This is Mansfield’s annual lecture to commemorate Adam von Trott, whose studies at Mansfield informed his role in the plot against Hitler. Taking Adam von Trott and two of his close acquaintances as a starting point, Professor Patel, director of Project House Europe at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, discusses some of the key problems in the history of 20th century Germany. How to deal with dictatorship? What difference can an individual make? How to build a better future—for Germany, but also for Europe? These questions have remained crucially important, and the lecture will discuss history’s lessons for today.

Professor Kiran Klaus Patel is professor of modern history at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich where he also serves as the director of Project House Europe, LMU’s centre for interdisciplinary research on the history of contemporary Europe. Before joining LMU, he has been a professor at Maastricht University, at the European University Institute in Florence, and assistant professor at Humbolt University in Berlin. His latest publication is Project Europe: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) (German version: Beck, 2018).