Mosse Lecture Series

The Mosse Lectures, founded in 1997 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, commemorate the history of the German Jewish Mosse family, the Rudolf Mosse Publishing House, and eminent historian George L. Mosse, who gave the inaugural lecture on May 14, 1997.

The Mosse Lectures, inaugurated at the Humboldt University in Berlin, commemorate the history of the German Jewish Mosse family, the Rudolf Mosse Publishing House, and eminent historian George L. Mosse, who gave the inaugural lecture on May 14, 1997.

As an academic institution, the Mosse Lectures continue the tradition of democratic liberalism, which was established and defended by Mosse’s newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, as part of a commitment to the support of cultural exchange, transfer of knowledge, and political enlightenment. 

The Mosse Lectures at Berkeley have developed their own identity as a public humanities event with a focus on the role of visual and other media. We have engaged in conversation with eminent filmmakers and writers on questions of capitalism, populism, utopian fiction, documentary poetics, and cultural memory. 

This series is presented by the Department of German for the Mosse Lectures at UC Berkeley with support from co-presenting partners at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the German Historical Institute with support from The Mosse Foundation and the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.