New York: Book Reading “Farewell to America”

The ACG and Deutsches Haus at NYU will host a book reading and discussion with Marc Pitzke, Correspondent for Der Spiegel and Author of „Abschied von Amerika,“ and moderated by Gudrun Engel, Washington Bureau Chief for ARD.

In Farewell to America (2026, DVA), long-time Der Spiegel journalist Marc Pitzke writes about a country he no longer recognizes: Suddenly, his adopted homeland feels foreign to him, incomprehensible, almost frightening. He’s spent half his life in the United States, as a reporter and a private citizen, but today it is no longer the country where he sought and ultimately found his happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: the values that once drew Marc to the U.S. have lost their meaning.

Marc Pitzke has been reporting from New York for more than three decades. He reported on major news stories, Bush vs. Gore, and six other U.S. presidential races, the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, hurricanes “Katrina” and “Sandy,” Obama’s inauguration, as well as from gay pride parades and nightclubs with Madonna. But now his future in America is at stake—as is the future of his Black U.S. husband. His personal reflections are also political. What remains of a country whose dreams have been shattered? And what if these were his dreams too?

Gudrun Engel studied journalism and political science at the universities of Dortmund, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Kaunas, Lithuania. At Westdeutscher Rundfunk, she worked as an editor and reporter for several local newspapers, WDR aktuell, Aktuelle Stunde, and Phoenix. Starting in 2012, she reported from North Rhine-Westphalia as a correspondent for Tagesschau and Tagesthemen, as well as their online formats. In addition, she worked as a correspondent for ARD’s Morgenmagazin and Weltspiegel and served as a studio correspondent in Nairobi, New York, and Paris. From 2019 to 2022, she worked as a correspondent at ARD Europe Studio in Brussels, covering the European Union, NATO, and the Netherlands. Since July 2022, she has headed the ARD studio in Washington.

Marc Pitzke studied at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the German School of Journalism (DJS), and Columbia University’s School of Journalism in New York City. He worked at Bayerischer Rundfunk as a correspondent for Reuters in Berlin during the years leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a reporter and later as U.S. correspondent for Die Woche, and as a freelance contributor for GEO, Merian, and other publications. From 2003 until 2026, he was the U.S. correspondent for Der Spiegel in New York.