Lecture & Discussion: Johannes Ehrmann - America '33
Johannes Ehrmann recounts the fateful year for the Western world from a transatlantic perspective for the first time—a gripping panorama of freedom, fear, and responsibility.
Moderator: René Freudenthal, Carl Schurz House
A German-American panorama of the fateful year 1933—viewed for the first time from a transatlantic perspective.
March 1933: The free world stands on the brink of disaster. While the Nazis brutally persecute their opponents, America is mired in a deep crisis. One in four people is unemployed, and Franklin D. Roosevelt rules more authoritatively than any president before him. And yet the U.S. is a refuge—for Albert Einstein, whom the Nazis are hunting with a bounty on his head; for George Grosz, who, from America, fears for his sons in Berlin. Marlene Dietrich is courted by Goebbels in Hollywood. Max Schmeling allows himself to be co-opted for Hitler’s purposes ahead of his fight against the Jewish boxer Max Baer. Meanwhile, Eleanor Roosevelt is in love with a woman—and desperately tries to bring more Jewish refugees into the country. But anti-Semitism and fear of immigration dominate the debate.
A book about freedom, fear, and responsibility, told like a gripping novel—frighteningly relevant today.
Johannes Ehrmann is an editor at *Die Zeit* and the author of several nonfiction books. He studied American Studies and History in Berlin and Philadelphia and earned his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He has received numerous awards for his journalistic work, including the Grimme Online Award and the Theodor Wolff Prize. Johannes Ehrmann lives in Berlin.
In cooperation with: Carl Schurz House, Freiburg
