This event has been ended!
Anna-Bettina Kaiser: »Staatsstreich, Ausnahmezustand, Regression«
Anna-Bettina Kaiser: “Coup d’état, state of emergency, regression”
Event by: Mosse Lectures
Location: Humboldt University of Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin - Mitte
About event
"Coup d'etat, state of emergency, regression"
- with Lothar Müller
The coup d'etat as a form of constitutional change has had its day; today democracies are dying a slow death - that is a common assumption at the moment. However, a closer look shows that by no means has a uniform “script” been established as to how democracies are gradually destroyed. Rather, we can currently observe very different forms of dismantling of constitutions. But how can these different phenomena be conceptualized? Under what conditions does law and when does violence play an essential role? Will the coup finally return?
ANNA-BETTINA KAISER: Legal scholar; Professor of public law and fundamentals of law at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Kaiser has been part of the “Constitutionalism under Stress” [CONSTRESS] project in cooperation with Princeton University since 2016 and has been co-director of the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society [LSI] at Humboldt University since 2019. Her areas of expertise include constitutional law [constitutions in times of crisis, freedom of expression], comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory and the crisis of the rule of law. Her book “Exceptional Constitutional Law”, published in 2020, was on the non-fiction best list of ZDF, Deutschlandfunk and DIE ZEIT in the same year and was awarded the Werner von Simson Prize. Most recently, she was a 2023/24 Fulbright Scholar and Senior Emile Noël Global Fellow at New York University.
The Mosse Lectures take place in the Senate Hall of Humboldt University (Unter den Linden 6). The room is barrier-free.
Image: Julius von Bismarck, Detail of "The Elephant in the Room [Otto von Bismarck]", 2023, Installation view "When Platitudes Become Form", Berlin, 2023. Courtesy Julius von Bismarck; Alexander Levy, Berlin; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Esther Schipper, Berlin © Julius von Bismarck; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Photo: Roman März
- with Lothar Müller
The coup d'etat as a form of constitutional change has had its day; today democracies are dying a slow death - that is a common assumption at the moment. However, a closer look shows that by no means has a uniform “script” been established as to how democracies are gradually destroyed. Rather, we can currently observe very different forms of dismantling of constitutions. But how can these different phenomena be conceptualized? Under what conditions does law and when does violence play an essential role? Will the coup finally return?
ANNA-BETTINA KAISER: Legal scholar; Professor of public law and fundamentals of law at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Kaiser has been part of the “Constitutionalism under Stress” [CONSTRESS] project in cooperation with Princeton University since 2016 and has been co-director of the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society [LSI] at Humboldt University since 2019. Her areas of expertise include constitutional law [constitutions in times of crisis, freedom of expression], comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory and the crisis of the rule of law. Her book “Exceptional Constitutional Law”, published in 2020, was on the non-fiction best list of ZDF, Deutschlandfunk and DIE ZEIT in the same year and was awarded the Werner von Simson Prize. Most recently, she was a 2023/24 Fulbright Scholar and Senior Emile Noël Global Fellow at New York University.
The Mosse Lectures take place in the Senate Hall of Humboldt University (Unter den Linden 6). The room is barrier-free.
Image: Julius von Bismarck, Detail of "The Elephant in the Room [Otto von Bismarck]", 2023, Installation view "When Platitudes Become Form", Berlin, 2023. Courtesy Julius von Bismarck; Alexander Levy, Berlin; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Esther Schipper, Berlin © Julius von Bismarck; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Photo: Roman März