Harry Liebersohn

Liberalism is usually defined as either a political or an economic doctrine of personal freedom, with freedom of speech and exchange as two of its defining features. But since its beginnings around 1800 it has also been a cultural movement strengthening personal freedom in friendships, family, and emotional and erotic relationships. Romance and political argument were often closely interwoven: poets, novelists, political thinkers, philosophers, social scientists and social reformers argued for political freedoms and explored new freedoms in their personal lives.

Women and men criticized the legal and social structures of patriarchy in Europe and the United States; women struggle to achieve gender equality in public life. Jane Addams, founder of the most famous American settlement house, founded a women’s milieu that successfully advanced women’s public roles and private friendships. She also played an important part in redefining liberalism itself, moving it in a democratic direction open to all in a nation grappling with mass immigration. Well educated and widely traveled in Europe, she invites comparison with German and English women across the Atlantic who took part in parallel transformations of women’s private and public lives. Whether in education, politics or their network of friendships and romances, her generation encourages us to engage with liberalism as a way of life.

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Harry Liebersohn is Center for Advanced Study Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2016 was the recipient of a Humboldt Research Prize. His work has focused on cultural encounters and social theory since the late eighteenth century. His most recent book is Music and the New Global Culture: From the Great Exhibitions to the Jazz Age (2019). He is currently writing a history of nineteenth-century liberalism.  

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

For more information, e-mail b.ebert@berlin.bard.edu.