The Mosse-Lectures at Humboldt University in Berlin, founded in 1997, commemorate the history of the Mosse-family, the German-Jewish publishing house Rudolf Mosse, and George L. Mosse – the eminent historian – who gave the series’ opening speech 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 Berliner Tageblatt, in their commitment to the support of cultural exchange, transfer of knowledge, and political enlightenment. With support from The Mosse Foundation, the Department of German will bring selected Mosse Lectures to Berkeley.
November 10, 2023:
The UC Berkeley Department of German and BAMPFA are pleased to host Werner Herzog’s Mosse Lecture. The author of more than a dozen books of prose, Herzog reads from the long-awaited Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir (Penguin Random House, October 10, 2023) and engages in conversation with Deniz Göktürk, Professor of German and Film at UC Berkeley. The annual lecture is generously supported by the Mosse Foundation and reflects the foundation’s mission to promote cultural exchange and political engagement. The Mosse Lectures were originally founded in 1997 at Humboldt University in Berlin to commemorate the history of the Mosse family, their patronage of the arts, and their contributions to intellectual life through the German-Jewish publishing house run by Rudolf Mosse and the newspaper Berliner Tageblatt. For more information, visit: https://bampfa.org/event/mosse-lectur...
September 1, 2022:
Organized by the UC Berkeley Department of German in collaboration with the Mosse Foundation, the Institute of European Studies, and the German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley. "Each day we are sold different versions of yesterday, but rarely offered a different tomorrow. The apocalypse streams into every household at a flat rate. In an era of dystopian forebodings, the future can no longer be taken for granted, and optimism is under siege. It seems high time for a reboot of utopian literature, in which a space that is not, may yet come to be in the future. We are near forgetting that history is not a foregone conclusion, and that fatalism is the last refuge of the coward. How we shape the future lies in our own hands, but with the prerequisite that we are ready to think ahead, into the unknown and uncertain, imagining alternatives to given paradigms. If the seeds of human progress are indeed planted by ideas before they can blossom into transformations, utopian narratives are of existential importance." – Ilija Trojanow speaks as a novelist who has spent the past years working on a utopian novel and exploring the history of Utopia. A political activist, he initiated Der utopische Raum, a multimedia platform for debate on visionary, provocative thinking in Vienna, Frankfurt, and soon, Hamburg. At a time when we reckon with our destruction of nature and of imagination, Trojanow's work encourages us to scrub clear our overclouded skies and remind ourselves: what is literature if not unshackled fancy?
April 8, 2019:
German filmmaker and artist Ulrike Ottinger presented an illustrated talk discussing her approach to the visual design of her films, as well as her research methods for a nonfiction project like CHAMISSO'S SHADOW. Following her presentation, Ottinger was joined for an onstage conversation with Deniz Göktürk, professor of German and film studies at UC Berkeley. Presented by the UC Berkeley Department of German and BAMPFA
March 9, 2018:
Many people have an intuitive sense that the built environment is bound up with politics. The lecture poses the question how we might think more systematically (and normatively) about the relationship between democracy and architecture as well as public spaces as a particular form of the built environment. A very basic distinction between representing democracy, on the one hand, and facilitating democratic practices, on the other, will serve as a structuring feature. Tracing the difficulties of representing democratic principles and/or “the people” historically, the speaker will address a number of successful examples in the US and Germany of how particular spatial arrangements can help democracy. Finally, he will pose the question whether the Internet/virtual space might replace actual physical space in fulfilling a number of functions foundational for democratic practices, continuous participation in particular – or whether filter bubbles and echo chambers will in fact contribute to democracy’s present-day decay. Jan-Werner Mueller is a professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He works on democratic theory and the history of political thought. His books include "Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe" (2011) and "Constitutional Patriotism" (2007). His book "What is Populism?" has been translated into more than 20 languages. (http://www.princeton.edu/~jmueller) The Mosse-Lectures at Humboldt University in Berlin, founded in 1997, commemorate the history of the Mosse-family, the German-Jewish publisher Rudolf Mosse, and George L. Mosse – the eminent historian – who gave the series’ opening lecture on May 14, 1997. As an academic institution, the Mosse-Lectures follow the tradition of democratic liberalism in the spirit of Mosse's newspaper Berliner Tageblatt with a strong commitment to cultural exchange, transfer of knowledge, and political enlightenment. With generous support from The Mosse Foundation, the Department of German brings selected Mosse-Lectures to Berkeley.
July 11, 2016:
Joseph Vogl: "The Spector of Capital. The Strange Survival of Theodicy in Economics." The Inaugural Mosse-Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Aufzeichnung der Inaugural Mosse-Lecture vom 7.4.2016 an University of California, Berkeley.