Germany Archives - Public Seminar

Germany, Genocide, and Gaza

Why, critics ask, aren’t Germans forcefully condemning Israeli action in Gaza and the West Bank as genocide?

March 6, 2024 • by Andrew I. Port

What about German responses to the claim that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians constitute genocide? Many Germans are understandably wary to use that charged term when it comes to the Middle East because of their own history—the same reason why German officials have kept a tight rein on pro-Palestinian demonstrations ...

Genocide

Asia’s Auschwitz

An excerpt from Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust

May 22, 2023 • by Andrew I. Port

In an excerpt from Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, Andrew I. Port examines German responses to genocide in Cambodia....

COVID-19

Habermas on the Legitimacy of Lockdown

Habermas argued that the state’s duty to protect life outweighed all individual rights. His critics accused him of authoritarianism.

February 23, 2022 • by Peter J. Verovšek

Jürgen Habermas recently argued that the pandemic measures of the German government hadn’t gone far enough. To weigh the state’s duty to protect life against other rights and freedoms was unconstitutional, he warned. In the ensuing controversy, critics accused him of authoritarianism. ...

Europe & Central Asia

Goodbye Merkel, Hello … Who?

The German election and what’s to come

September 29, 2021 • by Nicolas Allié

One thing is clear about the 2021 German election: it is going to be consequential. Long-time chancellor and ostensible champion of democratic values, Angela Merkel, is leaving after 16 years in office. The consequences of this action are still uncertain. Germany’s electoral system is unique. Voters elect representatives to the German parliament, or Bundestag, and they cast two votes. The first is for who will represent ...

History

Why Weimar is an Imperfect Mirror

Its polarized culture reinforced the destructive energy of an increasingly polarized politics

April 8, 2021 • by Helmut W. Smith

"It would be too much to say that the Weimar Republic fell to Nazism because of its bifurcated culture. But the high culture of Weimar was not a supporting pillar of democracy either. Instead, Weimar’s polarized culture reinforced the destructive energy of its increasingly polarized politics. " - Helmut W. ...

Democracy

Can The Republican Party Successfully Orbanify the U.S.?

Some comparative reflections on the exceptional vulnerability of American democracy

March 23, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This past year the U.S. experienced a transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. It was not a peaceful transfer of power. On January 6, a large and angry mob descended on the U.S. Capitol to “Stop the Steal” by obstructing the constitutionally mandated certification by Congress of the ...

Democracy

Ghosts of Weimar

Is factual accuracy even the point when it comes to the discourse of antifascism?

October 15, 2020 • by Anton Shekhovtsov

Alexander Yanov, the emigré historian of Russia and Russian nationalism, was critical of major Western approaches towards post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. He criticized the "devious simplicity" of the Western logic holding that, because a non-market Russia had been the West’s sworn enemy, a free-market Russia would become its partner. ...

Activism

Varieties of Antifascism

Russian notes towards a global debate

October 15, 2020 • by Mischa Gabowitsch

_____ A question may bе raised as to why, if we wish to explore new resources for combating fascism, we do not give as much attention to the "potential antifascist." The answer is that we do study trends that stand in opposition to fascism, but we do not conceive that they ...

Democracy

The Right Terror Threatens Us All

A Call to Uncover Right Extremist Networks In Germany

November 6, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit and Irit Dekel

The murder, on Yom Kippur (October 10th, 2019), of two German citizens in Halle, one outside the synagogue that was the perpetrator’s initial target and another by a nearby Döner bistro, echoed other terror attacks on minorities. These are always described in the German media as acts of an individual ...

Feature

The New Queer

Aesthetics of the Esoteric Left and Virtual Materialisms

August 19, 2019 • by Luce deLire

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots inspired cultural actors in Berlin and elsewhere to take stock. June 2019 has seen Puqs in Love at Gorki theater, The Present is Not Enough at Hebbel am Ufer Theater (HAU), the Queer Alms conference at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and other events. I used the occasion to investigate contemporary 'Queer ...

Feature

The Universal Memoir: An Interview with Nora Krug

The NBCC autobiography award winner on Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

May 5, 2019 • by J.P. Apruzzese

In March, The New School hosted this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards, which honor literature published in the United States in the previous year. The awards are presented in six categories -- autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry -- and are the only U.S. literary awards chosen by critics themselves. MFA ...

The Universal Memoir: An Interview with Nora Krug

Feature

A Homage to the Victims of Germany’s Neo-Nazis

Author Esther Dischereit laments the deaths of Turkish immigrants murdered by a German terrorist cell

March 3, 2019 • by Emilia Otte

Between 2000 and 2007, a Neo-Nazi terrorist cell murdered ten people across Germany. Even though eight of the victims were Turkish immigrants, the state didn’t initially consider the deaths to be racially motivated. It wasn’t until 2011, when two of the members staged a failed bank robbery, that the police forces connected the ...

Germany

Germany, Genocide, and Gaza

Why, critics ask, aren’t Germans forcefully condemning Israeli action in Gaza and the West Bank as genocide?

Asia’s Auschwitz

An excerpt from Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust

Habermas on the Legitimacy of Lockdown

Habermas argued that the state’s duty to protect life outweighed all individual rights. His critics accused him of authoritarianism.

Goodbye Merkel, Hello … Who?

The German election and what’s to come

Why Weimar is an Imperfect Mirror

Its polarized culture reinforced the destructive energy of an increasingly polarized politics

Can The Republican Party Successfully Orbanify the U.S.?

Some comparative reflections on the exceptional vulnerability of American democracy

Ghosts of Weimar

Is factual accuracy even the point when it comes to the discourse of antifascism?

Varieties of Antifascism

Russian notes towards a global debate

The Right Terror Threatens Us All

A Call to Uncover Right Extremist Networks In Germany

The New Queer

Aesthetics of the Esoteric Left and Virtual Materialisms

The Universal Memoir: An Interview with Nora Krug

The NBCC autobiography award winner on Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

A Homage to the Victims of Germany’s Neo-Nazis

Author Esther Dischereit laments the deaths of Turkish immigrants murdered by a German terrorist cell

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