How an activist who helped transform postwar Germany views its newest challenges
In American terms, you might best think of Gesine Schwan as a German Eleanor Roosevelt.
To be sure, Professor Schwan was never a president’s first lady. Nor was she ever a president herself, though she did run as a rare woman nominee for German head of state a decade ago. Nor has she ever held a senior United Nations post, as Roosevelt did when she coaxed diplomats from a kaleidoscope of cultures, religions, and histories to agree on the astounding Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, a mere three years after the world‘s most destructive war.
Yet what unites these kindred spirits is their zeal for human rights and for reforms to benefit left-behinds. During the great depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt famously lent her voice to workers who lost their jobs, to second-class women, and to African-Americans. In post-World War II Europe Schwan joined her
Inequality and discontentPutin's role as spoilerSchwan's outlook
