Germany news: Snow warnings for Hamburg, 'Elli' storm nears

At the beginning of every year, political parties in Germany traditionally set out their most important priorities for the coming 12 months at their closed-door meetings.

But this year, everything is different: Donald Trump is causing uncertainty in NATO, parts of Berlin were without power for days, and an expected snowstorm has forced the chancellor's party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to cancel its closed-door meeting in Mainz. 

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who, despite the inclement weather, did at least manage to attend the meeting of the conservative CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Merz is starting the year in alert mode, trying to clearly communicate his agenda for 2026 despite a range of challenges. Even though foreign policy dominates much of the agenda, Merz is now promising to focus much more strongly on his actual goal and election promise: the German economy. 

The challenges in economic and social policy are enormous, said Merz in Seeon, Bavaria. He described the German economy as "still worrying." How can the economy be revived? How can the entrenched structures of the German labor market be broken down? How can long-term unemployment be combated? These are the questions preoccupying Friedrich Merz in the first week of January.  

If the economy fails to pick up, there is a threat of domestic political instability on a scale that Germans have never seen. 2026 will see five state elections and even more local elections. The popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is growing. In the eastern German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the right-wing populists are polling at nearly 40%. Depending on how other parties perform, the AfD could secure an absolute majority.  

That's why Merz wants to strengthen the economy above all else — he aims to halt Germany's declining prosperity and stop even more voters migrating to the AfD. His recipe for success: cutting corporate taxes, slashing bureaucracy and lowering energy prices. And all of that as quickly as possible.  

In Seeon, Merz emphasized that Germany was fundamentally prepared to engage in peacekeeping in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine. But while he did not rule out a deployment to Ukraine, he did say, "How far we can go overall does not depend solely on me." In Germany, such decisions must be approved by both the government and the Bundestag. Merz does not want to put the cart before the horse. He first wants to reach an agreement within the governing coalition on what to do if a ceasefire does come about. But it will be some time before any concrete decisions are made. In Merz's words: "Russia does not want a ceasefire."  

Until then, the chancellor must focus primarily on the German economy so the country at the heart of Europe remains politically and financially strong enough to keep its commitment to peace in the future. 

A kitten put the saying "cats have nine lives" to the test early on in its young life, after surviving nearly a week hidden in the back of a lorry that travelled from Turkey to Germany.

Germany's customs office said that police heard loud meowing coming from the lorry during a routine check near the southern German city of Würzburg.

Customs officials discovered the exhausted kitten in a space in the vehicle laden with machine parts.

The kitten — believed to be around 3 months old — was taken to an animal shelter and is reported to be doing well.

Once fully recovered and vaccinated, it will be allowed to be rehomed in Germany.

Parts of the River Spree's surface in Berlin iced over on Thursday, as snow covered the German capital.

Berlin is famed for regularly enduring some of the harshest winters anywhere in the country, excluding the mountainous areas in Bavaria.

The city's BER airport warned on Thursday that it anticipated considerable disruptions, particularly if conditions worsened on Friday as forecast. 

"We anticipate that there will be severe delays to services in the event of the massive snowfalls currently forecast in much of Europe starting on Friday," the airport said in a statement. This could lead to delays and flight cancellations, it said. 

BER said that it had 60 winter service vehicles in service and that it was bringing in additional staff. 

Rail operator Deutsche Bahn said it wanted to cancel some services in advance, and also that it planned for trains to operate at slower speeds as a precaution. It warned passengers to be prepared for potentially long delays. 

DIY stores like Obi, Bauhaus and Hornbach also warned of shortages in some stores of salt, grit and other material designed to help clear ice. Under German law, houseowners or tenants are liable for keeping the sidewalks outside their residences safe for pedestrians. This is known locally as the Räumpflicht, or "clearing duty."

Police in Reutlingen in southwestern Germany say three people have died in an apartment collapse after a suspected gas explosion in Albstadt. 

A 33-year-old man, his 30-year-old wife and their 6-year-old child were all killed as a result of the blast, which took place at around 5 a.m., police said in a statement. 

"Several surrounding buildings were damaged, some seriously, by the detonation," police said, adding that based on current information, residents of the nearby buildings had not been injured. 

Fire services, rescue workers and police were on site in large numbers, with some local streets in the Tailfingen district of Albstadt closed because of the response. 

