Jörg Später, born in 1966 in Wetzlar and living in Freiburg since 1989, is an independent author associated with the Research Group on Contemporary History at the Historical Seminar of the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. His dissertation, Vansittart: British Debates on Germans and Nazis, was published in 2003. He has also written two scholarly books for Suhrkamp Verlag: Kracauer – A Biography (nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize) and Adorno’s Heirs: A History from the Federal Republic (2016 and 2024). Später contributes to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and serves as editor of the Journal of Modern European History.
Since the beginning of this year, Später has been working on a new research project titled The Beckers: A Politically and Intellectually Aristocratic Family in 20th-Century Germany. The Becker family belonged to Germany’s political and intellectual elite for three generations. They were affluent, well-educated, politically engaged, and connected to influential social circles. The Beckers cultivated networks, founded institutions, mentored talented young men, and consistently shaped ideas and initiatives. They were liberal, cosmopolitan, and receptive to major societal changes, from the Republic and the Nazi regime to the postwar Federal Republic and the cultural shifts of 1968, with a strong belief in comprehensive human education and democratic elitism. The project traces the lives of key family members—Carl Heinrich Becker, Hellmut Becker and their wives Hedwig and Antoinette, and the six Becker children— through Germany’s 20th-century history. Their experiences serve as a lens into educational reform in the Kaiserreich and Weimar Republic, Nazi-era state law, the Nuremberg Trials, the intellectual foundation of postwar Germany, and post-1968 developments in psychoanalysis and sexual science. The narrative also extends to courtrooms in Stammheim and Moabit, as well as to Israel, a Jewish state emerging alongside the Federal Republic after World War II.