Jan Philipp Reemtsma
Von den Deutschen lernen
with the author, Susan Neiman, Potsdam
What have Germany’s efforts to atone for its national atrocities achieved? What mistakes has it made? Is there a single culture of memory for all of Germany, or do East and West remain divided on postwar German history? What can other countries learn from Germany’s experiences? Susan Neiman’s 2019 Learning from the Germans explores these and other questions. Jan Philipp Reemtsma, the founder of the institute that produced two major exhibitions on Wehrmacht war crimes, will discuss the book with its author.
Jan Philipp Reemtsma is the founder and chair of the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and Culture and the founder of the Arno Schmidt Foundation. Until March 2015, he was the director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, which he also founded. Among his many works, those available in English include Trust and Violence (2012 [2008]), In the Cellar (1999 [1997]), and More than a Champion: The Style of Muhammad Ali (1998 [1997]).
Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. Previously, she was a professor of philosophy at Yale University and Tell Aviv University. Among other books, she is the author of Evil in Modern Thought (2002), Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (2008), and Learning from the Germans (2019).