Democracy in the Anthropocene w/ Hedwig Richter

Liberal democracies thrive on the idea that there is prosperity for all, and on a temporal regime embedded in parliamentarism. Growing prosperity has time and again covered up problems in democracies such as overcoming Nazism and fascism after 1945. But what happens when the material foundations shift and prosperity needs to be redefined? And what does it mean that democracies often need many years for major reforms, but governments are impatient and always look to the next elections? The climate crisis raises the question of whether and how far the liberal order is equipped for the future.

Prof. Hedwig Richter, University of the German Armed Forces Munich

Hedwig Richter is Professor of Modern History at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. Her research focuses on 19th and 20th century European and US history, including history of democracy & environment, migration, gender, and church history. She is the author of several books, among them Demokratie. Eine deutsche Affäre. Vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H.Beck, 2020, 4th ed.) and „Aufbruch in die Moderne. Reform und Massenpolitisierung im Kaiserreich (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021). In 2020 she received the Anna Krüger Prize from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

This event is part of the Lecture Series “A Never-Ending Crisis? Transatlantic Perspectives on the State of Liberal Democracy”, co-sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service.