Mythos 1776

Book Presentation & Conversation with Hiram Kümper, University of Mannheim | As part of the event series "Zwischen/Zeiten: 250 Jahre USA"

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”—this triad from 1776 forms the sacred foundation of today’s superpower, the United States. Yet in 2026, in a nation torn apart from within, these words often sound like nothing more than a distant echo. While Donald Trump exploits the myth of the American quest for freedom to engineer a radical realignment of power in Washington, historian Hiram Kümper poses—to himself and to all of us—the uncomfortable question: Were the Founding Fathers truly concerned with universal human rights—or simply with access to power and “the spoils of office”? Kümper looks behind the glossy, polished heroic epic of white men and dissects a political ideology that exported its “Way of Life” globally while systematically excluding millions of enslaved Black and Indigenous people at home. Together with the Mannheim history professor—also known from television—and his non-fiction book “Mythos 1776,” we shed light on the dark flip side of U.S. self-confidence: Who really paid the bitter price for the rise of this “power player”? We explore the paradoxes of an iconic founding narrative that continues to fuel political extremes to this day—and in doing so, we bring to light those who have all too often been forgotten in the official narrative.