Viola Müller

@vfmueller.bsky.social

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Historian at Wageningen University @historywur.bsky.social | Book Review Editor at @JournalSlavery.bsky.social | author of ESCAPE TO THE CITY (UNC Press) 👉 https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671062/escape-to-the-city/

Image repeats title of lecture, place and time.
Abstract lecture: In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe, welcoming almost one million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis. This lecture asks another vital question: how, and how far, have the Germans since reinvented themselves? To answer this question, the lecture follows the ups and downs of complicity, conscience and compassion. Their mixed history helps explain the difficult present in which the country finds itself today.

Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Helsinki.

Cover image of Journal of Global Slavery