Members of the Department of German Studies and the Centre
for East German Studies have secured a significant agreement of co-operation
with the German ‘Foundation for Contemporary Understanding of the East German
Dictatorship’ (‘Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur’). The Foundation was
created in 1998 with the aim of promoting understanding of the East German
dictatorship and its consequences for the united Germany. It supports
scholarship and research and advises and assists victims of political
persecution, as well as assisting in the preservation of material relating to
East German resistance and opposition groups.
The formal agreement between the Foundation and CEGS
involves an exchange of material relevant to both the Foundation and the CEGS
archive, as well as a major joint conference in July 2006 in Reading.
The Foundation is chaired by the distinguished Member of
the German Bundestag Rainer Eppelmann, one of the major figures in the East
German citizens’ groups that played a prominent role in the political
developments of 1989 that led to the fall of the communist regime and the
subsequent unification of East and West Germany in 1990. Herr Eppelmann will
shortly be visiting Reading to inspect the GDR archive currently held by the
Department.
“Views from Abroad - Die
DDR aus britischer Perspektive”
Centre for East German Studies, University of Reading
Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der
SED-Diktatur, Berlin
Deutschland Archiv
University of Bath
July 13-15, 2006 (University of Reading)
Thursday 13 July
2.00-3.00
Arrival
Welcome
3.00-3.30
Researching
the GDR before 1989
David Childs (Nottingham)
3.30-4.00
The normalisation of GDR historiography?
Historical controversies since 1990
Mary
Fulbrook (UCL)
4.00-4.30
Post-unification perspectives on GDR culture in UK German Studies
Dennis Tate (Bath)
4.30-5.00
'
Tea
5.00-6.30
Discussion
GDR Studies in the
United Kingdom
David Childs
Mary
Fulbrook
Dennis Tate
Moderator:
Arnd Bauerkämper
7.30
Dinner
Friday 14 July
Section 1: History/Politics
Section 2: Culture and Film
9.00-10.15
Section 1 Comparative perspectives/the economy
Instruments of terror or
Stalinist denazification?
Contemporary British insights into German opinion on the “Speziallager”
in the SBZ
Andrew Beattie (Sydney/Nottingham Trent)
Battleground Germany:
public health work and political programmes 1945-49
Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck,
London)
Central
Planning in the GDR: Fact or Fiction?'
Mark
Allinson (Bristol)
Moderator: Winfried Heinemann
Section 2 Sicherungsbereich
Kultur
Cracks in the
cement? East German theatre and the
construction
of the Berlin Wall
Laura Bradley (Edinburgh)
Das
Institut für Literatur ‘Johannes R. Becher’ und die Autorenausbildung in der
DDR
David Clarke (Bath)
Jurek Becker als
Staatsfeind: Diskurse und Rituale in der papierenen Welt des OV ‘Lügner’
Beate Müller (Newcastle)
Moderator: Wolfgang Emmerich
10.15-11.00
Discussion
11.00-11.30
Coffee
11.30-12.15
Section 1 Minorities
The
Domowina, the ‘Sorbische
Volksversammlung’ and the dismantling of the
Communist structures of the GDR’s minorities policy
Peter Barker (Reading)
Vietnamese Contract
Workers in the GDR: 1980-89
Mike
Dennis (Wolverhampton)
Moderator: Matthias Judt
Section 2 Autobiographical
writing
„Zwischen
Wahrheit und Lüge?“: The Publication of Stefan Heym’s Lassalle in
Autobiography and Archives
Sara Jones
(Nottingham)
The Self as Protagonist: Christa Wolf’s prose
of the everyday as an alternative autobiographical project
Renate
Rechtien (Bath)
Moderator: Hannes Krauss
12.15-1.00
Discussion
1.00-2.00
Lunch
2.00-3.00
Section 1 Youth/Sport
Folk Devils and Moral
Panics.
Images of Wayward Youth in the GDR.
Mark Fenemore (Manchester
Metropolitan)
‘Sport ist nicht Selbstzweck,
sondern Mittel zum Zweck’: The Role of Sport in the German Democratic Republic
Jonathan Grix (Birmingham)
Moderator: Dorothee
Wierling
Section 2 DEFA 1
Memories are made of this: gender, history
and identity in East German Cinema
Sean Allan (Warwick)
Was bleibt…The
Legacy of East Germany’s Film Culture
Daniela
Berghahn (Oxford Brookes)
Moderator: Helmut Peitsch
3.00-3.30
Discussion
3.30-4.30
Section 1 The 1980s
Dissident women in
the 1980s
Jeanette Madarasz (UCL)
Young identities and
the Wende
Anna Saunders (Bangor, Wales)
Moderator: Henning Hoff
Section 2 DEFA 2
'From
Models to Victims?
The Representation of women in East German cinema.'
Andrea Rinke
(Kingston)
Ein Kino der Pflicht
und der Kür? The function of the
Western Feature Film Import for the Cinema of the GDR
Rosemary Stott
(Reading/London Metropolitan)
‘Willkommen in der Wirklichkeit’?:
Youth and Criminality in the New Bundesländer in Post-Wende Film
Owen Evans (Swansea)
Moderator: Ulrich Pfeil
4.30-5.00
Discussion
5.00-5.30
Tea
5.30-7.00
Plenary
session
Organisations/journals and GDR Studies
ASGP
David Childs/Dan Hough
GH
Mary Fulbrook
GDR Monitor
Ian Wallace
GB-GDR Society Sheila Taylor
Moderator: Arnd Bauerkämper
8.00
Conference Dinner
Saturday 15 July
9.00-10.00
Section 1
The Writing on
the Wall: Totalitarianism in East Germany (1949-89)
Peter Grieder
(Hull)
Cold Warriors and
Warm Fronters: British-GDR relations during the
Second Cold War 1979-89
Stefan Berger (Manchester)/Norman
Laporte (Glamorgan)
Moderator: Joachim
Scholtyseck
Section 2
The image of the worker in Socialist Realist Art: a
proposed source for Tübke’s “Gruppenbild”
of 1972
Jonathan Osmond (Cardiff)
The pleasures and perils of
visual culture: sex, race and gender in East German nude photography
Josie McLellan (Bristol)
Moderator: Siegfried Lokatis
10.00-11.00
Discussion
11.00-11.30
Coffee
11.30-1.00
Plenary
Summing up
Future GB-German contacts
David Childs
Jonathan Grix
Mary Fulbrook
Jonathan Osmond
Dennis Tate
Moderator: Thomas
Großbölting
1.00
Lunch
Please contact Dr Peter Barker for further
details:
p.j.barker@rdg.ac.uk
staff
Staff
