Episode 79: Germany’s Public Health Care System
On this episode of The Zeitgeist, AICGS president Jeff Rathke and Dr. Christine Arentz, Professor for Health Economics at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, discuss Germany’s public health …
Shaping Foreign Policy
Germany’s “Feminist” Approach to the War on Ukraine The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Government. “As long as …
No Vodka for Lunch
Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy as Part of the Zeitenwende Reports about German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s first visit to Moscow on January 18, 2022, recorded that she told Russian foreign …
The Not-so-Sudden Death of Weimar Democracy
January 30, 1933, the day that Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany—and a day whose 90th anniversary we marked last month—was …
The Evolution of German Citizenship Law
Over the past three decades, German citizenship law has evolved from a largely jus sanguinis (“right of blood”) system with a high bar for naturalization to something closer to jus …
Recent Authors
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Advocating for the Local Level
Local Government Associations in Germany and the United States In recent years, politics in Germany and the United States were affected by enormous global challenges and crises, such as the …
Berlin Votes… Again
Observers of German politics often lament the exaggerated attention devoted to state (Land) elections—especially those that do not coincide with a national election. Such regional polls are interpreted as a …
Orbán’s Enablers
German Conservatives and the EU Council’s Unanimity On December 12, 2022, as the first news of Eva Kaili’s arrest and “Qatargate,” the European Parliament’s first major corruption scandal, broke, Hungarian …
Partisan Divides and Popular Fronts
We are pleased to inaugurate the AICGS 40th Anniversary series with the following article, which coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power (Machtergreifung) when Hitler was appointed chancellor …
The AICGS at Forty Series
How the Society, Culture, and Politics Program Has Evolved The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Founded during the last …
Berlin’s Extraordinary Election
Flaws, Failures, and Their Consequences Peter Müller, a constitutional judge, described the elections that took place on September 26, 2021, in the city-state of Berlin as follows: “One could have …
Authoritarian Rebels
The Reichsbürger Movement, the Far-Right, and the Growing Assault on German Democracy On December 7, 2022, German authorities arrested twenty-five members of the so-called “Patriotic Union,” a network that is …
Episode 74: Antidemocratic Insurrections and Populist Uprising—Germany, Brazil, and the United States
In December 2022, German authorities arrested dozens of people tied to an alleged right-wing extremist plot to overthrow the German government. Among the accused are a member of a former …
Local Governance of Religious Diversity in Hamburg and Washington, DC
A Transatlantic Perspective Germany is an increasingly heterogeneous society. This has become obvious by the Bundestag elections in September 2021. For the first time in the history of the Federal …
