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 …
Martin Leiner, DAAD/AGI Research Fellow
AGI is pleased to welcome Dr. Martin Leiner as a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to November 2021. Martin Leiner is Professor for Protestant Theology and Ethics at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. …
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Alliance Relations and Berlin
Berlin posed the worst kind of alliance problem. Lying 100 miles inside East German territory, surrounded by 124 Soviet and East German divisions, Berlin was indefensible by the West. General …
The Berlin Wall
Sixty Years Since its Construction Sixty years ago on August 13, East German leader Walter Ulbricht tried to save his regime by closing off the escape route to West Berlin. …
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 …
Lily Gardner Feldman on Reparations as Part of Reconciliation
AGI Senior Fellow Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman recently spoke with Quartz about the German experience of confronting the past. The article notes, “If the German example can teach it anything, …
The Central Council of Jews in Germany: A Success Story Against All Odds
The Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) turned seventy this summer. Founded in Frankfurt in July 1950, the Central Council represents the interest of the …
Lucky Soldiers
Part Four of Rubble Child’s World: Stories from Bremen’s Ruins Introduction George H. Jordan, Jr. did not like the movie Commando.[1] He made this clear to me as the Arnold …
Up from the Cellars
Part Three of Rubble Child’s World: Stories from Bremen’s Ruins Introduction In the Introduction to her outstanding work of oral history of German women who lived during the Second World …
