When the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to the United States in 1930, he was a rising academic star who had illuminated Berlin with his intellectual prowess. At age 24 he had already completed two doctoral dissertations, the first of which was on the entire history of German transcendental idealism, starting with Schleiermacher, Fichte, and Kant, and running up through the Hegelians. Bonhoeffer was on his way to do postgraduate work in New York City at the Union Theological Seminary, but he didn't have high hopes for American Protestant theology.

"This challenge is certainly global," says former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker concerning the future of international financial regulation, "but much depends on our two countries working together to solve the problem." Volcker, now at the helm of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, spoke on March 6 at the Federal Presidential residence, Schloss Bellevue, to an audience of distinguished guests -- diplomats, bankers, and fiscal policy legislators -- from across Europe and the United States. The Academy's Spring 2010 Richard von Weizsäcker Distinguished Visitor, Volcker was introduced by German Federal President Horst Köhler and by Peter Y. Solmssen, an Academy Trustee on the management board of Siemens AG, who delivered remarks on the Academy's behalf. Following his talk, Volcker sat down for an in-depth discussion with Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, Jürgen Fitschen of Deutsche Bank, and Ambassador John Kornblum, a Trustee of the American Academy in Berlin, who moderated. 

India it is now unquestionably the world's innovation hub, says the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, holding that India is a near-future superpower. The Bush Administration, too, was clear about its wish to help India into superpower status during the twenty-first century; and the Obama Administration seems set to continue to policy, hosting Manmohan Singh, India's Prime Minister, as the first guest of an official State Dinner. Indeed, the numbers point in the same direction: the GDP of the Indian economy, Goldman Sachs analyses detail, will surpass that of the United States before middle of the century. So how did all of this happen -- and so fast? How has India risen from a class-riddled, colonized, overcrowded nation to become one of the rising stars of the global economy? "India's ambitions have been always been immodest," says Sunil Khilnani, the Academy's inaugural Metro Fellow and Director of the South Asia Studies program at the Johns Hopkins University. 

Donald Runnicles was in Berlin three years ago to conduct Richard Wagner's Ring cycle. Shortly thereafter, having once again given impressive life to the performance in the mecca of world opera, he was asked to become General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper -- which he did, on September 1, 2009. Pamela Rosenberg also came to Berlin to pursue its musical power, landing as the esteemed Managing Director of the Berlin Philharmonic. She sat down with Runnicles to discuss the conductor's fascinating journey through opera houses across Germany over the decades. It all began, Runnicles notes, when he was a schoolboy in Edinburgh, Scotland, as he heard Wagner for the first time.

Click here to watch the film of Runnicles and Rosenberg in discussion. 

Frank Langella, a Golden Globe and Tony-award winning actor of stage and screen, stopped by the American Academy in Berlin on the evening of February 25 for an informal talk with Executive Director Gary Smith. Langella, currently filming in Berlin, was nominated for an Oscar for his role as President Richard Nixon in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon, directed by Ron Howard and written by Peter Morgan. The evening discussion began with Langella speaking about his time working with Academy alumnus Arthur Miller and then wove into a dazzling discussion about acting, craft, and the apparent ease of great art.

Click here to watch a video of the evening talk. 

We think of the artists Vesari, Picasso, and Duchamp as collectors par excellence, as amassing an expansive body of objects from around the world. But when did artists first become collectors? This question interests art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith, an expert in the German Renaissance and Anna-Maria Kellen fellow at the American Academy. Smith wonders, generally, how the collections that artists amass have influenced their work -- and, in particular, how the Renaissance master Albrecht Durer's collection, much of which he carefully annotated, influenced his sprawling oevre of drawings, prints, and paintings.

"We human beings are the youngest species in the evolutionary scheme of things," notes Jeremy Rifkin, author, political adviser, and founder of the Foundation of Economic Trends. Speaking on February 11 at the Deutsche Telekom's Berlin Representative Office and introduced by former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rifkin sounded a loud emergency siren of just how far global warming could -- and very likely will -- go by century's end: an increase of six degrees celsius. Paraphrasing NASA's chief climatologist, James E. Hansen: "It's the end of human civilization as we know it."

A translator of Musil, Kafka, Goethe, and Heine, Spring 2010 Holtzbrinck Fellow Peter Wortsman gives a stirring account of his life and activities as a moderator of languages. "Hello Berlin!" he stirringly yelped to open the evening, echoing Charles Bukowski's geographically anachronistic greeting at St. Mark's Chuch in Manhattan years ago. "I think of Berlin not as a proper noun," Wortsman said, "but, like New York, as a proper verb, forever boomeranging -- or Berlining -- into something new."

The US and German Nuclear Non-Proliferation Quartets arrived at the American Academy in Berlin on the evening of February 3 for a historic discussion about the future of global nuclear-arms reduction. The American Quartet is comprised of the Hon. Henry A. Kissinger, former Secretary of State and founder, Kissinger Associates; Hon. Samuel A. Nunn, former US Senator (D-GA) and Co-Chairman, Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI); Hon. William J. Perry, former US Secretary of Defense and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and the Hon. George P. Shultz, former US Secretary of State and Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution. Their German counterparts: The Hon. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Federal Foreign Minister; Hon. Helmut Schmidt, Co-Publisher of Die Zeit and former Federal Chancellor; Hon. Richard von Weizsäcker, former Federal President; and the Hon. Egon Bahr, former Federal Minister for Special Affairs. The evening, moderated by Stefan Kornelius, Foreign Policy Editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung, was cosponsored with NTI, a non-profit organization with a mission to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and to work to build the trust, transparency, and security which are preconditions to the ultimate fulfillment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s goals and ambitions. NTI is co-chaired by Ted Turner and Sam Nunn.

John B. Bellinger III, former legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and a major instrument in bringing the United States into the international fold during the second Bush administration, is concerned with how the Obama administration has fared in the realm of international law after its first year: Has it kept the promises it made regarding closing Guantanamo and ending detentions? Has it moved closer to joining the International Criminal Court? Bellinger opened the evening talk – attended by a smattering of Berlin’s legal minds and diplomats – by noting that much credit due the second Bush administration has been overlooked: “How many international treaties were pushed through the Senate during the last two years of the Bush administration?” Bellinger asked. “Ninety.”