"Investigations into the cause continue," police said. A fire service spokesman said the blast was a gas explosion. 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrat Union (CDU) has canceled its first big party meeting due to severe weather brought by Storm Elli.

The annual CDU meeting had been scheduled to begin on Friday.

"Due to the severe weather warnings and the associated dangers, as well as the announced train and flight cancellations, we unfortunately feel compelled to cancel our annual kick-off meeting this coming Friday and Saturday," the CDU spokeswoman said.

The CDU was planning to hold closed-door meetings at a hotel in Mainz, near Frankfurt.

But the German Weather Service (DWD) has forecast snowstorms overnight in central and eastern parts of the country.

The country's rail operator Deutsche Bahn has also cautioned passengers to expect delays and cancellations on long-distance services, while those traveling by car have been asked not to embark on lengthy journeys.

Around 350 participants and some 100 media representatives had been expected to attend the CDU talks.

The party's executive committee will still meet virtually.

An elderly man has succumbed to his injuries in hospital in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg after being hit by a snowplow. 

Police said that the 86-year-old was on a sidewalk in Villingendorf when he was struck. The snowplow driver was moving to rejoin the roads after clearing a local car park. 

He was taken to hospital with serious injuries and died on Wednesday evening. Prosecutors tasked an appraiser with evaluating the accident.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has said the government will continue its "tough course" on asylum and repatriation in 2026, after initial asylum applications halved in 2025 compared to the previous year, at 113,236 new applications. 

"We have set out on course to implement a new collective European asylum system," Dobrindt told DW's Rosalia Romaniec on the sidelines of his Bavarian CSU party's conference this week in Seeon. 

"This will happen this year," he said. "We have together agreed that we will set up repatriation centers, that we want to organize so-called "Return Hubs" in third countries. This is a challenging task. But we created the legal framework to do it in December. And that means that we want to open up this option in 2026." 

Asked which third countries might be considered, Dobrindt said only that a group of EU member states was currently trying to decide on this.

He also said that he hoped individual national governments could reach a consensus, "because we do not want to leave this question to the European Commission." 

"There is a group of like-minded countries that want to organize this now," he said. "And this group will agree within the coming weeks on which country outside the EU to go into talks with first."

Dobrindt said he also anticipated a reduction in asylum applications from Ukraine in 2026, one of the more common source countries in recent years since Russia's 2022 invasion. He said that the reduction would be because of legal changes in Germany and likely changes from the government in Kyiv.

A Hamburg youth service worker took the stand in the high-profile trial concerning the abduction of two of the children of steak restaurant chain heiress Christina Block. 

The youth service worker told the court that she was not aware of any allegations of violence against Block. 

"No accusations had been raised with me beforehand," the 43-year-old said in court. 

The heiress of the "Block House" restaurant chain was in a long-running custody dispute with the children's father, Stephan Hensel, who failed to return the couple's two youngest children, then aged 10 and 13, after a planned visit to his residence in Denmark. Hensel justified keeping the children by accusing Block of violence against them.

"The situation was established from one day to the next," the youth worker told the court on Thursday in the northern city of Hamburg. 

Block stands accused of tasking an Israeli private security company with abducting the children and bringing them back to Germany. She denies this and says the company acted on its own initiative on New Year's Eve of 2023/24 without explicit instructions from her. 

The children currently reside in Denmark after a Danish court ruled they should be returned to the father at least pending the resolution of legal proceedings in Germany.

The German fashion delivery service Zalando is closing its logistics center in the eastern city of Erfurt, which employs roughly 2,700 people. 

The company announced the move at its Berlin headquarters on Thursday. It said that it was in the process of informing employees about the plans. 

Zalando said the reason for the closure was the reorganization of the company's European logistics network in the aftermath of its takeover of another online fashion retailer, About You, last year. 

The Erfurt offices would close by the end of the year, with operations continuing broadly unchanged until then, Zalando said. The offices had opened in 2012 and is the only one of its kind in eastern Germany, according to Zalando press spokesman Christian Schmidt. 

Zalando also operates larger logistics centers in Giessen, to the north of Frankfurt, in Lahr in the Black Forest in the southwest, and in Mönchengladbach in the west, near the Dutch border. In total, the company foresees retaining 14 logistics centers of various sizes in seven German states after the reorganization.

