German-History Lecture Series

by Davit Gasparyan

On February 21, IES and GHI West were honored to welcome Kerstin Brückweh for an engaging talk titled “The Longue Durée of 1989: Regime Change and Everyday Life in East Germany.” An author and editor, Brückweh lectures at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and is currently a fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies. Her presentation centered on the historic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the unification of Germany.

by Maddi Erdall

On November 13, Jennifer Allen (Professor of History, Yale University) visited IES to deliver a talk entitled “Twentieth-Century Anti-Utopianism and its West German Antidote” to 25 attendees. The main goal of Allen’s lecture was to convince her audience of the significance of the curious cultural practices that developed in the last decades of the 20th century. She began with a historical overview of the anti-utopian turn following the end of the Cold War, stating that there was a large consensus that radical left ideologies had confronted a dead end. Building off of the failed leftist ‘68 revolutions, this anti-utopian sentiment became widespread through the famous claim of ‘the end of history,’ in addition to Margaret Thatcher’s conclusion that “there is no alternative.”

by Lillie Vogt

On October 9th, IES and GHI-West were pleased to host Martina Kessel (Professor of Modern German History at Bielefeld University) for a lecture on the significance of humor as an identity practice during the time of National Socialism in Germany. Addressed to an audience of 40 students, faculty and community members, the lecture was centered around Kessel’s forthcoming book titled Gewalt und Gelächter. “Deutschsein” 1914-1945 (Laughter and Violence. ‘Being German’ 1914-1945).