One year before he made the cut for Lufthansa's elite flying school, Andreas Lubitz worked at a Burger King behind a car wash, flipping Whoppers and frying fries and talking to co-workers about his dream.

The father of the Germanwings co-pilot who allegedly deliberately crashed his plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board, is said to be “completely shattered”.

Media reports tell of a disturbed young man in relationship crisis as friends say he was happy in job.

A judge has taken a German tourist's word that she will voluntarily pay thousands of dollars in compensation to a motorcyclist that she seriously injured in a head-on crash.

German retailing giant Aldi has brought a new supermarket experience to Australian shoppers.

Anti-austerity protesters seeking to spoil the inauguration of the ECB's new HQ in Frankfurt left a trail of destruction across the city.

Despite its dark past, this visitor-friendly city in former East Germany takes its history very seriously, as Mathew Dearnaley finds out.

Hundreds of thousands of German women were raped by British, American and French soldiers after the end of the Second World War, a German historian has claimed.

Passengers on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Auckland last month have been exposed to measles, public health officials have confirmed.

She had spent seven months living and working in New Zealand as an au pair, but German woman Janine Baer lost her life after a crash that killed her mother.

As 4500 tonnes of explosives fell from 800 British planes, 25,000 Dresdeners died in a raging firestorm and the heart of their historic city was obliterated.

When 500 German anti-Islamisation protestors in Germany were given free banners and stickers, they accepted. But activists had lured them into a trap.

For the dwindling band who still remember the horrors, it was possibly the last time they would gather to remind the world of their story.

Jozef Paczynski recalls the "welcome" speech the deputy commandant of Auschwitz gave on his arrival in 1940, down to the last chilling word.

A Duesseldorf court has ruled in favour of a man's right to urinate while standing up after his landlord demanded money for damage to the bathroom floor.

Munich's Oktoberfest is the largest festival in Europe and one Josh Martin enjoyed a little too much.

The controversial anti-Islamic Pegida movement and terror attacks in neighbouring France are polarising Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a stinging attack on Germany’s growing anti-Islamic protest movement, accusing leaders of preaching prejudice and of hijacking positive political slogans.

A 93-year-old German man Oskar Groening, who claims he was an accountant at Auschwitz, to go on trial for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 prisoners.

Marco Rojas is likely to leave his current club SpVgg Greuther Furth in January - and is almost certain to be playing his football outside Germany next year.

After nearly three years of tough talking, British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing a crunch moment in his troubled strategy towards the European Union.

World War II's greatest escape, which involved Kiwi officers scaling barbed wire fences instead of the previously favoured method of tunnelling, has been told for the first time.

Germany and a Swiss art museum have signed a landmark agreement returning a priceless hoard of art stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners.

An intelligent arm brace adding extra muscle by flexing, as we do, will be created in a landmark German-Kiwi collaboration.

A chilling but illuminating legacy of the former East German state is the archives of its Ministry for State Security, the dreaded Stasi.

Imagine growing up not knowing your father because he has been declared an enemy of the people and has to live in another country you are forbidden to visit.