WILLY BRANDT SPEECH LÜBECK

Eva Illouz will deliver the 2025 Willy Brandt Speech in Lübeck. The sociologist and author is one of Israel’s most prominent and well-respected intellectual voices. Since Hamas’s attack on Israel, she has commented on the situation in Israel and Palestine in numerous interviews and articles, sharply criticising the Netanyahu government. At the same time, she defends Israel’s right to exist and denounces the sharp increase in anti-Semitism around the world. In her Willy Brandt Speech, Illouz will draw on her decades-long research on the role of emotions in politics and society to address a feeling fundamental to modern memory cultures: guilt. What role has guilt played in the constitution of democracies since the Second World War? And what are the limits of such politics?

Eva Illouz is Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of Studies at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique in Paris. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Frank Schirrmacher Prize and the Aby Warburg Prize in 2024. Her books have been translated into numerous languages.

Every year, the Willy Brandt House, in cooperation with the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, invites an outstanding personality who – following on from Willy Brandt’s legacy – analyses the most pressing political and social issues of our time and develops possible solutions.

Bitte beachten Sie: Die Rede wird in englischer Sprache gehalten. Eine deutsche Übersetzung kann leider nicht angeboten werden. Im Nachgang der Veranstaltung wird es einen Videomitschnitt der Rede mit deutschem Untertitel auf dieser Homepage geben.

Der Eintritt ist frei. Anmeldung erforderlich unter 0451/122 425 0, oder per Online-Formular.