WARSAW, June 8 (Reuters) – When Hans-Christian Maass
travelled from East Berlin to Warsaw four decades ago to watch
West Germany play Poland he thought he was seizing a rare chance
to see some of the finest footballers in a generation.

East Germany’s Communist authorities viewed the then
21-year-old’s trip very differently.

ALPEN, Germany (Reuters) – The ploughs that made German farm machinery firm Lemken its name line the factory forecourt like a row of modernist sculptures, with jutting spokes and sinister-looking blades.

Based in an agricultural region close to the Dutch border, this is an archetypal German “Mittelstand” company, family-owned over seven generations and still catering to the same farmer clientele served by its founder, blacksmith Wilhelmus Lemken, in 1780.

ALPEN, Germany, June 7 (Reuters) – The ploughs that made
German farm machinery firm Lemken its name line the factory
forecourt like a row of modernist sculptures, with jutting
spokes and sinister-looking blades.

Based in an agricultural region close to the Dutch border,
this is an archetypal German “Mittelstand” company, family-owned
over seven generations and still catering to the same farmer
clientele served by its founder, blacksmith Wilhelmus Lemken, in
1780.

BEELITZ, Germany, May 22 (Reuters) – Present a spear of
finger-thick white asparagus to a German and watch her eyes
light up.

Come spring-time each year Germans shed their typically
sober attitude towards food to swoon over the freshness, the
flavour and the girth of their asparagus.

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany pulled the euro zone’s economy back from the brink of recession at the start of 2012 but stagnation in France and contraction in southern Europe underlined sharply differing fortunes in a bloc laboring under the effects of austerity.

Overall gross domestic product was unchanged in the first quarter following a dip at the end of last year, data showed on Tuesday, meaning that the euro zone missed slipping officially into recession by the narrowest possible margin.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Stellar exports powered Germany to surprisingly strong growth of 0.5 percent in the first quarter, cementing hopes that Europe’s largest economy can underpin the euro zone, though poor investor sentiment data warned of Berlin’s continued vulnerability.

Germany bounced back from a contraction of 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter, comfortably shaking off recession fears and beating even the highest forecast in a Reuters poll of 41 economists. Demand for its high quality goods, particularly from outside Europe, reached a record monthly level in March.

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany pulled the euro zone’s economy back from the brink of recession at the start of 2012 but stagnation in France and contraction in southern Europe underlined sharply differing fortunes in a bloc laboring under the effects of austerity.

Overall gross domestic product was unchanged in the first quarter following a dip at the end of last year, data showed on Tuesday, meaning that the euro zone missed slipping officially into recession by the narrowest possible margin.

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Germany’s economy confounded expectations by posting robust growth in the first quarter of the year while France could summon up none at all, data showed on Tuesday.

Gross domestic product in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, rose by 0.5 percent on the quarter, bouncing back from a 0.2 percent slide in the last three months of 2011. France’s economy stagnated, although it grew slightly at the end of last year.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives were in danger of being ousted from power in another German state on Sunday after the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said they wanted to form a three-way coalition with two smaller centre-left parties.

The Christian Democrats’ (CDU) vote fell to 31 percent, their worst result in the state since 1950, but they were still just the largest party in the rural region between the Baltic and North Seas, a projection by Germany’s ARD TV network showed.