upcoming: Thursday, March 11, 2010, 8:00 pm
Humanities
Ellen Maria Gorrissen Lecture
From the Phraseological to the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and America, 1930-1931
Charles Marsh
Professor of Religious Studies, Virginia
Published Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Economics

Outlook for Financial Regulation

The chair of President Obama's Economic Recovery Board, Paul Volcker, addresses new challenges facing financial regulation and what the United States can do to help prevent future crises in capital markets.

"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. 

Paul Volcker speaking at Schloss Bellevue on March 6, 2010 as the Richard von Weizsäcker Distinguished Visitor of the American Academy in Berlin. Photo: Hans Glave
Published Thursday, March 4, 2010
Politics

The Rise of India in a Changing World

Sunil Khilnani, the Academy's inaugural Metro Fellow, assesses how India rose from a colonized, class-bound society to become one of the most successful democracies on the planet.

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. 

Published Thursday, March 4, 2010
Arts and Culture

A Conversation with Donald Runnicles

The General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin discusses his path to the German capital and a charmed life in music.

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. 

Published Friday, February 26, 2010
Arts and Culture

A Conversation with Frank Langella

In conjunction with the United States Embassy, actor Frank Langella visited the Academy to discuss the stage, the screen, and his durable life on both.

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.

Actor Frank Langella at the American Academy in Berlin on February 25, 2010. Photo: Peiper
Published Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Humanities

Dürer as Collector

Albrecht Dürer was one of the most prolific and masterful artists of the northern Renaissance. Less known is that he was also, says art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith, an avid and discerning collector of art and artifact.

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.

Published Friday, February 12, 2010
Social Sciences

The Empathic Civilization

Jeremy Rifkin discusses how we get from a world of pure economic and national self-interest to a set of conditions better suited for sustainable -- and shared -- global growth and environmental protection.

"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."

Published Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Humanities

Talking in Tongues

Translator and Holtzbrinck Fellow Peter Wortsman interprets the syntax of living between languages.

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."

Published Thursday, February 4, 2010
Politics

Toward A World Free of Nuclear Weapons

The American and German Nuclear Non-Proliferation Quartets meet at the Hans Arnhold Center for a historic discussion about the way forward for global nuclear disarmament.

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.

Published Friday, January 29, 2010
Law

The Obama Administration and International Law

What has the Obama Administration achieved in the realm of international law, one year into its term? Not enough, says a former Bush Administration legal adviser.

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.”

John B. Bellinger III at the American Academy on January 28, 2010.
Published Thursday, January 28, 2010
Humanities

Presentation of the Spring 2010 Fellows

A new class of Berlin Prize Fellows and Distinguished Visitors heads to the Hans Arnhold Center for a semester of intellectual and cultural adventure. Cicero's Editor-in-Chief welcomes them to the German capital.

The snowy night of January 27 created a wintery setting for the Spring 2010 Fellows Presentation at the Hans Arnhold Center. An audience of Berlin’s leading lights in journalism, policy, the arts, academia, and diplomacy were here to meet this semester’s stellar cast -- their American counterparts -- from a range of intellectual fields and cultural endeavors: art historians, novelists, composers, social scientists, and translators, among them. The evening was ably introduced by Dr. Michael Naumann, former German Minister of Culture, long-time Editor/Publisher of Die Zeit, former head of Metropolitan Books and Rowohlt Verlag, and recently named Editor-in-Chief of the Berlin-based magazine of political life, Cicero.