Moritz Hürtgen und Ronen Steinke

In the organizer's words:

Germany has never had as many and as strict laws regulating and restricting freedom of expression as it does today. In the past ten years, a large number of new paragraphs have been added to prohibit certain statements. And the legal situation has not even become clearer as a result - this is the finding of Ronen Steinke's new book "Meinungsfreiheit" (Berlin Verlag, 2026). The sentence "Vaccination makes you free", for example, is now a criminal offense, but "Germany to the Germans, foreigners out" is permitted. Who still knows their way around? And what if the sender of a questionable slur also claims to be a satirist like Moritz Hürtgen by profession? an evening that finds its way from comedy to serious discussion (and back again). An amusing plea for more courage and composure. And thanks to the unpredictable Munich audience: an evening with an open outcome.

Ronen Steinke, Dr. jur., born in Erlangen in 1983, is a senior editor and columnist at the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He studied law and criminology, worked in law firms, a youth prison and at the UN Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague. His doctorate on the development of the war crimes tribunals from Nuremberg to The Hague was praised by the FAZ as a "masterpiece". His biography of Fritz Bauer, the courageous investigator and prosecutor of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, published in 2013, was made into the award-winning film "Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer" and translated into numerous languages.

Moritz Hürtgen, born in 1989, is a freelance author and satirist. He successfully completed a degree in German studies and joined the Frankfurt satirical magazine Titanic, where he later became editor-in-chief for four years due to a lack of candidates. Working as a gag writer for various TV formats soon became too strenuous for him. Today, he is a columnist for Apotheken Umschau, co-host of the podcast morning show "Bohniger Wachmacher" and host of the analog late-night format "Volksshow" at Munich's Volkstheater.