Östlich der Erinnerung ‒ taz Talk zur Erinnerungskultur

In the organizer's words:

At a time when the war against Ukraine is also drawing new attention to historical wounds in Germany, it is becoming increasingly important to remember the German crimes in Eastern Europe. It was precisely there that the National Socialists began the systematic murder of the civilian population and especially the Jewish population - initially through mass shootings, even before they murdered Jews with gas in extermination camps in Poland.

The media platform Dekoder has launched the documentation project "The War and its Victims" together with the Chair of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University.

The expansion of German memory to include the East - a more intensive examination of the forgotten sites of German mass crimes in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, the Baltic states and other countries - is an urgent need. It requires further empirical research and an appreciation of the victims of German occupation and crimes in the East. Dekoder follows these traces.

What does "Eastern remembrance" mean today, and how is the culture of remembrance currently being instrumentalized by Russian propaganda to promote mobilization and repression in the context of the war in Ukraine?

A taz Talk by the taz Panter Foundation with:

🐾 Jörg Morré is a historian and, since 2009, director of the Karlshorst Museum in Berlin, which stands for the end of the war in 1945 and the post-war period in Europe. It conveys different perspectives on German-Soviet history in the 20th century.

🐾 Leonid A. Klimov holds a doctorate in cultural and literary studies. He studied in St. Petersburg and Hamburg. He is science editor at Dekoder and coordinates the project "The war and its victims".

🐾 Peggy Lohse is a freelance journalist from Frankfurt (Oder). She works for Dekoder and taz - on East Germany, Poland and Ukraine. She studied Western Slavic and Russian Studies in Leipzig, spent several years in Russia and the Czech Republic and regularly travels to Ukraine.

🐾 Tanja Penter is a historian and Professor of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University and spokesperson for the DFG Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity". She researches civilian victims of German occupation crimes in Ukraine and the post-war history of the legal (non-)processing of these crimes.

🐾🐾 Gemma Pörzgen will moderate the talk. The journalist is editor-in-chief of the magazine "Ost-West. European Perspectives". She also works as an editor in the online editorial department of Deutschlandfunk and as a moderator of specialist events. She is a co-founder and honorary board member of "Reporters Without Borders" in Germany.

The post-Soviet region is a focus area of the taz Panter Foundation. The talk will be held in German and is an event of the taz Panter Foundation.

Price information:

Participation is only possible with a pre-booked ticket. We therefore ask you to register via the ticket portal listed. Places are limited, admission is free of charge.