"Who Are We? Germany in Search of Its Identity"

Lecture with book signing

The United States is no longer the reliable protective power Germany depended on for decades. That leaves Germany facing a question it could long afford to defer: what role does this country want - and need - to play in a world changing faster than the old Federal Republic was used to? Great-power rivalry is intensifying, artificial intelligence is reshaping economies and societies, the Global South is growing more assertive, and Europe is under military pressure.

In his lecture, Joschka Fischer places this situation in a broader historical frame. Germany remains the world's third-largest industrial nation, yet it is also a country whose relationship to power, the military, and national identity is still shaped by the catastrophic history of the 20th century. Can a post-national Germany hold its own in an increasingly dangerous world? Is economic strength still enough when technological sovereignty, defence capability, and political resolve all need to be renegotiated?

Germany must define what responsibility means today. The trust its former wartime adversaries extended after 1945 was the foundation of Germany's postwar rise. Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer argues what it means to honour that trust while boldly confronting the entirely new threats of the 21st century - military, technological, and political.

Joschka Fischer, born in 1948 in Gerabronn, served as Federal Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1994 to 2006, and a visiting professor at Princeton University in 2006/07. He lives in Berlin and has published numerous books on German and international politics, Europe, and the new world order.