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.
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The 2026 State Elections: AGI Expert Analysis in the Media

In fall 2026, first-place finishes for the far-right and far-left in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin shook up German politics. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) will likely form …

Episode 156: State Election Aftershocks

Regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin saw successes for the far-right Alternative for Germany and far-left Die Linke and “disaster” for the mainstream parties. The episode of The Zeitgeist …

One of 83 Million

Last week, two sports figures offered very different answers to a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to stand with your country? In Washington, Capitals hockey legend Alexander Ovechkin …

Change at All Costs

Election Impressions from Saxony-Anhalt At 5:59 pm on Sunday, September 6, the anticipation in the whimsical restaurant tucked inside Magdeburg’s historic Millennium Tower was palpable. With all screens turned to …

The Unloved Chancellor

Following the results of the recent Landtag elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the press is already preparing Friedrich Merz’s political obituary. While he may be responsible for some of the discontent and …

AGI Profiles: Kai Wegner

​Mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner, Berlin’s first conservative mayor in twenty-two years, initially emerged as the figure who could restore the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) position in Berlin. Yet after …

The Language of Eastern Resentment

Of the three eastern German states I was responsible for as U.S. Consul General in Leipzig, Saxony-Anhalt always struck me as perhaps the most distinctly eastern. It was also a …

He Inherited Freedom. Does He Believe It Is His?

At the risk of dating myself, I remember a very different mood among young people in post-communist Europe. I was a student in Prague in 1994, five years after the …

AGI Profiles: Alois Rainer

Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Regional Identity Alois Rainer is a member of the Bundestag from Straubing, Bavaria, and serves as Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Regional Identity (Bundesminister für …

“Dear Occupants of Dohrmannstrasse 1”

A House, a Stream, and Two Telephones Looking back, Gary Sternberg could not believe he did it. He simply had been compelled to do so. On August 5, 2019, he …