1989
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('MMM') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('YYYY') }}
| free admission |
| 12 years and older |
| German |
| Mechanical Arena in the Foyer |
| Part of: Talking About Ruptures |
| Belongs to: Transform! |
In Eastern Europe, the events of 1989 led to far-reaching transformations, as in the GDR. The collapse of the USSR was dealt with very differently in the individual countries. This discussion is a comparative examination of the Hungarian and Polish emancipation movements with a view to freedom and upheavals after 1989. It is obvious that these transformations continue to have an effect today. And at the latest since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many democratic successes of the former Eastern Bloc states have been under great pressure. From the establishment and dismantling of hard-won freedoms and democratic orders.
Moderation
Markus Dichmann
Participants in the discussion
Zsuzsa Breier, Katja Hoyer and Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Participants
Zsuzsa Breier
Zsuzsa Breier (Dr. phil.), born in Budapest in 1963, lived through the year 1989 in Hungary. She wrote her doctorate on Max Frisch, was a university lecturer at the ELTE in Budapest and researched German-language post-war and contemporary literature. In 2000, she came to Berlin as a diplomat, and in the year the former Eastern Bloc states joined the EU, she initiated and directed the Cultural Year of the Ten in Berlin. In 2012, she was appointed State Secretary for European Affairs in the Hessian state government. She has been a freelance author and publicist since 2016 and lives in Berlin. Her most recent book was 1989. Das Jahr beginnt (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 2024).
Katja Hoyer
Katja Hoyer (*1985) went to England after studying history at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena. There she commented on historical and political topics for the BBC, the Telegraph and the Spectator, among others. Today she conducts research at King’s College London and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. As a columnist for the Washington Post, she regularly writes about German and European society and politics. Her first book published in German, Diesseits der Mauer, was a Spiegel bestseller.
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Prof. Dr., Director of the German Historical Institute Warsaw, studied cultural studies and sociology in Lodz, Gießen and Mainz, completed her doctorate at the University of Lodz in 2008 with a dissertation on urban memory and habilitated at the University of Warsaw in 2016 with a monograph on visual cultures in Germany immediately after the Second World War. Before taking over as director of the DHI Warsaw, she worked at the University of Lodz, the Center for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Her research focuses on memory cultures in Germany and Poland, media history after 1945 and reception research. Her publications include Mikrogeschichten der Erinnerungskultur (2022, engl. Transl. 2024), Bilder der Normalisierung (2017, together with A. Labentz) and numerous articles in Memory Studies, The Public Historian, Osteuropa.
Markus Dichmann
Markus Dichmann, born in 1987, is a freelance author, reporter and presenter on Deutschlandradio programs. He presents the weekly magazine show Eine Stunde History for Deutschlandfunk Nova, which won the German Podcast Award in 2019 and was nominated for the German Radio Award in 2017. For his work as an author and reporter, often on historical topics, he won the German-French Journalism Prize and was nominated for the German-Polish Tadeusz Mazowiecki Prize. As a Johannes Rau scholarship holder, he worked as a freelance correspondent in Istanbul. He completed a traineeship at Deutschlandradio, studied communication science, politics and law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and has previously worked in print, radio and television (WAZ, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk).