A climate protection law that reimbursed up to 70 percent of the costs—and still failed. Why did government subsidies do nothing to quell the anger over the German Building Energy Act? In the lead article of the current issue of Gesellschaftsforschung, Philipp Golka argues that the public debate was not driven by an assessment of risks, but by a logic of threat that portrayed climate policy as deliberate harm inflicted by a supposedly overreaching state. The Institute’s magazine provides insights into current research projects and activities at the MPIfG.

Jens Beckert will join the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton for a year beginning in September. He is one of 21 scholars selected for the 2026/27 academic year from a pool of more than 600 applicants. In Princeton, Beckert will work on his book project The Society Capital Creates, which examines the social and political consequences of the increasing concentration of wealth and power of capital.

This lecture is drawn from a book-in-progress on the global history of money from ancient times to the present, told through the recurrence of the ancient Greek myth of the golden touch of King Midas. For thousands of years money was scarce. Today, in a world of fiat money, it is as if the ancient myth has become true. In his talk, Jonathan Levy introduces the problem of the demand for money in history, and seeks — drawing from Keynes — to clarify demand as a category of analysis across economic but also social, cultural, and political life. Join us for this MPIfG Lecture on June 10, at 16:30.