On Thursday, January 29, Dr Markus Hünemörder, guidance counsellor and adjunct lecturer at the chair for American studies at LMU Munich, paid a visit to our school giving a talk about the current political situation in the US. He had already given a USA Update talk at AVG back in February 2022, when things looked a lot less gloomy than they do today … Needless to say, a lot has changed for the worse ever since then, so Aventinus teaching staff thought fit to get a renewed update from a well-known expert.

The entire 12th and 13th grades of Aventinus-Gymnasium and Kurfürst-Maximilian-Gymnasium Burghausen (12th year only) had the chance to get a deeper insight into much of what had probably already been dealt with in their regular English classes. Not only did Dr Hünemörder talk about the current president‘s achievements and blunders (at least from an European point of view), he also mentioned topics such foreign policy issues (Greenland! Canada!), tariff wars, Homeland Security (ICE and the most recent events in Minneapolis!) and the political/cultural divide of both Congress and society at large. In order to maintain the attention of the student audience (which definitely was not a problem for Mr Hünemörder at all …) he provided cartoons and short clips taken from the Simpsons, thus adding a lively note to his presentation. At the end students were invited to ask questions which Dr Hünemörder did not fail to answer in great depth. What we heard is certainly not exactly reassuring, but then Dr Hünemörder didn’t fail to show a positive attitude to US and Europe’s future.

Text/photo: Fachschaft Englisch