Jürgen Habermas, the most influential German intellectual of his generation, has died

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died, a spokesperson for his publishing house, Suhrkamp Verlag, told AFP on Saturday. He died at the age of 96 in Starnberg, in the south of Germany, she said, based on information from the family of this committed intellectual.

Jürgen Habermas was the most influential German intellectual of his generation, involved in all the major debates of the post-war period and seeing in Europe the only remedy in his eyes for the rise of nationalism. It was to promoting a European federal project, to prevent the Old Continent from falling back into nationalist rivalries, as in the 20th century, that he devoted his last years.

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Throughout his life, Habermas linked philosophy and politics, thought and action. His moral authority has earned him multiple distinctions around the world.

After being the spokesperson for the German student protest in the 1960s, he became its target thirty years later, having denounced the risks of a “left-wing fascism» for the rule of law.

In 1989, he criticized the terms of German reunification, essentially guided by market demands, and which made “the Deutsche mark its standard”.

Born on June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Jürgen Habermas was incorporated into the Hitler Youth but he was too young to have actively participated in the war. As a teenager, he was deeply affected by the collapse of Nazism.