Hyperinflation Weimar
One hundred years ago, the Weimar inflation reached its peak. It remains Germany’s greatest economic crisis and has heavily shaped the history of the Federal Republic. Within a few months …
Publication Preview: The German-Israeli Special Relationship
In the coming weeks, the American-German Institute will publish “The German-Israeli Special Relationship: A Chronicle of Four Decades, 1983-2023” from Senior Fellow Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman. In light of the …
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 …
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 …
Partisan Divides and Popular Fronts
We are pleased to inaugurate the AGI 40th Anniversary series with the following article, which coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power (Machtergreifung) when Hitler was appointed chancellor …
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Reparations Reprise
Poland Presses a Perceived Advantage The leader of Poland’s governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, has escalated his demand for compensation from Germany for the World War …
The Ngonnso Statue
Germany Moves Forward by Facing its Past If you have been to an ethnological museum, you might be familiar with walking through exhibits titled “Africa” or “Oceania” and seeing a …
Documenta 15 and Anti-Semitism
Documenta 15: Curating the Meta-Collective, Translocating Art, and Anti-Semitism Artist collectives have gained heightened visibility in the twenty-first century, not only as a platform for virtual collaborations but also as …
The Anti-Semitism Scandal at Documenta 15
Documenta is one of the highest-profile contemporary art exhibitions in the world. Dating back to 1955, the exhibition runs for several summer months in and around the small central German …
AGI Profiles: Claudia Roth
Commissioner to the Federal Government for Culture and Media In 2021, Claudia Roth was appointed Commissioner to the Federal Government for Culture and Media (Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und …
Language of Remembrance
Over the last few years, American society has been entrenched in a debate about how to remember the past. Demonstrations calling for the removal of Confederate statues and the backlash …
Catherine the Great and the Limits of German Memory Culture
Catherine the Great. Yes, the eighteenth-century Russian Czarina, who was originally German, is back in the news. As reported by Katrin Bennhold in the New York Times, the former chair …
On the Possibilities and Pitfalls of German Holocaust Memory Today
In the past week, we marked the eightieth anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi bureaucrats coordinated the murder of millions of European Jews in a beautiful villa outside …
Another Unmasterable Past?
The Humboldt Forum Part II As I wrote over a year ago, the new museum and cultural complex in central Berlin, the Humboldt Forum, has gradually opened since late 2020 …
