A European Culture of Progress

I’m fascinated by where culture and politics meet. I founded and edit ævum, a German-language magazine about political ideas, and work at Prometheus, a Berlin-based think tank. Before that, I studied philosophy and mathematics and worked in politics for a while. On Substack, I will write about European culture and progress: I want to understand why Europe distrusts progress and where its technopessimism comes from. So I go looking for the origins: the Romantics, German and French philosophy, the 1970s Greens, and today’s New Right. At the core are ideas about meaning, nature, markets, and artificiality, which I want to explore with progress in mind.

books and a camera

My life circles around ideas, so I spend most of my time reading, discussing, absorbing ideas. Including good fiction. Apart from that, I love photography, looking at it in museums and taking photos myself. I also try to make the most of my subscription to the Yorck cinemas, Berlin’s old movie houses. And, of course, visiting other European cities. Sometimes I envy the British leisure class of gentleman scholars. But then again, they died so early.