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Free wireless Internet and public transport; voting rights for over-14s: just some of the policies of the Pirate Party, which Sunday spectacularly won its first seats in a German state parliament.

Hailed by mass circulation daily Bild as an “election sensation”, the party clinched around nine per cent of the vote in Sunday’s regional poll in Berlin, which was won by the Social Democrats and their popular mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

The Pirates, a youth movement with origins in Scandinavia and now active in around 20 countries, has been in Germany for five years and is beginning to shed its image as a “party for geeks.”

The election win has thrust the party, and its leader, into the limelight.

“From IT-nerd to full-time politician,” said the Financial Times Deutschland online edition introducing a profile of Andreas Baum, the head of the group.

Its supporters and leaders are young and well-educated – most of those who voted for the party were under 30, according to an election analysis by television channel ZDF.

“Ask your children why you should vote for the Pirates,” runs one of its election posters. “We have the questions, you have the answers,” says another.

33-year-old telecoms engineer Baum, who was chosen by lot, told ZDF after the results: “We’re going to get to work ... people will hear from us, of that you can be sure.”

“Our grace period is over,” Matthias Schrade, another senior member told AFP after the results. “Now we have to show that we want to get things moving,” added Schrade, one of around 1,000 Pirates gathered in the grungy Berlin district of Kreuzberg to celebrate the results.

The party can expect to secure around 15 seats in the 130-seat Berlin regional parliament, according to initial calculations.

Campaigning mainly via the Internet, the Pirates spent less than a quarter of the €1.7 million shelled out by the victorious SPD party.

Their manifesto can be summed up in one word: Transparency.

“We want to make public all data, all administrative procedures,” said Martin Delius, a 27-year-old IT engineer.

On their online editions, major German dailies focused nearly as much on the Pirates as the winners of the election.

“The election success in Berlin will give the Pirates a powerful tailwind,” commented the Freie Presse.

“If the political rising stars manage to sail nicely with the wind and get competent people at the wheel, then (Sunday’s) victory may be more than just a warning shot,” the paper added.

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Lufthansa pilots have shot down a rule which forced them to retire at 60, and can now continue to fly until they are 65, with a ruling from the European Court of Justice which said anything else would be discrimination.

Three pilots who were forced out of the cockpit at 60 challenged an agreement made between Germany’s national carrier and trade unions, which will now have to be renegotiated.

This will also bring the airline into line with international standards, where the trend has been to raise retirement ages in recent years.

The three plaintiffs had argued that they were, “fit and competent and would like to fly.” The court ruled that not allowing them in the air if they were healthy and capable of doing their jobs, could be considered discrimination.

For many years, pilots were forced to retire from airlines when they reach 60, due mostly to health concerns. But older pilots have been pushing airlines and regulators to allow them to continue flying until they reach 65.

Older pilots can make €200,000 a year, so the suspicion is that airlines are keen to get them to retire to make way for younger, cheaper pilots. Health is also a concern – and currently pilots over the age of 60 are always assigned a younger co-pilot in the cockpit.

“The probability of getting a heart attack or serious injury increases with age,” said Jörg Handwerg, spokesman for the pilots’ association Cockpit, although he had no statistics on accidents.

Yet a 2007 study of 118 pilots from Stanford University came to a different result, showing older pilots outperformed their younger colleagues.

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An English-speaking teenager who walked out of the forest near Berlin told police he had been living in the woods for five years with his father, but had no idea who he was or where he came from.

Authorities have launched a Europe-wide appeal for information about the boy, who is somewhere between 16 and 18 years old, and says his name is Ray.

“We have sent appeals for help to all European countries via Interpol. The boy speaks English and a little German but we really have no idea where he comes from,” Michael Maaß, spokesman for the Berlin police told The Local on Friday.

The boy emerged from the woods on September 5, and said he had been living wild with his father for about five years.

The pair had left civilisation when his mother, who the boy said was called Doreen, died. The boy said he and his father, who he said was called Ryan, had not set up a home but had kept moving.

They had slept in a tent and huts they found in the woods, he told them.

Maaß said the boy had told youth workers he could remember nothing about where he came from, nor anything much more than his own first name.

Two weeks ago he found his father had died, and buried him in a shallow grave which he covered with stones, he told them.

“His father had told him to look at his compass and go north, if anything should happen. And this is apparently what he did, walking for two weeks before reaching Berlin,” said Maaß.

“There he found a youth emergency centre and walked in. We have never seen anything like it. We have no evidence to contradict what he has told our colleagues at the youth services, although we are still investigating, and very much want to find out who he is.”

He said Berlin police would have to enlist the help of colleagues in Brandenburg and possibly other neighbouring states. “I don’t know if you can walk through Brandenburg in two weeks,” said Maaß.

He said the boy had been medically examined and was physically healthy, while there was nothing to suggest he was the victim of any kind of abuse or violence.

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