Divided memories in a unified Europe - Looking back on dictatorship, between 'victim competitiveness' and politics towards the past
Podium in the German Historical Museum, Schlüterhof | 30th May 2009, 16:00-17:30h
Since the fall of the iron curtain Europe has faced the challenge of grappling with two pasts of totalitarian dictatorship which have had a great impact on the twentieth century. The necessity of processing, and coming to terms with the National Socialist past and the German occupation has always been indisputable. In Europe, what is more controversially discussed is the debate surrounding the communist past. This background has, since the nineties, developed into a more or less hidden competition of memory. After long debates, a consensus has been reached in Germany that within the culture of remembrance, the National Socialist crimes cannot be relativised, and nor can the injustices committed by the communist dictatorship in East Germany be trivialised. Politics, schools, museums and memorials should reflect this consensus.
Communism claimed more victims in Central Eastern Europe over the decades than it did in Germany. The people in these countries have a different perspective to offer regarding the European history of dictatorship, which gives rise to different cultures of remembrance. These different views on the past always lead to hard fought debates within Europe - especially because they always have a historical-political dimension.
With
Dr. Zsuzsa Breier, Germanist, executive board member of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Kultur im erweiterten Europa, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Bernd Faulenbach, professor of history at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum
Prof. Dr. Antonia Grunenberg, professor of social sciences, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Volkhard Knigge, director of the Memorial Foundation Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, honorary professor of history and public at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena
Prof. Dr. Jan Maria Piskorski, professor of comparative European history at the University Szczecin, Szczecin
Moderation: Alfred Eichhorn, rbb, Berlin
The podium will be translated from German to English simultaneously.
