Understanding the German Elections and What Comes Next

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Nico Lange is the director of the Washington office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung with responsibility for the USA and Canada. Before moving to the U.S., Lange was deputy director for political consulting and head of domestic policy at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung headquarters in Berlin, Germany. In this role, he provided policy-oriented research and political advice to top level politicians in the German government, to the political party of Angela Merkel, and to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Lange was a member of the CDU party reform commission and of the party committee on domestic affairs. He is specialized in party development, political planning and strategy, and populism. He has a track record working on media and security issues. Lange is a frequent contributor and interview partner to German and European media.

Paul Lerner is a Historian of Modern Germany and Central Europe at the University of Southern California with particular interest in the history of the human sciences, Jewish history, gender, and the history and theory of consumer culture. He has written on the history of psychiatry, specifically on hysteria and trauma in political, cultural and economic context in the years around World War I in Germany, and he recently authored "The Consuming Temple: Jews, Department Stores, and the Consumer Revolution in Germany, 1880-1949" (Cornell Up, 2015) on the reception and representation of department stores and modern forms of marketing and consumption in Germany and Central Europe. Lerner is also part of a long-term project and working group on German Jewish popular culture. He is currently working on several projects concerning German-speaking émigrés from Nazi-controlled Europe, including a study of Austrian Jews and their impact on American consumer culture in the 1950s and beyond.

Hans Jörg Neumann has served as the German Consul General in Los Angeles since July 2015. Prior to this, he was German Ambassador to Benin in West Africa. He has served as Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Bucharest, Head of Consular and Legal Affairs in Prague as well as in the Economic Department of the German Embassy in Cairo and as Foreign Desk Officer for the Maghreb countries. Before starting his career in the German Foreign Service, Mr. Neumann studied law in Frankfurt and Lausanne, Switzerland, and practiced law in Frankfurt from 1986 to 1987.

 Download Podcast

Duration: 1:23:33

 Download Podcast

Duration: 1:23:33