Initiatives

© Henrike Hannemann

Parallel to our promotional activities, we use our own initiatives to provide impulses.

Augstein Einhundert

On November 5, 2023, our founder would have been 100 years old. Augstein was a journalist, publisher and publicist. As the founder of the news magazine DER SPIEGEL, he witnessed and helped shape German history. In his honor, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation organized the lecture series “Sagen, was ist” in cooperation with the University of Hamburg in the winter semester 2023/24 and, in cooperation with DER SPIEGEL, a ceremony in the publishing house on November 3. The laudator was Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. This was followed on November 5 by a ceremony in Hamburg’s resonanzraum with a laudatory speech by Senator for Culture and Media Dr. Carsten Brosda and a literary concert.

re:balance

Gender equality is still a long way from being achieved in the arts. Whether in terms of payment, presentation opportunities or the awarding of prizes: Success continues to depend on the gender of the artist. This is why the Rudolf Augstein Foundation launched a new funding line: re:balance – gender equality in the arts.

Follow the science – aber wohin?

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the Rudolf-Augstein Foundation invites experts in the fields of politics, science and media to the conference “Follow the science – aber wohin?” to discuss: Was the media coverage done adequately? Does the pandemic mark a rupture in the relationship between media, science, and politics? Which lessons can be drawn from this health crisis? And, how can we be better prepared for future challenges?

Global Funders Meeting

On the pre-conference day of the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation hosted a funders event in support of investigative journalism with international donors in Hamburg.

Investigative journalism funding under the spotlight
re:claim public discourse

re:claim public discourse!

Europe votes in May 2019. The campaign organisation of the right-wing populists is running at full speed. How should journalists deal with this? The Rudolf Augstein Foundation invites journalists and academics to a symposium to discuss what journalists and representatives of liberal democracy can do to counter right-wing populist media strategies.

re:claim autonomy

Under the title “re:claim autonomy – self-empowerment in the digital world order”, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation organized a symposium in 2016 in memory of the journalist Frank Schirrmacher on urgent issues of digitization. The symposium addressed the power of digital corporations as well as the potential of distributed ledger technologies and the future of democracies in the digital age.

re:claim autonomy
Panel discussion: re:claim autonomy – Digital Freedoms in the New Legislature
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Panel discussion „re:claim autonomy – Digital Freedoms in the New Legislature“

At re:publica, Europe’s large-scale digital conference, the Foundation hosted a panel discussion in May 2018 entitled “re:claim autonomy – Digital Freedoms in the New Legislature”. Jakob Augstein discussed the following questions with Dr. Katarina Barley (SPD), Thomas Heilmann (CDU), Dr. Constanze Kurz (CCC) and Gerhart Baum: How can our freedom rights be strengthened on the Internet? To what extent do we need guidelines for the use of automated decision-making systems? And in view of controversial initiatives such as the Network Enforcement Act or upload filters, what might a future-oriented platform policy look like?

Cover Reclaim-Autonomy-Publikation

Publication “Reclaim Autonomy – Self-Empowerment in the Digital World Order”

The publication “Reclaim Autonomy – Self-Empowerment in the Digital World Order”, published by the Foundation in edition suhrkamp, brings together essays by the symposium participants. Among them well-known thought leaders of networked society such as the economist Shoshana Zuboff, the Internet skeptic Evgeny Morozov, the sociologist Saskia Sassen, the speakers of the Chaos Computer Club Constanze Kurz and Frank Rieger and the expert for so-called artificial intelligence Yvonne Hofstetter. They discuss questions such as: How to tame digital capitalism and how can we conquer (back) autonomy in a digitized world?