AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

Germany’s Changing Culture of Remembrance

New Normative and Empirical Debates Germany’s culture of remembrance of the Holocaust has received renewed attention in recent years. Only very few witnesses and survivors are still with us, and …

Making Sense of Berlin’s Extraordinary Election

A glorious winner, many losers, and the politics of coalition building On November 16, 2022, the Constitutional Court of the city-state Berlin judged that the 2021 state-level parliamentary election had …

Alexander Ritzmann, DAAD/AGI Research Fellow

AGI is pleased to welcome Alexander Ritzmann as a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from March to June 2023. He has been working on the promotion of liberal democracy and human rights …

AGI Profiles: Andreas Michaelis

State Secretary, Federal Foreign Office Andreas Michaelis currently serves as a state secretary in the German Federal Foreign Office, a position he has held since January 2022. Over the course …

Episode 79: Germany’s Public Health Care System

On this episode of The Zeitgeist, AGI president Jeff Rathke and Dr. Christine Arentz, Professor for Health Economics at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, discuss Germany’s public health …

Shaping Foreign Policy

Germany’s “Feminist” Approach to the War on Ukraine The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Government. “As long as …

No Vodka for Lunch

Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy as Part of the Zeitenwende Reports about German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s first visit to Moscow on January 18, 2022, recorded that she told Russian foreign …

The Not-so-Sudden Death of Weimar Democracy

January 30, 1933, the day that Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany—and a day whose 90th anniversary we marked last month—was …

The Evolution of German Citizenship Law

Over the past three decades, German citizenship law has evolved from a largely jus sanguinis (“right of blood”) system with a high bar for naturalization to something closer to jus …

Advocating for the Local Level

Local Government Associations in Germany and the United States In recent years, politics in Germany and the United States were affected by enormous global challenges and crises, such as the …

Berlin Votes… Again

Observers of German politics often lament the exaggerated attention devoted to state (Land) elections—especially those that do not coincide with a national election. Such regional polls are interpreted as a …

AGI Profiles: Boris Pistorius

Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius currently serves as the German Federal Minister of Defense. Appointed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on January 17, 2023, Pistorius succeeded Christine Lambrecht following her …