Philharmonic Discourse
“The USA before the election”‒ Ingo Zamperoni and Annika Brockschmidt in conversation with Christiane Florin

Biographies

Annika Brockschmidt

A freelance journalist and author, Annika Brockschmidt has worked for the ZDF-Hauptstadtstudio and produced the podcast HistoPod (for the Federal Agency for Civic Education). She writes for the Tagesspiegel, Zeit Online and the Frankfurter Rundschau, and others. Her book America's God Warriors (2021), about the power of the religious right in the USA, became a bestseller. Most recently, her history of the Republican Party was published under the title Die Brandstifter. Annika Brockschmidt studied History, German Studies and War and Conflict Studies in Heidelberg, Durham and Potsdam.

Ingo Zamperoni

Presenter of German television news show “Tagesthemen” Ingo Zamperoni lived in the USA for many years, was a correspondent in the ARD Washington studio from 2014 to 2016, and is recognised as an expert on American politics. He authored the books Fremdes Land Amerika (2016) and Anderland - Die USA unter Trump (2018). During the 2020 US election campaign and again in 2022, he travelled the USA to show the political divisions there in film documentaries. Ingo Zamperoni studied American Studies, Law and History in Konstanz, Berlin and Boston. He has also been an honorary professor at Stuttgart Media University since January 2022.

Christiane Florin

Christiane Florin is head of the new Current Culture department at Deutschlandradio. From 2016 to 2023, she was editor for religion and society at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne. She was previously head of the Christ & Welt editorial team at the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. She has written two books: Der Weiberaufstand (2017) and Warum unsere Studenten so angepasst sind (2014). She studied political science, modern history and musicology in Bonn and Paris, and completed her doctorate with a thesis on France's handling of the Vichy past.