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Smile please: it's possible - also in 2020
Photo: Johner Images / Johner RF / Getty Images
2020 will always be the Corona year.
The year in which the virus spread worldwide, millions of people became infected and many thousands died.
The year in which - depending on the country - there were several shutdowns, people stayed at home and only met outside with masks.
2020 was also the year in which temperatures rose again worldwide - CO2 emissions only partially decreased due to the corona restrictions.
And last but not least, 2020 was the year in which right-wing populists like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro or Viktor Orbán often set the tone - Trump even weeks after he was voted out of office.
It was the year in which autocrats like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bluntly displayed their power.
Seldom have the western democracies been under such pressure recently as in 2020.
And yet: this year, which is coming to an end, also had its beautiful sides.
Many people grew from the crisis.
Many can - at least in retrospect - say: There were also good things.
Things that give you courage.
Twists you didn't expect.
Remembering ten happy moments in 2020:
Made a happening out of necessity
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Collective yoga training in the German embassy in India: "People who otherwise have little to do with the state"
Photo: Christoph Schult / DER SPIEGEL
With his ponytail, the German diplomat Walter Lindner has always radiated a little Jesus flair in the 30 years of his career.
In spring, at the height of the first corona wave, the 63-year-old was actually celebrated like a messiah.
Lindner, ambassador to India since 2019, organized a return campaign for several thousand Germans within a few weeks.
Lindner posted on social media where the stranded should go.
He had vacationers brought to the capital by buses from all parts of the country.
Because all the hotels were closed, Lindner quickly opened the garden of his residence.
The Germans, including many hippies, camped here until their return flight.
They brought their bongo drums, hit their mats on the lawn, and organized a collective yoga class.
When Lindner stepped onto the terrace of the residence, the guests gave a standing ovation.
"It was moving to see how people, who otherwise have little to do with the state, were grateful to us diplomats for the help," recalls the ambassador.
Christoph Schult
And suddenly there was a vaccine
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Biontech founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci: Why did the development come about so quickly?
Photo: Stefan Sämmer / imago images
HIV, borreliosis, malaria - even after decades of research there is no vaccination against some pathogens and diseases.
It's different with the new coronavirus: Less than a year after the first cases of the mysterious lung disease became known in China, a vaccine developed in Germany has proven to be safe and effective: The vaccine from the Mainz company Biontech - together with the US company Pfizer Tried and tested in a large phase III study - therefore reliably protects against Covid 19 disease.
At the beginning of December, Great Britain was the first country in the world to issue an emergency approval, and shortly before Christmas the vaccine was regularly approved in the European Union.
And: Several manufacturers and their vaccines have now completed phase III tests with good results.
Why did it develop so quickly?
Among other things, because the Sars-I virus, a virus that is genetically very similar to the new pathogen, has been known for a long time.
Starting points for a possible vaccination can thus be found quickly.
In addition, the manufacturers do not use weakened viruses for their vaccines, which have to be laboriously grown in the laboratory, but rather a genetic code for characteristic virus proteins.
That saved time.
In addition, the projects were prioritized.
The Biontech / Pfizer mRNA vaccine is the first of its class to ever hit the market.
The US company Moderna also relies on the technology.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University have developed a vector vaccine.
The next year will show how long the protection against Covid-19 created by these and other agents will last - and whether infections can also be prevented.
Julia Merlot
Triumph over populism and corona
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Election winner Jacinda Ardern: The virus is so far back that New Zealanders can celebrate again
Photo: Bloomberg / Getty Images
In a world in which the largest and most powerful states are ruled by populists and autocrats - none younger than 65, hearts flew to a woman from a small country far away in the South Pacific.
Jacinda Ardern, 40, not only managed to defend her position as Prime Minister of New Zealand - she even won a whopping absolute majority.
Even before her triumph in October, she had a large fan base beyond her home country, whom she admired for her empathic and decisive appearances after the Christchurch massacre in 2019.
At home, however, Ardern's compatriots also saw that she was struggling to keep her political promises.
In the fight against Covid-19, however, she showed leadership and pushed the virus back so far that New Zealanders have long been able to celebrate, travel in the country and go to rugby.
