Ulrike Herrmann

Ulrike Herrmann is a journalist and publicist specialising in social and economic policy issues. She has been an editor at the Berlin newspaper taz since 2000. Herrmann is a popular radio and TV guest in current political discussions (e.g. Presseclub, Phoenix, Lanz, Maischberger).
She tells exciting economic stories and takes apart the common myths of the German economy - unsparingly. Herrmann sees herself as a typical middle-class scion.

She completed an apprenticeship as a bank clerk (Bayrische Vereinsbank), went through the renowned Henri Nannen School of Journalism and studied history and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin.

She was a research assistant at the Körber Foundation and press spokesperson for Hamburg's Senator for Equal Opportunities Krista Sager (Green Party). At TAZ, she was head of the opinion desk, parliamentary correspondent and has been a business correspondent since 2006.

From 2008 to 2014, she was a member of the board of taz-Verlagsgenossenschaft. Herrmann is a member of the board of trustees of the German organisation "AFS Interkulturelle Begegnungen e.V." and of the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen party (dormant membership).

Herrmann tries to explain economics in such a way that even laypeople understand the economic world in which they live.

All of her books have been bestsellers. In her work "Der Sieg des Kapitals" (Piper 2012), she explains how capitalism came about, what role money plays and how crises occur. Her book "Kein Kapitalismus ist auch keine Lösung" traces the history of economic theory - and what we can still learn from Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Maynard Keynes today. In "Germany, an economic fairy tale", she dispels the legends that have obscured our view of economic realities to this day - from the currency reform to reunification. In her latest bestseller "The End of Capitalism", Herrmann describes why economic growth and climate protection are incompatible.

As a solution, she suggests taking the British wartime economy from 1939 as a model.
She was honoured with the Keynes Society Prize for Economic Journalism (2015) and the Otto Brenner Special Prize (2019).