Germany news roundup: AfD offers state premier backing, heat deaths rise, and Rhine water levels drop

The leader of the far-right AfD in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has offered to back populist Sahra Wagenknecht as state premier. And heat-related deaths this year are now numbered at some 12,500. DW has more.

This blog is closed. Below is a roundup of the main headlines in Germany on August 13, 2026:

An offer by the AfD's Björn Höcke to support the BSW's Sahra Wagenknecht threatens to undermine a current "firewall" against cooperation with the far right

Public health authorities say heat-related deaths in Germany have hit a new high this year

Events are to be held to mark the 65th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall

Drought causing significant crop losses

Suspected explosive device on rail tracks in Bavaria forces evacuations of buildings

This summer's heat waves and lack of rain have led to a sharp drop in the levels of Germany's inland waterways. The Rhine River's water levels have sunk to record lows. That's taking a heavy toll on commercial shipping.

German luxury and sports-car maker Porsche is reportedly planning to stop producing its electric Taycan by 2030 after weak sales left output at its main Stuttgart plant running well below capacity.

German business magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" says Porsche's management and works council had reached an agreement in principle, although it had not yet been put in writing.

The Taycan was Porsche's first fully electric model and initially became the company's flagship EV after production began in 2019. Its second electric model, the Macan SUV, followed in 2024.

Taycan sales have fallen sharply in recent years, however, leaving production at Porsche's Stuttgart headquarters underused.

According to the magazine, Porsche had given up on moving Taycan production to its Leipzig plant or ending the model sooner. The current plan would instead keep production in Stuttgart until 2030.

Porsche had set itself the goal in 2022 of increasing the share of fully electric vehicles to 80% of sales by 2030.

But Porsche has since adjusted its strategy as demand for electric cars has developed more slowly than expected. The Macan is also due to become available again with a combustion engine.

Executives at Germany's 40 largest listed companies have seen their average pay rise again, with a typical DAX board member earning more than €3.9 million ($4.5 million) in 2025.

The annual analysis by the shareholder association DSW and the Technical University of Munich found executive compensation increased by 4% compared with the previous year, with a large share coming from performance-related bonuses.

Across all DAX companies, board members earned on average 42 times as much as ordinary employees at their firms.

The widest gap was at Adidas, where executive board members received 106 times the average employee compensation.

The ratio was 75 to one at Volkswagen and 70 to one at healthcare group Fresenius.

Chief executives of DAX companies received an average of around €6.14 million in 2025.

SAP chief Christian Klein topped the ranking with total compensation of about €10.9 million, around 86% of it variable.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing received €10.5 million, with around 64% made up of short- and long-term bonuses linked to business performance.

DSW managing director Marc Tüngler said the €10 million mark had been exceeded in two cases, describing it as a level that remained socially and internally sensitive.

German CEO pay remains well below levels at many major companies abroad.

CEOs of non-German companies in the Euro Stoxx 50 received an average of €9.5 million in 2025, while the average among the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was €30.5 million.

German officials have warned against romanticizing communist East Germany, saying nostalgia for the former dictatorship risks obscuring its repression and lack of basic freedoms.

The comments came on the 65th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall and just weeks before important state elections in eastern Germany.

Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said both left-wing and right-wing extremists were trying to play down the crimes of the former East German regime.

He described East Germany as a "brutal dictatorship" without free elections, press freedom or freedom of movement, and pointed to the role of the Stasi secret police, political repression and the fortified border around West Berlin.

Evelyn Zupke, Germany's federal commissioner for victims of the communist dictatorship, also warned against what is commonly known as "Ostalgie" — nostalgia for life in the former East Germany.

"East Germany seems more appealing to some people the further it recedes in history," she told the Rheinische Post newspaper, warning that a nostalgic view could blur the reality of the dictatorship.

Extreme swimmer Nathalie Pohl is continuing her swim up the Rhine River (yes, it is still deep enough for this purpose at least!) towards Cologne.

She trying to set a new world record by covering a 200 kilometer stretch from Frankfurt to Cologne in just four days, raising money for charity en route.

Pohl entered the water in Lahnstein, near Koblenz, shortly before 11 a.m. on Thursday. The day's stretch covers some 58 kilometers, ending in Bad Honnef — a short southerly swim upstream from DW's offices on the Rhine in Bonn.

Wednesday's stretch already took her through some of the shallowest segments of the Rhine amid this summer's drought, particularly the bottleneck at Kaub.

