WThe 2018 Christian Democratic Union leadership election took place during the party's 31st Congress in Hamburg at the Messehallen convention center on 7–8 December following Angela Merkel's decision in October 2018 not to stand for party leader at the 2018 party conference following the party's bad performance in the 2018 Hessian state election and the party's consistently low numbers in national polls.
WOn 31 December 2018 and 1 January 2019, a car was intentionally driven into crowds of people in the cities of Bottrop and Essen in Germany, injuring ten people. First media reports suspected a terrorist background. Later, the perpetrator was admitted to psychiatry and a surveyor certified that he is probably not guilty by reason of mental disease.
WStorm Eleanor was an extratropical cyclone and European windstorm that affected Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Benelux, Germany, Austria and Switzerland on the 2–3 January 2018. The storm caused extensive damage and traffic disruption. It was given the name Eleanor by Met Éireann and the UK Met Office, while the Free University of Berlin named the low pressure Burglind.
WThe Day X plot refers to an alleged conspiracy by soldiers of the Kommando Spezialkräfte of Germany's Bundeswehr in 2017. According to media reports, the objective of the operation was the assassination of Die Linke party leader Dietmar Bartsch and other left-leaning politicians. Information about the plot came to law enforcement attention in 2017 during the investigation of a different alleged plot by German military officers to assassinate the President of Germany. The planned killings were made public in November 2018.
WEnde Gelände 2018 were a series of events of a mass movement for climate justice in the Rhenish lignite mining area in Germany. The non-violent direct action civil disobedience events were targeted against coal-based power generation through RWE Power AG and demanded the "immediate fossil fuel phase-out" based on climate justice and climate change mitigation.
WEu:CROPIS was a life science satellite developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and intended to investigate the possibility of growing plants in different levels of gravity, such as that of the Moon and Mars, as a sustainable food source using human urine for moisture and as the source of fixed nitrogen.
WStorm David was a compact but deadly European windstorm that heavily affected the British Isles, France, Benelux, Central Europe, Northern Italy, Poland and parts of Eastern Europe in early 2018 with widespread hurricane-force gusts and severe snowfall, creating blizzard conditions in some areas. The storm caused extensive damage and traffic disruption. It was given the name David by Météo France while the FUB named it Friederike.