancing, Berlin has a club for you. At least it used to until the pandemic struck. But now that there’s light at the end of that tunnel, will the German capital’s culture of clubs return? 

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson hosted an on-air special on Aug. 13 at Germany’s top electronic music radio station, sunshine live, and spoke with DJs, club scene leaders and more. We bring you the highlights in this Common Ground episode.

Featuring guests:

Georg Kössler, Berlin MP and Club Culture spokesman for the Green Party;

Robin Schellenberg, United We Stream co-founder, and manager of the Berlin club Klunkerkranich;

Marc Wohlrabe, Livekomm Board Member, Director of the ‘Stadt nach Acht’ Nightlife Policy Conference;

Katharin Ahrend, head of the Berlin Club Commission Awareness and Diversity Department.

And featuring DJs: Wannadosomething?, Nikola and Sagan

We also hear from Remi Letournelle of Fitzroy and Marie Anoinette, and Tino Zaddach of Nuke Club. 

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed and Stephanie Wolf.

Coming up on Aug. 13, Common Ground and Germany's top electronic music radio team up on air to bring you the latest on nightlife in the German capital, which continues to grapple with COVID-19. Tune in from 7 p.m to 10 p.m. CET Guests and DJs include United We Stream’s Robin Schellenberg, Berlin's Club Commission’s Lutz Leichsenring and Georg Kössler of the Green Party. (Find your local FM station and streaming links at sunshine-live.de). 

This episode of Common Ground -- the last before our summer hiatus -- was recorded outdoors in the Berlin neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, where host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson explores the mounting challenges facing cyclists with Andrew Bulkeley, who writes for Berliner Zeitung English Edition; Dirk von Schneidemesser of Changing Cities, an initiative specializing in democratic sustainability transformation and award-winning journalist and author Matthew Schofield. 

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed. 

Germany’s handling of the pandemic has sparked a debate about whether the country’s form of government still makes sense. Host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson untangles the complex federal and state relationship with Bloomberg Opinion Columnist Andreas Kluth and Wolfgang Renzsch, professor emeritus at the University of Magdeburg, who has written extensively about German federalism.

This show is produced by Dina Elsayed.