Prof. Herfried Münkler
Political Scientist
© Ralf U. Heinrichs
Herfried Münkler was born in 1951 in Friedberg, Hessen and studied political sciences, phi-losophy and German at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt. He wrote a thesis on Niccolò Machiavelli for his doctorate in 1981 and a study on the Idee und Begriff der Staatsraison in der Frühen Neuzeit for his professorship in 1987. After time spent assisting and standing in for other professors in Frankfurt he became a professor for political theory at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where he remains, despite attempts to tempt him away. He is a member of the Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin, where he was responsible for continuing the leadership of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) from 1993 – 2019. He passes his knowledge on teaching at various research institutes and as a guest professor. In 2009 he was awarded the Leipzig Book Trade Fair prize and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf’s Meyer-Struckmann prize, which was followed by the 2016 Frie-drich Schiedel Prize for Literature. He was also a Fellow at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens institute from 2016 -2017. Many of his books, some of which have been translated into more than 20 languages, are considered standard works, including Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen (2009 Leipzig Book Trade Fair prize), Der Große Krieg (2013), Die neuen Deutschen (2016), Der Dreißigjährige Krieg (2017) and Marx, Wagner, Nietzsche (2021), which appeared in the best-seller list in Spiegel magazine for months. His Welt in Aufruhr. Die Ordnung der Mächte im 21. Jahrhundert went on sale recently.