They thanked them on election day.
Dietmar Pieper
Only the toughest can do that
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Chris Nikic at the Ironman in Florida in July 2020: Conquered one of the toughest sports distances in the world
Photo:
Michael Reaves / Getty Images for IRONMAN
Chris Nikic started cycling when he was 15, but it was tough, he didn't get a meter at first.
The American has Down syndrome.
One consequence: he has little muscle tension - and holding a bicycle handlebar was quite difficult for him at the time.
Again and again he fell.
But Nikic didn't give up, he really wanted to ride a bike, also to make friends with his fellow men.
The sport and a goal should help him do this.
He continued to practice, six months later Nikic managed to drive 30 meters.
What for many is from one street lamp to the next was for the young American the proof that he can achieve anything in his life.
Chris Nikic is 21 today and this year he became the first person with Down syndrome to conquer one of the toughest sports distances in the world: at an Ironman in Florida - 3.8 kilometers swimming, 180 kilometers cycling, 42.195 kilometers running - came Nikic crossed the finish line after 16:46:09 hours.
But Chris Nikic is not quite there yet.
He has noted other life tasks on a whiteboard in the Nikic family's house: he wants to live in his own house, drive a car and find a woman who loves him.
Jan Göbel
Hit a nerve - leisure photo instead of business photo
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Lauren Griffiths: Left her old profile picture on LinkedIn, right her new photo
Photo: Lauren Griffiths
The world of work has changed rapidly this year.
And Lauren Griffiths, 39, made sure to be seen.
She got almost 900,000 likes on LinkedIn because she replaced her business photo with a leisure photo.
More than 30,000 people posted a comment, many promising to do the same.
Griffiths, who had never posted a post on LinkedIn before, seemed to have hit a nerve.
She was invited to talk shows such as “Good Morning America” and she also gave an interview to SPIEGEL that was widely discussed: What are glossy profile pictures actually good for?
Why don't we show ourselves as we really are?
Even if that means for many mothers and fathers in times of a pandemic: disheveled, sweaty, with wet hair and sweatpants?
And why do so many people still judge skills from looks?
Griffiths has sparked a global debate about authenticity and prejudice in the workplace.
She now wants to comment on this topic more often on LinkedIn and on her own blog.
Her current topic: Nobody should be ashamed of tears in the workplace.
Helene Endres
The comeback of the disco queens
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Kylie Minogue: The Disco Queen We Need Now
2020 was not only the year of the closed clubs, but also that of the newly opened dance floors: between mountains of dishes, hills of waste paper and Lego traps.
The year in which the figure of the disco queen was not reborn in the hallowed halls of the former New York nightclub "Studio 54", but with the help of decrepit computer speakers in the home office.
In March, when the clubs had only just closed, Dua Lipa released her album "Future Nostalgia".
"With this record," the London pop singer told SPIEGEL, "I wanted to distract people for a moment from what was happening in the world out there." Lipa did it with a sound in which Abba and Prince nodded knowingly and which made one think of a heavy eighties dance workout, see »Flashdance«.
A few months later, American Lady Gaga, who cuddled with the nineties, joined the row of 2020s disco queens, in the summer the Englishwoman Jessie Ware, who felt at home in cool funk, and in the fall the Irishwoman Róisín Murphy, who did the Times with lines like "I'll make my own happy ending" defied.
But one could not be missing.
It took the longest to arrive.
Kylie came in November.
And what did Kylie Minogue's anti-corona blues album naturally have to be called?
Exactly, "disco".
The longing for dance, sweat and intoxication with loud music can hardly be served without clubs where people get close.
Unless you try a music that is garish, that uncompromisingly invites you to dance and thus somehow seems utopian in these times.
Music that also comes across as nostalgic, so to speak homely.
Music like disco.
Jurek Skrobala
"The crisis is an opportunity for us"
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Juliane Willing and Eva Neugebauer sell groceries from farms
Photo: Franziska Evers
Juliane Willing, 31, and Eva Neugebauer, 31, have had more customers than ever since the beginning of the corona crisis.