Pohl is raising money to improve awareness on the importance of safe swimming among children, and to fund swimming projects and teaching. Her team says they have raised around €85,000 (almost $100,000) so far.

German steel giant Thyssenkrupp says the low Rhine River levels have not yet impacted production at its major facility in Duisburg.

Chief Financial Officer Axel Hamann said that supplies to customers were not presently at risk, as he presented nine-monthly performance figures to the press.

For the moment, he said, the facility was still receiving some deliveries of raw materials — particularly coal for the furnaces — via partially-laden barges on the Rhine.

"If the situation really deteriorates and the ship journeys are stopped altogether, then we could not rule out an effect on results," he said, meaning sales volumes and output.

"We of course do have a few options to adapt the production and the deliveries to our facilities somewhat, so we can continue to work longer with the supplies that we have," Hamann said. He said there were shipping alternatives and that the company was trying to secure more supplies via rail in particular.

"We're still a long way away from letting some of our furnaces run cold," Hamann said.

The company was also looking into potential transport by road networks, he said — but typically coal is seen as a very bulky, heavy and cost-inefficient product to transport using trucks in large quantities. Earlier in the week, a company spokeswoman had suggested that truck transportation was not a realistic option.

The lack of rainfall affecting large parts of Germany has severely impacted this summer's harvest, according to an association representing farming companies.

Around 3 million metric tons (3.31 million US tons) of grain and rapeseed have been lost since mid-June, meaning revenue shortfalls of €600 million ($692 million), the German Raiffeisen Association said.

According to the association's expert for cereal markets, Guido Seedler, "that amounts to economic damage of €10 million each day during the around 60-day hot-weather period from June till the end of the harvest."

The association estimates that this year's grain harvest will be 40.6 million tons, down from 45 million tons in 2025.

"Only the favorable spring weather prevented greater damage," Seedler said, adding that the harvest was still adequate overall but below average.

The German Raiffeisen Association represents 1,600 cooperative companies in agricultural trade and processing.

Managers at Germany's top listed companies were paid an average of just over €3.9 million ($4.5 million) in 2025, a study has shown.

That means that executives at the 40 companies in the DAX stock index brought home 42 times the pay of an average employee.

The chief executives of DAX companies received pay of an average €6.14 million in 2025, the study by the German shareholder protection association DSW and the Technical University of Munich.

Pay for two chief executives exceeded €10 million: Christian Klein, chief executive of software company SAP, received around €10.9 million, and Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing received €10.5 million.

In Klein's case, almost 86% of that came from variable compensation, while 64% of Sewing's pay was made up of short and long-term bonuses linked to business performance.

As high as these sums may seem to many normal citizens, they are relatively modest in international comparison.

Top executives of companies in the Euro Stoxx 50, excluding German ones, received an average of €9.5 million for the 2025 financial year, the analysis showed.

And for chief executives of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the average was €30.5 million.

Authorities have begun evacuating buildings around a Bavarian train station as specialists examine a suspicious object on the tracks.

Rail traffic is currently suspended in the area as experts check to see if explosives are present.

For 28 years, a nearly insurmountable barrier kept people from fleeing East Germany. Today, it is difficult to imagine what was bitter reality just a few decades ago. A computer animation reveals the vast security system of Germany's inner border and the Berlin Wall, both of which were recreated virtually in the greatest detail.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called on people to keep up the fight to retain freedom and democracy as Germany marks the 65th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

"Sixty-five years ago, the leadership of former East Germany had the Wall built. Today, our country has been united longer than it was divided and we live in freedom and peace," Merz wrote on the platform X.

"The lesson of the Wall remains: Freedom and democracy are not a given. We must always fight for them," he wrote.

Merz's remarks come amid a surge in popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party seen by many as anti-democratic in its ideology.

On August 13, 1961, on what would become known as Barbed Wire Sunday, communist East Germany sealed the border between Berlin’s eastern and western sectors before building a wall that was to divide the city for the next 28 years.

People trying to cross the Wall to leave the authoritarian state were often shot dead, and the barrier came to symbolize the repressive political system behind it.

In remarks to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, culture commissioner Wolfram Weimer warned against "positive distortions of former East Germany" by the far-right AfD and the Left Party.

Weimer criticized such "collective forgetting, repression and downplaying of former East Germany" as the biggest challenge to properly commemorating the crimes of the regime there.

Rail traffic through the southern German town of Treuchtlingen has been suspended after police discovered a suspicious object.