Sven Becker, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Peter Müller, Marcel Rosenbach and Merlind Theile:

Germany’s Pirate Party has gone from a tiny group of hackers to a significant force in an astoundingly short amount of time. Its growing pains are obvious to all, but the party could succeed in fundamentally changing German politics. First it must agree on what it stands for.



Now she knows what it’s like. Now she knows what politics feels like. It can hurt, and it can be extremely draining. On Thursday evening, Marina Weisband decided she had had enough. She cancelled a television appearance and checked herself in to Berlin’s Charité Hospital feeling faint and dizzy.

By then Weisband, party manager of the Pirate Party, was already familiar with the new rigors of politics and the challenges presented by her own party. She had been in the eye of a shitstorm and had been rudely berated online, all because she had written things that others didn’t like.


Last Thursday evening Weisband, 24, became acquainted with the rigors of the old system. She was a guest on a talk show hosted by Michel Friedman, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who accused the Pirates of providing a political home to “Nazis, racists and anti-Semites” — about the worst possible insult in German politics.