DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION

Robert Misik in conversation with Hedwig Richter and Bernd Ulrich

DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION
Ways out of self-inflicted ecological immaturity

Young people are breaking the law on the streets and invoking the climate judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court, according to which the living do not have the right to halve the freedom of future generations. The German government is not complying with the Paris Agreement and at the same time is reaching the limits of growth and the debt brake because the costs of the climate crisis and climate change have to be met at the same time.
A contradiction has arisen between democracy and ecology, between the unavoidable pressure of time and the seemingly God-given slowness of democracy. Historian Hedwig Richter and ZEIT journalist Bernd Ulrich want to overcome this contradiction and show how a necessary revolution to preserve the basis of our existence can go hand in hand with the necessary defence and development of democracy.
To this end, they look back and into the future. They enquire into the dark side of the history of democracy, into the often destructive social and fossilised conditions under which our democracy has developed in Germany and elsewhere. And they sketch out a future that also guarantees future generations the freedom to shape their own destiny, which is essential for a democracy.

Hedwig Richter, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich
Ulrich Bernd, Editor of the TIME
Robert Misik, Author and journalist

Hedwig Richter, Bernd Ulrich:
Democracy and revolution.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, April 2024, 25,- €