Overview
- His publisher Suhrkamp said he died on March 14 in Starnberg at age 96, citing information from his family.
- He was widely regarded as the most influential German intellectual of his generation, with coverage casting his passing as the close of a major post‑war chapter.
- In his final years he pressed for a federal European project as a response to surging nationalism.
- He succeeded Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt, led the Max Planck Institute for the Social Sciences, and developed the theory of communicative action in the late 1970s.
- He remained an active public voice, defending asylum during the 2015 migration crisis and urging negotiations over Russia’s war on Ukraine in essays for Süddeutsche Zeitung.