New Books in Political Science Moritz Föllmer, "The Quest for Individual Freedom: A Twentieth-Century European History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Jan 14, 2026
Moritz Föllmer, an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and an expert on Weimar and Nazi Germany, dives deep into the concept of individual freedom in the 20th century. He discusses the complex nature of freedom amid two world wars and evolving societal norms. Föllmer critiques simplistic narratives about individuality, explores the paradox of war creating new avenues for independence, and highlights tensions between personal freedoms and state control. He also connects modern populism to historical perceptions of freedom, making the topic as relevant today as ever.
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Century-Long, Nonlinear Quest
- The quest for individual freedom ran across the whole 20th century and various European contexts rather than following a single rise-or-fall story.
- Moritz Föllmer emphasizes tensions between ordinary people's private claims to freedom and ambitious collective political agendas.
Freedom Is Relational And Graded
- Freedom is a matter of degrees and often contains ambivalence between subjective feeling and structural constraints.
- Föllmer uses Simmel and Berlin to show freedom is defined against limits like state power, military or moral norms.
War's Paradoxical Openings
- Wars imposed severe constraints yet created disorder that opened unexpected spaces of personal independence, especially for women.
- Föllmer cites women running farms or moving to paid factory work as examples where wartime shifts expanded freedom.
