As a foreign correspondent in Germany, Jonathan Carr, who has died in Königswinter, near Bonn, at the age of 66, never lost his air of quintessential Englishness. Yet he dedicated his life to explaining the triumphs and contradictions of the land of his adoption to the outside world.

Over a period of almost three decades he worked alternately for both the Financial Times and The Economist, and was based in Bonn and Frankfurt. However, he resisted all attempts to make him move to Berlin when it became the capital of a united Germany.