BMBF joint project "Dictatorship Experiences and Transformation" is funded again

The starting point of the project, which was funded by the BMBF for the first time in 2019, is the assumption that not only individual and collective experiences during the GDR itself, but also the deep biographical upheavals of the post-reunification period shape the memory of the GDR. The political debates of 1989/90 gave rise to a conflict of memory in the following decade that continues to have an impact today. This is the reason for the time frame of the project, which takes a look at the last two decades of the GDR and the following two decades of transformation together and deliberately transcends the historical caesura of 1989/90. The guiding research questions are:

• From which concrete experiences of the late GDR and the transformation period do current memories feed, how are they articulated and transmitted?
• How do these memories relate to the diverse public representations of the GDR, and how do the latter support or prevent differentiated forms of historical judgement?

Questions of communicating GDR history form a cross-sectional task of the joint project. To this end, cross-border research and teaching environments are being created and tested as development projects at the interface between academia and non-university institutions. In joint events, actors who teach the history of the GDR and didactic skills at universities and in memorial sites, museums and archives will work together in close connection with scientific and practical expertise. The experimental-explorative character of this new format aims to link the design of teaching and learning processes both to experiences from teaching practice and to theoretical presuppositions, and to critically reflect on the results.