Skip next section What you need to know
What you need to know
- Average summer temperature of 19.6 Celsius is second only to 2003 figures, Germany’s DWD weather service says
- Cologne police investigate early-morning shooting of empty cafe in south of city center
- Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is visiting Tunisia and Algeria
- Hamburg’s new, larger Sternbrücke rail bridge opens for business, replacing a predecessor from 1926
- Chancellor Merz warns an AfD government would damage Saxony-Anhalt, with vote on Sunday
Welcome to our roundup of news and analysis from and concerning Germany on Monday, August 31.
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Skip next section PROFILE — Sven Schulze, the politician leading the fight against the far-right in Saxony-Anhalt08/31/2026August 31, 2026
PROFILE — Sven Schulze, the politician leading the fight against the far-right in Saxony-Anhalt
All political eyes in Germany, and indeed beyond, are turning to the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt this week, ahead of Sunday’s state election in which the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to perform strongly.
But who’s currently leading the coalition government in Saxony-Anhalt, Christian Democrat Sven Schulze?
And what’s his message on polling week, as he tries to stay in his job while facing not just the prospect of losing to radicals on the right of politics, but of perhaps needing support from those he might deem radicals on the left to avoid such a defeat?
https://p.dw.com/p/5JhdySkip next section Woman confesses to pretending son had cancer to raise money08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Woman confesses to pretending son had cancer to raise money
A German woman on trial in Giessen, north of Frankfurt in Hesse, has confessed to pretending her young son had cancer to raise money online.
Her lawyer said in court that she accepted and admitted to the allegations “without any reservation” and regretted what had happened.
She’s accused of obtaining a total of €358,000 (roughly $415,000 at current exchange rates) in donations between September 2021 and October 2024. The boy was aged 5 to 8 during this time period.
The woman is alleged to have come up with the idea after a dermatological examination revealed an issue that turned out to be benign and require no further treatment.
She then allegedly claimed that her son was suffering from malignant melanoma and urgently required expensive specialist treatment in the US, claims she also made to the media and online.
Prosecutor Kai Karges said that hundreds of individuals and charities responded to the calls, and said that the child also believed he had cancer.
The fraud was uncovered when the boy’s pediatrician saw the calls for donations on social media and alerted child protection services. He has since been taken into care.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JhbwSkip next section Update: Cologne police issue details on suspect in cafe shooting, nobody hurt08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Update: Cologne police issue details on suspect in cafe shooting, nobody hurt
Just a quick follow-up on our top headline from the early morning today.
Cologne police are still seeking a man believed to have fired shots at a Turkish cafe in the south of the city center. They confirmed that nobody was injured in the shooting.
Police described the man as “baldheaded, roughly 1 meter 80 (5 foot 9 inches) tall,” wearing “sports shoes, black trousers and a gray hooded jacket” at the time of the shooting. Investigators said residents saw the man fire the shots and flee on foot at around 7:40 a.m. that morning.
“Based on preliminary investigations, four projectiles penetrated the cafe’s front windows,” police said, adding that Cologne’s criminal investigation department or Kriminalpolizei had taken over the case.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JhLcSkip next section UK fuels 50% year-on-year growth in 2025 German foreign direct investment08/31/2026August 31, 2026
UK fuels 50% year-on-year growth in 2025 German foreign direct investment
According to a report from the German Economic Institute (IW) think tank, foreign direct investment (FDI) into Germany rose markedly in 2025, reaching just over €86 billion (just under $100 billion at today’s exchange rate).
Investments from the UK were the largest driver of growth by far.
IW put the level of FDI from the UK at more than €26.3 billion, saying it was a year-on-year increase of 284%.
This made the UK the largest external contributor to projects in Germany, overtaking the US, as US investment dipped by 44% to around €11.75 billion.
Investment from the other 26 EU member states remained the largest source of input, at just over €44 billion combined, with the annual figure more or less stable compared to 2024.
“If you include the UK investments as well, then more than 80% of all foreign direct investments came from Europe. The numbers show: the closest and most reliable trade relations remain those with European neighbors.”
Investment from China, Saudi Arabia and Chile also rose markedly in 2024, but barely totaled €3 billion combined.
The figures followed a below-average 2024, with the think tank saying that overall foreign direct investment had risen by 50% year-on-year.
