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by Lorenz Jäger
This article was originally published in Die Welt on November 28, 2025, and is translated here with permission of the author.
Librarian Regine Stein’s motto is: “The future of libraries is open.” This can be interpreted optimistically: ever-expanding horizons are opening up for information and education. Or fatalistically: no one knows what lies around the next corner.
Just over a year ago, Regine Stein became director of the central office of the Common Library Network (GBV) of the German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The network, which includes around twenty libraries in Berlin, is funded in part by the German Research Foundation.
One of the participating institutions is now slated to be excluded on December 31, 2025: the Library of Conservatism (BdK), located in Fasanenstraße in Berlin, near the Literature House and numerous galleries. The reasons for the decision, which was made in the summer, have not yet been disclosed and were not communicated to the library; our inquiry to Regine Stein went unanswered.
The rationale for the action was unlikely to have been unpaid membership dues. The library’s core collection consists of the extensive holdings of the publicist Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing (1927–2009) and the philosopher Günter Rohrmoser (1927–2008). The total number of books is in the mid-five-figure range. Schrenck-Notzing was primarily interested in American conservatism, while Rohrmoser, in his later years, focused more on Russian conservatism. Both attempted, after 1968, to broaden the political options available to the CDU and CSU parties toward the right.
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by Russell A. Berman
A distinctive feature of the recently released 2025 National Security Strategy is its recognition of culture as a key dimension of national interest. Of course, it does not neglect the standard security topics—alliances, foreign policy, and defense capacity—but it also pays significant attention to questions of culture and national self-understanding. What that means in detail for the United States is a topic for a separate treatment; here however it is worth noting how the evaluation of security in Europe—and the reaffirmed American interest in European security—involves worrisome cultural developments on the old continent. To be sure, in the background, the traditional American insistence that our European allies invest more in their militaries continues, since their defense is not only about culture. But culture matters; civilizational erosion in Europe and the undermining of shared values in the Atlantic Alliance are threatening the security agenda that more tanks and missiles may not be able to fix.
Precisely because the document reaffirms American interest in Europe’s thriving, it also calls out—harshly—deleterious cultural developments. If Europe is voluntarily giving up on freedom and instead pursuing policies of repression, the credibility of the alliance necessarily declines. Policies hostile to core rights in Europe will undermine the American public’s attachment to the historical connection. “In particular, the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government are core rights that must never be infringed. Regarding countries that share, or say they share, these principles, the United States will advocate strongly that they be upheld in letter and spirit. We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies” (NSS, p. 12).
Washington’s criticism toward Europe could hardly be clearer: countries that share—or perhaps only say they share—these values are not succeeding as custodians of the values. In our contemporary public sphere—in the press and in university discussions—the anxiety about threats to democracy or the perception of a “democratic backsliding” is typically directed by the left against the right and by Europeans against the United States. The new National Security Strategy document turns that around and, affirming that there is a threat to democracy, locates it in the managerial practices of Europe and England. That erosion of liberty, the systemic suppression of heterodox opinion, is itself a threat to security.
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