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Dictatorship & Information: Autocratic Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China
"I want to start off with a simple but important observation about the role of information in any political system…democratic or not," is how Martin Dimitrov, a spring 2012 Axel Springer Fellow and associate professor of political science at Tulane University, tantalized the audience at his February 16 lecture. "Decision-makers value information because it reduces their... read more >>
Head to Head in Stuttgart
The American Academy in Berlin and the Literaturhaus Stuttgart are proud to present the German-American series "Head to Head" at the Literaturhaus Stuttgart. In the series, which begins on March 5, a renowned American scholar or writer meets with the German expert of his or her choosing to discuss a topic germane to art, literature... read more >>
Power and Legitimacy: Europe and the Nation State
The convulsions of the last decade have profoundly disoriented European integration scholarship, and the ongoing European crisis has severely challenged the very idea of the supranational European Union. As we continue to witness, economic and political integration has always entailed "more Europe," but it has never entailed autonomous democratic and constitutional legitimacy. For... read more >>
The Munich Security Conference Supplement
The 48th Munich Security Conference will take place at the Bayerische Hof in Munich from February 3rd to 5th, attracting a smattering of the world's top strategic defense thinkers and policy makers to discuss the most pressing topics confronting the defense policy world.
The 2012... read more >>
The American Academy in Berlin Launches New Website
The American Academy in Berlin re-launched its website after six months of close collaboration with the talented programmers and designers of the Berlin-based agency Compuccino. Over the last few years, the Academy's online presence has become an increasingly important aspect of the Academy's public programming and outreach. With the addition of online... read more >>
What Germans Do Not Understand about America
One day after President Obama's State of the Union address, Philip D. Murphy, the US Ambassador to Germany, was at the American Academy to deliver a lively and wide-ranging lecture on "What Germans Do Not Understand about America." Americans are at root an optimistic people, Murphy noted, regardless of the nation's current economic condition. Most Americans, now as before, he said,... read more >>
Announcing the Spring 2012 Fellows
A festive January 17 evening welcomed the spring 2012 Berlin Prize Fellows to their semester on the Wannsee. Opening remarks were delivered by the United States Ambassador to Germany, Philip D. Murphy, and the welcoming talk by Klaus Reichert, honorary president of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in Darmstadt. The American Academy in Berlin is proud to welcome the following... read more >>
Voices in the Dream Palace: Dramatic Language in Pre-Code Movies
The films made during the half decade between 1929-1934 mark the triumph of the talking picture format, which began in 1927 with Al Jolson's Jazz Singer. Films of the early talkie era were the product of a culture ravaged by the Depression, a growing sense of liberated cynicism, and, most importantly for Geoffrey O'Brien, a Bosch Fellow at the Academy, an environment prior to the enforcement... read more >>
Kindness: A Novel in Progress
Prize-winning, bestselling author Adam Haslett (You Are Not A Stranger Here; Union Atlantic) is not yet finished with the novel he has been working on while at the Academy this fall as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in Fiction. The title of his budding book, Kindness, reflects not only an overarching narrative theme, but as well the author's willingness to share a few... read more >>
Memorial Mania!
Ten years after 9/11, and six years after the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Berlin, the American Academy in Berlin held a symposium to deliberate "the memorial" as a form of memory culture and as a site of clashing political strategies. Questions by a panel of distinguished experts included, Does a memorial heed our changing perceptions of “the event” over time, or... read more >>