(2 June 2016) The crisis of the euro has stimulated a heated debate in Italy, and other European countries about Germany’s role in the EU. The discussion, initiated mainly on the economic and political level, has quickly slipped in a direction that could be called ‘national-anthropological’. With the escalation of the crisis, including in Germany, circulating voices called into question the supposed national Italian character and the stereotypes that come with it. A widespread tendency to reduce other states and cultures to mere clichés finds it way. Luigi Reitani, German scholar at the University of Udine and current director of the Italian Cultural Institute of Berlin, has grappled with analysing this phenomenon, which he juxtaposes a paradigm under which cross-border contacts and the dialogue between cultures are essential. A paradigm that Reitani identifies precisely in Germany after World War II. This will be the topic of the “Italy – Germany – Europe” seminar for Italian teachers of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Regensburg to be held Saturday, June 11 at the University of Regensburg. (Picture: Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869), Italian und Germany, 1828). (Red)
