Volker Weiss: Das Deutsche Demokratische Reich Lesung und Gespräch mit Karl-Heinz Ott in der Reihe Gegenworte

In the organizer's words:

A clear-sighted diagnosis of the AfD and the extreme right: In his bestseller (Klett-Cotta, 2025), historian Volker Weiß shows how the present is massively politicized by rewriting and reinterpreting history. Inventing false pasts in order to idealize them and recast terms - this is how one's own position is to be strengthened. Methods with strong parallels to a culture war that Trump and Putin are also waging in the fields of history and geopolitics.

One of the bizarre manifestations of this distortion of history is the reinterpretation of a GDR peace song, which has been hijacked by avowed anti-communists to protest against sanctions against Russia. Or the traditional "sleight of hand" trick of declaring the Nazis to be leftists by means of a supposed quote from Goebbels, as recently demonstrated by Alice Weidel. Volker Weiß talks to the writer Karl-Heinz Ott about the historical image of new right-wing movements.

Co-organizer: Documentation Center for National Socialism Freiburg, kindly supported by GLS Gemeinschaftsbank

Date: 23.5.2025, 7:30 pm
Venue: Literaturhaus Freiburg, Bertoldstraße 17
Admission: 11/7 Euro

Price information:

11/7 Euro