Editor Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Rainer Hermann comes from Lörrach and was born in 1956. He studied economics and Islamic studies at the universities of Freiburg, Rennes, Basel and Damascus. He obtained his doctorate in Freiburg in 1989 with a thesis on modern Syrian intellectual history. His knowledge of the Middle East then led him to work as an editor and correspondent for the Federal Office for Foreign Trade Information in Cologne. In 1990, he witnessed the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait before continuing his correspondence from Istanbul in 1991. In 1998, he moved to the business desk of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, based in Istanbul. From 2008, he worked in Abu Dhabi to observe the political changes in the Arab world at close quarters. Since mid-2012, Rainer Hermann has been living back in Germany and is part of the political editorial team of the FAZ with a focus on the Islamic world.
Thursday, 24. October 2013, 18:15 – 20:00 h
At the University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich, KOL-G-201
It was an illusion to believe that stable democratic systems would be established in the Arab world in the blink of an eye after the fall of authoritarian regimes. As after every revolution, the social and political upheaval will take decades and will be accompanied by setbacks. But the opportunity for an Islamic modernity is opening up.