The DWD German Weather Service is warning of extreme weather conditions in much of the country on Friday, with red snow warnings already in place for the north of the country around Hamburg. 

It anticipates snowfalls to start in earnest by the evening. 

"Fresh snowfalls in the evening the night into Friday arriving from the southwest, progressing northeast rapidly and later transitioning into rain in the west and south," the DWD forecasts in its national status report from 10:30 a.m. CET (0930 GMT/UTC). "New snowfalls of between 3 and 10 centimeters from the northwest via the central regions and through to Bavaria [in the south], and up to 15 centimeters within nine to 12 hours in flashpoints." 

The DWD also warns of the potential for freezing rains and black ice build-up overnight, particularly in the west and south as snows turn to rain.

Police in Hamburg in northern Germany closed a major bridge in the city center connecting the A7 highway and the island of Wilhelmsburg. 

"The Köhlbrandbridge is currently closed in both directions because of the heavy snowfall and the ice," police said online, also asking drivers to avoid the area where possible. 

Around an hour later, it was possible to reopen the busy bridge, which is typically used by tens of thousands of vehicles on weekdays.

In a more general appeal, police asked anyone on the road to drive particularly carefully and allow extra time for journeys.

Germany's DWD weather service forecasts between 3 and 6 centimeters (1 to 2 inches) of fresh snow in the Hamburg area on Thursday morning, and forecasts heavier snows of up to 10 centimeters for Friday.

The northern port city is expected to bear the initial brunt of the arrival of the "Elli" storm front. 

Hamburg authorities asked the city's state schools to prepare for a closed snow day on Friday.

The city politician in charge of schools, Thorsten Altenburg-Hack, called for children from the first to sixth grades to be issued either with learning materials for use at home, or potentially with online classes. He also called for the organization of emergency full-day care for children who could not stay home. 

Children in the seventh to 13th grades should be provided online classes or exercises. Exams would be delayed or canceled. Authorities said they would advise on Monday's school status by Friday morning.

There are roughly 273,000 school-age children in Hamburg, the vast majority of them in state schools.

Around 50 sheep wandered into a Penny supermarket in the small Bavarian town of Burgsinn, the retailer said.

The sheep lingered among the shelves and checkout area for about 20 minutes, after they had strayed from their flock before entering the store on Monday. It is unclear how the sheep broke loose. 

Penny said the supermarket was cleaned after the incident and it does not plan to seek compensation from the farmer.

Read more on the sheep's shopping spree in our report.

Germany has deported a convicted Syrian criminal to his home country, authorities said on Wednesday.

This is the second such case since the ousting of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.

The 32-year-old man, who had been serving a prison sentence in Saxony-Anhalt after being convicted in 2020 of drug offences and assault, was returned to Syria on Tuesday, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told Bild newspaper.

"Another Syrian criminal was returned to Syria today on a scheduled flight," the spokesperson said.

The Syrian deportee had multiple convictions for violence and drug-related offences.

The first post-Assad deportation took place shortly before Christmas, when a Syrian man convicted of aggravated robbery, assault and extortion was returned from Gelsenkirchen in western Germany.

Germany suspended deportations to Syria in 2011 after the outbreak of civil war.

Following Assad's removal, the conservative-led government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to resume deportations to Syria and Afghanistan, starting with convicted criminals.

Berlin mayor Kai Wegner drew criticism after admitting to journalists he played tennis on the first day of the city's largest blackout in decades, as tens of thousands were left without power, heating and phone service.

The outage that began last Saturday was caused by an arson attack on a cable bridge in the city's southwest. It initially cut electricity to 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses, with some 100,000 residents left without heat as temperatures hovered below freezing.

Power was fully restored over five days, making it the longest blackout in Berlin's postwar history. 

Wegner, a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said he played tennis for an hour Saturday with his partner, Berlin Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch, around five hours after the blackout began. He said he needed time to "clear his head" after taking phone calls, and remained reachable.

Read our full story on Wegner's criticism here.

Guten Tag from Bonn! 

After power was restored in southwest Berlin following an arson attack, the city's mayor is under pressure after he admitted playing tennis for an hour on the first day of the blackout. 

It was the German capital's worst blackout in decades. Wegner's conservative party in Berlin will hold a special phone conference to discuss the blackout response. 

And also Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will address the party conference of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, on policy platforms for 2026, with numerous state and local elections on the horizon.