The two founded the online farm shop »Frischepost« five years ago, and until the beginning of the year they supplied customers in Hamburg with food from farms - and now also in Berlin, Munich and the Rhine-Main area.
At first it looked anything but good for the company: "In mid-March we lost almost all corporate customers overnight - and thus 70 percent of our sales," says Juliane Willing.
It was therefore clear to both of them: They had to win more private customers.
And they succeeded.
Milk, cheese, eggs and fresh vegetables are especially popular with their customers, but so are beer, wine, pasta, flour - all those things that many people no longer want to go to the supermarket for.
Sometimes everyone in the office even had to help with packing and delivery.
»Even if we would of course have wished for other circumstances: The crisis is definitely an opportunity for us.
We assume that many end customers will now rethink their consumption and will also choose us in the long term. «
Helene Endres
The stumbling block shimmered golden
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Stolperstein von Kurt Teil, born as Kurt Henry Teiltelbaum: A dream came true for him
Photo: Katka Iken / DER SPIEGEL
"Such a stumbling block, I'd like to have that too!" Said Kurt Teil when we said goodbye to each other on his doorstep in Hamburg-Eppendorf in summer 2018.
The Jewish banker's son had lived there before he had to flee to America from the National Socialists.
Kurt Teil returned at the beginning of 1945, bombed German cities as a GI, and worked as a Nazi hunter for the US Army after the end of the war.
Kurt Teil had answered our call to witnesses: I wrote the story of this courageous, humorous man.
Accompanied him to his old apartment.
Locked it tight in my heart.
In 2020, in the darned Corona year, the time had come: Kurt Teil finally got his stumbling block.
A dream came true for him, the elderly man from southern Germany traveled to Hamburg by Flixbus and plane.
Together we marveled at the small brass plate on the sidewalk, the stumbling block shimmered golden in the autumn sun.
The 97-year-old beamed.
And I with him.
Katja Iken
The best hug of the year
»My mother, 81, lives 15 minutes on foot from me, we see each other regularly - also this Corona year.
In the past few months, however, we have always met at a distance and mostly outdoors.
I can't bear the thought that I might be infected and infect them.
So we met often, and yet never really.
Because I haven't touched my mother since March.
It was therefore good news for me that Austria recently offered rapid antigen tests for everyone.
My seven year old boys, my husband and I had our appointment ten days ago.
We were all negative, I didn't expect anything else.
I was still happy.
Because the result gave me the best present: a hug with my mother - it was the warmest of the whole year.
I went to see her with the twins that afternoon, with a bottle of punch essence and a bag of chestnuts in my pocket.
At some point we stood together and I said: ›Mom, you already know that I have to squeeze you hard now?‹ So we squeezed, maybe 30 seconds, what felt like five minutes.
It was wonderful, almost like Christmas, a moment just for us. «
Veronika Weiher, 45, from Klosterneuburg near
Vienna
, recorded by Julia Stanek
The late night director
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Late-Night-Teacher Björn Lengwenus: "What defines the heart of the school"
Photo: Ole Schwarz
The school is empty, the children are all at home: Björn Lengwenus, headmaster from Hamburg, missed his around 1,600 students in the first shutdown.
So he developed an unusual format to keep in touch with them: a late night show on YouTube.
On Monday, March 23, 2020, it went on air for the first time at 10 p.m.
"After a week in the shutdown, it was clear that the digital lessons were working well," he later told SPIEGEL.
"But what defines the heart of the school was missing: the feeling of being a large community."
It was precisely this community that Lengwenus wanted to create virtually during the school closings in the spring - with a "digital playground," as he says.
To do this, à la Harald Schmidt, he sat at a desk in a television studio that had been put together in a hurry and got started, went from the headmaster to the moderator, spoke to his students, told them how he was doing in the shutdown, had clips ready, including from Colleagues.
With his around 15-minute clips, Lengwenus created warmth and closeness - over the Internet.
Both arrived.
The show received several tens of thousands of views.
Gradually, more and more students sent in videos for the show.
"That made us really strong," says Lengwenus.
The headmaster went on air 28 times in the spring.
In November he received the Social Design Award from SPIEGEL Wissen for his work.
Silke Fokken
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