Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection 2021–2025
Robert Habeck, born in Lübeck in 1969, is a member of the German Bundestag. From 2021 to 2025, he was Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. From 2018 to 2022, he served as Federal Chairman of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Prior to that, Habeck served as Minister and Deputy Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein for six years, most recently heading the Ministry of Energy, the Environment, Agriculture and Digitalisation.
Habeck studied in Freiburg im Breisgau (German Studies, Philosophy, and Philology) and Roskilde/Denmark (Human Sciences) from 1991 to 1996. In 2000, he obtained his doctorate of Philosohpy (PhD) from the University of Hamburg (Literary Studies and Philosophy). He then worked as a freelance writer until 2009. In 2002, he became a member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.
Photo: © Nils Leon Brauer.
Tuesday, 25. November 2025, 18:30 – 20:00 h
At the University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich, KOH-B-10
Liberal democracies are under pressure. As different as the forms of authoritarian rule are - nationalist in Russia, libertarian in the USA, communist in China or North Korea, Islamist in Iran – they are all attacking individual freedoms that have been fought for in recent decades since the 1970s.
The politicians of the liberal, progressive parties are both stunned and confused by this advance. They are looking for explanations by analyzing individual election campaigns or simply blaming reactionary violence. In the back of their minds, they still have a linear view of history, according to which societies develop for the better step by step. So they think that they can't actually lose. But this is not true, neither historically nor in the present. Neither individual mistakes nor pointing the finger at right-wing conservatives are enough to understand our times, and certainly not to find answers.
The pressing question is whether liberal democracies and open societies are even capable of surviving crises and solving problems before they become historical catastrophes: Global warming, military threat/war, migration, loss of trust in liberal democracy itself – all of these can or will happen if the right political measures are not taken to prevent them.