The Measure of Democracy

An event featuring Jan Uplegger, Yumiko Tsubaki, and Maria Hinze, in collaboration with "Gegen Vergessen für Demokratie" (Kurpfalz regional group), DGB Heidelberg, and Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, Baden-Württemberg state association.

Our time is marked by political uncertainty, fuelled by rising populism and authoritarian and far-right tendencies. Can it already be compared to the 1930s?

A hundred years ago, one man warned early of the danger of rising Nazism: Wilhelm Leuschner, then interior minister of Hesse. After 1933, as a union leader, he built a secret resistance network underground that spanned all of Germany - the essential foundation for Stauffenberg's coup plans. Had the assassination attempt succeeded, Stauffenberg would have proposed Leuschner as Reich Chancellor. His vision of a unified trade union that would unite all democratic forces paved the way for the later founding of the DGB and the democratic post-war order.

Jan Uplegger is a freelance actor in Berlin and Leipzig and a speaker for Deutschlandfunk and numerous audiobooks. Yumiko Tsubaki is a freelance violinist with the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Musical Comedy Leipzig, the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Chemnitz, and baroque music ensembles such as camerata lipsiensis and Berliner Lautten Compagney. Maria Hinze works as a freelance musician at the Leipzig Opera and as musical director for theatre projects, including at the Kassel State Theatre, Magdeburg Theatre, and the Bremen Shakespeare Company. Mitschiko Tsubaki was a master student of Thomas Virnich and works as a freelance artist at the intersection of art, literature, and science.