AGI

Eric Langenbacher

Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program

Dr. Eric Langenbacher is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AGI.

Dr. Langenbacher studied in Canada before completing his PhD in Georgetown University’s Government Department in 2002. His research interests include collective memory, political culture, and electoral politics in Germany and Europe. Recent publications include the edited volumes Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (2019), The Merkel Republic: The 2013 Bundestag Election and its Consequences (2015), Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Ruth Wittlinger and Bill Niven, 2013), Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations (co-edited with Yossi Shain, 2010), and From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification (co-edited with Jeffrey J. Anderson, 2010). With David Conradt, he is also the author of The German Polity, 10th and 11th edition (2013, 2017).

Dr. Langenbacher remains affiliated with Georgetown University as Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government. He has also taught at George Washington University, Washington College, The University of Navarre, and the Universidad Nacional de General San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has given talks across the world. He was selected Faculty Member of the Year by the School of Foreign Service in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1999-2000 and the Hopper Memorial Fellowship at Georgetown in 2000-2001. Since 2005, he has also been Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Langenbacher has also planned and run dozens of short programs for groups from abroad, as well as for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense on a variety of topics pertaining to American and comparative politics, business, culture, and public policy.

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elangenbacher@aicgs.org

Recent Content

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With the Chancellor Candidates Selected, the Election Campaign Heats Up

Postwar German politics has been characterized by long periods of stability associated with dominant chancellors (Adenauer, Kohl, Merkel, Brandt/Schmidt) followed by a shorter period of upheaval and transition (Erhard/Kiesinger, Schröder), …

Episode 40: National Bellwethers for the German Federal Election?

The March 14 elections for state legislatures in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate kicked off an electoral marathon that will culminate in the September 26 German federal election, the …

Episode 39: Revitalizing Transatlantic Power

President Joe Biden has made rebuilding the transatlantic partnership a focus of his administration after four years of frosty relations between Europe and the United States. One of the most …

Germany’s Memory Culture and the Alternative for Germany

Issue Brief 62 For decades, the dominant narrative about the evolution of collective memory in the Federal Republic of Germany has been that after several decades of silence, evasion, and …

Episode 38: Lessons for Dealing with Right-Wing Extremism in the United States and Germany

Right-wing extremism has been on the rise around the world. The January 6, 2021 insurrection that attached the U.S. capital and the August 2020 protest in Berlin which breached the …

The 2021 Bundestag Election Year

One of the most consequential German elections in memory will take place on September 26, 2021, when a new Bundestag, a new coalition government, and a new chancellor will be …

On the Passing of a German Generation

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my “Nazi aunt” (actually a great aunt) as I called her. Born a century ago in 1920 in northern Bavaria, Leni was a …

The 2020 U.S. Elections: Initial Reactions

With the 2020 U.S. presidential election now called for Joe Biden, the world has witnessed the inner strength of a democratic system: the ability to self-correct, alter course, and peacefully …

Looking Back at German Reunification Thirty Years Later

Germans have long contrasted the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 with the much more sober formal reunification of East and West Germany in October 1990. The fall …

The Anticlimactic Opening of the Humboldt Forum

December will witness one of Germany’s (actually, Europe’s) biggest cultural events in at least a decade: the opening of a massive new museum and cultural complex in the heart of …