German bond yields start to rise

Germany just sold a 30-year bond with an average yield of 1.94%. Here's the chart of actual yields paid in bond auctions:

source

As recently as Jan 2021, yields were negative (investors were paying yields to the German government, in addition to lending them money). Why would investors do that? Because the European Central Bank was intervening heavily in the secondary market - the buyer of the bond would turn round and sell it to the ECB for a profit, and then the ECB was the one holding a negative yielding bond.

The ECB is no longer intervening, so yields are climbing fast. As you can see from the graph they're the highest since May 2014.

If German debt and inflation continue to climb, so will bond yields.