This volume of interviews reveals Haberman's passionate engagement with contemporary issues. Wide-ranging and informal, the interviews focus on matters of decisive importance to Germany and the rest of the world in the 1990s: German unification; recent explosive debates about interpretations of German history, Germany's asylum policies, and the Nazi era; efforts to create a cooperative, peaceful Europe; and the significance of the Persian Gulf War. A final interview focuses on the relation between theory and practice--between philosophy and the so-called real world.

The interviewer, Michael Haller, studied philosophy, politics, and social sciences in Freiburg and Basel. He has worked as an editor at Der Spiegel and has been a correspondent for Die Zeit in Hamburg and in Zurich since 1990. Peter Hohendahl is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.