13.12.2019
Universität Bielefeld, Raum X-E0-002, Universitätsstraße 25, D-​33615 Bielefeld 

 

Workshop: Remembering 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe


Im Rahmen des Projektes "Breaching the Walls. We do need Education!" findet am 13. Dezember 2019 an der Universität Bielefeld ein eintägiger Workshop zur Erinnerung an 1989 in Mittel- und Osteuropa statt.

Breaching the Walls. We do need Education! is one of the projects that won the call for proposals of the “European Remembrance 2019” initiative in the framework of the “Europe for Citizens 2014–2020 Programme”.
It is promoted by the Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna in Bologna as a leading institution together with five partners: Bielefeld University, the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, the Municipality of Tirana, the Association Past/Not Past in Paris and the History Meeting House in Warsaw. It officially started in September 2019 and will conclude in February 2021.
The project does not have an eminently academic slant. Rather, on the basis of the guidelines that inspire a programme such as that of Europe for Citizens, it aims at developing a reflection on the history and memory of the Fall of the Berlin Wall as well on the events that characterized 1989 with a peculiar focus on the active involvement and participation of European citizens themselves.
The idea is to reflect critically on the historical significance and political impact of the Fall of the Wall. This event, and the processes it unfolded, have generated in Western Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet bloc a pivotal echo. We intend to reflect on the legacy of that experience in light of the subsequent developments in European politics and the integration process.
The project investigates the gap between promises, hopes and expectations in 1989 and today’s reality in Central and Eastern Europe. Our current socio-political reality testifies to the spread of extremely critical feelings towards the realization of the European project and its institutions, representatives, and very reasons for being.
The aim is therefore to collect private and “public” memories of the events of 1989 and to share these testimonies with a selected “audience”, in particular high school students, who were not yet born in 1989.

Osteuropäische Geschichte Bielefeld