How to get an internship in first year?

@supernova777 thanks for that info

It's really simple to start searching for one actually: I searched on the university's and any attached institution's websites for interesting departments which already had upper-year internship vacancies and simply sent an email to the lead professors asking if they happened to need someone with interests x and skills y.
I sent 3 emails, spent some time with 2 departments, and ended up in France for five weeks assisting quite some niche research. Free travel, all-inclusive stay in the professor's farm together with the team, and nice sightseeing.
Don't expect anything in return except for a good resume entry/experience doing something you are actually interested in: if there's one thing that professors like, it's free/cheap enthousiastic labor!

Companies are a whole different story I think, because they need to appoint valuable resources to even try and get you up and running. So those might need some extra convincing...

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Check with your school if they can help. At least they can tell you companies that have previously shown interest in internships or other work with students.

I think you’d have very low success contacting companies on your own because many want a school as a middleman.

@Bibbit Yeah, it’s hard to convince companies. Where I work view early internships as a cost. It’s hard to come up with appropriate tasks. Even when we’ve had requests from students saying ”There must be simple tasks you want done. I’d happily do insignificant mindless grunt work” - we kinda don’t want to present the image that interning at us would be dull work. And we know the team couldn’t stop ourselves from getting involved and helping out.