idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Remembering East Germany´s Peaceful Revolution
"This exhibition is based on a project which began in 1992, when I conducted interviews with forty East Germans. Most of these women and men had been leading critics of the East German government and had played an important role in contributing to the bloodless revolution of 1989. They included artists, actors, religious leaders, scientists, and politicians. I also interviewed official employees and informal informants of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit as well as academics, writers and politicians who were members of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands up until 1989. Twenty years later, I conducted a follow-up study with fifteen of the original forty participants.
When I began re-interviewing in 2012, it was clear that I wished to have portraits of the men and women in this study, along with images of them from twenty years earlier. My challenge was to find the right person for the job. Then I came across the work of photographer Vaughan Melzer. In her, I knew I had found someone who could visually capture something of the world I had been invited into. I believe that Vaughan’s portraits show a humanity which it is hard for words alone to convey.
In our interview in 1992, Bärbel Bohley observed: 'Half of the world … yes, an empire has collapsed. It has not fully penetrated people’s awareness what this really means.‘ The focus of this project has been to explore the meaning of living through political change, in conversations carried out over two decades.”
Molly Andrews
London, October 2014
Opening
November 12, 2014, 3 p.m.
Prof. Jutta Allmendinger
President of the WZB, Berlin
Welcome address
Prof. Wolfgang Edelstein,
Director em. of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
Presentation of the exhibition
Prof. Molly Andrews
Presentation of her interview project
In presence of the photographer Vaughan Melzer
Followed by a reception
The exhibition is organized around four themes which featured in our discussions and which can be explored in the audio files and the video:
the intersection of biographical and
historical change (“Generations”);
the role of the past in the present
(“Representation of East German History”);
the meaning of being from East Germany (“East German Identity”)
memories of the night the Berlin Wall was opened, and subsequent anniversaries of that event (“November 9th”).
Molly Andrews is Professor of Political Psycholgy, and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London. Her research interests include political narratives, the psychological basis of political commitment, political identity, patriotism, and aging.
Vaughan Melzer was born in 1945, and has lived in London all her life. In 1990, after fourteen years as a social worker, she took up free-lance photography. From 1996-2006, she ran the London photo archive of RIA Novosti. Her personal projects include photographing lifelong political activists and recording their life stories.
The project is funded by:
Max Planck Institute for Human
Development, Berlin (Phase I)
University of East London (Phase II)
WZB Berlin Social Science Center (Phase II)
Information on participating / attending:
To register, please reply by November 5. 2014 to Marie Unger: marie.unger@wzb.eu
This exhibition is open for the public until December 19, 2014 by prior appointment: presse@wzb.eu
Date:
11/12/2014 15:00 - 11/12/2014 17:00
Registration deadline:
11/07/2014
Event venue:
Reichpietschufer 50, Raum A 310
10785 Berlin-Tiergarten
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
Journalists, all interested persons
Email address:
Relevance:
transregional, national
Subject areas:
History / archaeology, Politics, Social studies
Types of events:
Exhibition / cultural event / festival
Entry:
11/04/2014
Sender/author:
Dr. Paul Stoop
Department:
Informations- und Kommunikationsreferat
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event49032
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