FDI figures can be quite volatile annually, depending on what’s been agreed and when, with individual large deals capable of skewing the stats quite markedly. Still, 2025’s total was also roughly 11% higher than the multi-year median for the period between 2015 and 2024, the IW said.
https://p.dw.com/p/5Jh88Skip next section Weather service: 2026 summer provisionally the 2nd hottest of the century08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Weather service: 2026 summer provisionally the 2nd hottest of the century
Dmytro Hubenko Editor
Based on provisional data, with the meterological period only ending this Monday, 2026’s summer is the second hottest of the century in Germany.
Germany’s DWD weather service said that its provisional average round-the-clock temperature for the season lay at 19.6 degrees Celsius (67.8 Fahrenheit).
“Based on provisional calculations, only the ‘summer of the century’ in 2003 appears to have been hotter, at 19.7 Celsius,” the DWD said.
The average lies some 3.3 Celsius degree points above the reference average for the 1961-1990 period.
“What was without compare in 2026 was the frequency of the heat,” the DWD wrote. On average, areas in Germany experienced around 22 “hot” days — with temperatures of 30 Celsius or higher — and five very hot days with highs of at least 35 Celsius.
This included the provisional German record high temperature of 41.8 Celsius, recorded in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt on June 27. That same night, not far away in Kubschütz in Saxony, the mercury never dropped below 29.4 Celsius — “the highest overnight minimum temperature ever recorded in Germany.”
Above all, the DWD said, the summer was too dry, with around 171 liters of rainfall per square meter over the summer. This compares to historical seasonal averages of 239 to 241 liters per square meter in Germany.
Unlike the astronomical summer, which ends on September 21, the DWD classifies Germany’s meteorological summer as the June 1 – August 31 period.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JhDuSkip next section First trains cross Hamburg’s new Sternbrücke bridge08/31/2026August 31, 2026
First trains cross Hamburg’s new Sternbrücke bridge
The new Sternbrücke bridge opened for business on Monday in the west of Hamburg, after the major rail line was closed for several weeks during the installation phase.
It replaces a 100-year-old bridge connecting the Sternschanze and Altona-Altstadt districts, linking the Hamburg main station with the Hamburg-Altona station for both local and long distance rail lines in the northern port city.
The first trains started crossing before dawn on Monday morning, a local service from Kiel being first in line, just ahead of an early-morning express train headed south to Basel in Switzerland.
“Everything has gone according to plan here,” the project manager at Deutsche Bahn, Janna Widmaier, told local public radio station NDR 90.3 on Monday morning.
Some 900 trains will cross the bridge each day. The new bridge with four tracks weighs 3,700 metric tons and is considerably larger than its predecessor from 1926.
The bridge was transported roughly 500 meters from its construction site to its assembly position in July, painstaking precision work that attracted quite a crowd as the vast structure sometimes passed within just a few centimeters of houses and other roadside buildings.
The project had suffered a delay of roughly two weeks because of problems with the overhead electrical lines. Some of the streets below the new bridge are still closed off.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JgQkSkip next section Foreign Minister Wadephul departs for North Africa08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Foreign Minister Wadephul departs for North Africa
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul flew out of Berlin bound for Tunis early on Monday, as he heads on a two-day trip to North Africa.
“We share core economic and security concerns with Tunisia and Algeria,” Wadephul told reporters at the airport prior to takeoff. “Together we can make the Mediterranean into an area of strength between our two continents.”
Wadephul is expected to speak with his opposite number Mohamed Nafti in Tunis, as well as representatives of German businesses on sites and of Tunisian start-ups.
“For our industry — above all the car industry — reliable delivery links with Tunisia are central nowadays,” Wadephul said.
He noted that Germany had become Tunisia’s third-largest export market, and said that around 7,500 Tunisians were studying at German higher education facilities.
Wadephul will move on to Algeria in the second leg of his journey. There he will also meet Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, as well as being received by President Abdelmajid Tebboune, who visited Berlin this July.
The foreign minister called Algeria a “strategic partner in energy and also in security policy,” saying it was already a key natural gas deliverer for the EU and that it had the potential to become an even more important partner given its aim of rapidly expanding its green hydrogen production and supply to Europe in the next roughly 15 years. The project is partly supported by Germany.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JfwkSkip next section Merz warns AfD government would cause ‘considerable problems’ for Saxony-Anhalt08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Merz warns AfD government would cause ‘considerable problems’ for Saxony-Anhalt
Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned in his summer interview with public broadcaster ARD that the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt could suffer if the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) win Sunday’s state elections.
Polls vary, but all give the anti-migration AfD a vast lead over the other major parties, with something in the region of 40% of the vote. Merz’s center right Christian Democrats (CDU) are next in line, far adrift with less than 25%.
It’s not clear if the AfD will be able to secure a viable majority and govern, with this contingent both on how it fares on Sunday and on how many smaller parties fail to clear the 5% hurdle that guarantees parliamentary representation. But Merz said that an outright victory could be seriously damaging for the state.
“If that were to happen, …. then this state would encounter considerable problems,” Merz said. “I cannot imagine that many international investors would be coming to groundbreaking ceremonies with an AfD state premier, to open new factories or settle new businesses in Saxony-Anhalt.”
Merz said voters in the state would ultimately have to decide.
He also said he would be doing everything he could to try to swing undecided voters or encourage turnout in the last days of the campaign, planning two trips to the state this week. He noted that some 20% of voters were telling pollsters they had not yet made up their minds if they would vote or for whom.
Merz tried to sidestep a question about how to form a government that would keep the AfD out of office. As it stands, the third-largest party in the state looks set to be the socialist Left Party at around 13%.
The CDU and the Left have never allied in any federal or state-level coalition — but unless the pollsters are wildly mistaken or the mood swings considerably in a week, that could be necessary to have any chance of forming a larger bloc than the AfD’s in the state parliament.
“We will look at that in the light of the election results,” Merz said when asked how to set up a government keeping the AfD out of office. “We will do everything we can, to stop Saxony-Anhalt from falling to the radicals. And that applies both to the AfD and to the Left Party.”
The interview aired on ARD on Sunday evening.
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https://p.dw.com/p/5Jfo7Skip next section Low Rhine levels reveal car wreck with human remains near Bonn08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Low Rhine levels reveal car wreck with human remains near Bonn
Police in Bonn say they have been investigating the wreckage of a car found in the Rhine River in the Königswinter area this month.
The stricken vehicle was first spotted in early August as the river levels nosedived in the protracted dry hot weather.
Two weeks after it was seen, the fire department was able to recover the vehicle. Inside it, and near to it, the remains of human bones were discovered.
Police said they were trying to investigate the backdrop of the case, but said that as yet there were no leads on potential missing persons cases that could be connected to the car.
Police believe the car, thought to be a Fiat produced at some point between 1976 and 1984, could have been lying on the riverbed for decades. It was not yet clear whether the fragments of bones hailed from one person or more than one.
“The investigations are proving difficult, because it’s so far in the past,” a police spokesman told the German DPA news agency.
Königswinter lies just south of Bonn on the right bank of the Rhine.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JfgKSkip next section Police respond to early-morning shooting in Cologne, seemingly without casualties08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Police respond to early-morning shooting in Cologne, seemingly without casualties
Police cordoned off parts of several major roads in the south of the city center of Cologne early on Monday, including the Bonner Straße and other roads leading to the Chlodwigplatz square and public transport stop.
They were investigating reports of shots being fired at around 7:30 a.m. outside a cafe, and searching for what they believed to be a lone male suspect. They asked people to avoid the busy area during the morning rush hour.
Police did not report any casualties, but said they found multiple bullet holes in a cafe on Bonner Straße, as well as recovering several shell casings.
Police said they believed a lone suspect had fled the scene on foot. They said they were investigating the possibility of an organized crime connection.
The vibrant area around Chlodwigplatz is a short distance directly south of Cologne’s main train station and cathedral, near the left bank of the Rhine River.
Several storefronts in Cologne were shot at during August, according to the local Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper. An unknown suspect or suspects shot at a jewellers on Keupstrasse on August 21, while prior to that a watch store was fired upon twice in a few days.
https://p.dw.com/p/5JfVYSkip next section Welcome to our coverage08/31/2026August 31, 2026
Welcome to our coverage
Mark Hallam | Rana Taha Editor
Moin and welcome to our coverage.
It’s only a slightly sunny morning here in Bonn, as autumn threatens to emerge after an unusually hot summer — although the DWD German weather service might have something to say about that in its report later today.
Early this morning, a cafe in the western city of Cologne saw shots fired, with police looking for a suspect.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is due to campaign in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt, ahead of this weekend’s state election. On Sunday, Merz had warned that an AfD government would damage the state.
On the diplomatic front, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is visiting Tunisia and Algeria.
This and more is coming up in today’s edition of our daily updates on all things Germany. Stay tuned!
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