History Forum 1989 | 2009: Europe between Division and New Beginnings
International Forum for Academia, Culture, Politics, Media and the Public
Patron: Federal President Horst Köhler
20 years after the peaceful revolutions in the German Democratic Republic and in Eastern and Central Europe this festival opens a forum for engaging with 1989 in a lively and interdisciplinary manner. A multifaceted lecture and discussion programme is interlaced with various artistic approaches - e.g. in film, drama, lecture performance and music. The festival centres on the political, cultural and social preconditions and consequences of the events of 1989, a year marking the turn of an era. Retrospective evaluations of the division of Germany and Europe, as well as of how (and whether) this division was overcome, stand alongside discussions addressing the significance of the past for the present and future, on memory culture and historical consciousness.
The hosting institutions will present selected artistic productions and a series of central panel discussions to provide a frame for the festival. More than one hundred partner institutions, projects and initiatives from Germany and Europe have seized the opportunity to fill this frame and will put on over 150 individual events - discussions, lectures, workshops and readings, among others - to contribute to this open civic forum.
The History Forum is a joint project of institutions from the realms of academia, culture, civic education and civil society. With a view to the retrospect of recent European history and the debate about the European present aspired by the Forum's hosts in the anniversary year 2009, this breadth of backgrounds is an expression of the History Forum's primary objective: addressing as wide an audience and facilitating as wide an array of topics and interpretations as possible.
The History Forum 1989 | 2009 is an event hosted by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Foundation for the Examination and Reappraisal of the Communist Dictatorship in East Germany in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, the Centre for Research on Contemporary History Potsdam and the association Against Forgetting - For Democracy. The Humboldt University of Berlin, the German Historic Museum, and the Maxim Gorki Theater are partners to the event and will provide the Forum's multi-disciplinary campus in the heart of Berlin.
