FiF Lecture 2022 with Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem
Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?
Topic: „Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?
When: 11.05.2022, 5 pm
Where: Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Straße 241
With Professor Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem once again the FiF succeeded in convincing a scientist who is known beyond the subject boundaries to participate in the FiF Lecture 2022. Professor Hoffmann-Riem was a Judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1999-2008, and subsequently a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. Since 2012 he is Professor of Law and Innovation at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. He was one of the initiators of the “Charter of Fundamental Digital Rights of the European Union” in 2016.
As an expert in information and media law, he discussed in his FiF Lecture the challenges of the constitutional state caused by digitalisation, especially by the globally active internet groups such as Facebook and Google, acting as oligopolies. They impact the access to information and its content and have considerable economic and political power. They control the behaviour of their service users in many aspects and influence the way of public communication. They act according to their own rules and are only to a limited extent subject to sovereign law. What is the reason for it? Which possibilities are there to guarantee the freedom and plurality of communication and the autonomy of their users with the help of national and trans-national law?
These were the key issues of the FiF Lecture 2022 with Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem. The event took place on 11.05.2022 (Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Straße 241) 5 pm under the title: „Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?"
This event couldn't take place in 2020 and was postponed to 11.5.2022.
FiF Lecture 2022 with Prof. Dr. Konrad Paul Liessmann
Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?
Topic: Education as a provocation. About dealing with thinking.
When: 16.11.2021, 5 pm
Where: Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Straße 241
Konrad Paul Liessmann, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, has distinguished himself through a series of remarkable publications that consistently transcend the boundaries of his own discipline—most recently, in collaboration with the writer Michael Köhlmeier, through *Mythologisch-philosophische Verführungen* (2016) and *Mythologisch-philosophische Verdammungen* (2019). Following in the footsteps of Nietzsche, he explored the nature of “midnight temptations” in *Mitternächtliche Versuchungen* (2021). In his book *Was nun?*, published in 2025, he outlines a “philosophy of crisis.”
His FiF Lecture took ideas from his book Education as a provocation (2017) asking how to deal with thinking. In this context, there was also an opportunity to reflect on issues brought up in the Corona pandemic.
