When Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek’s play Die Schutzbefohlenen premiered in 2014 in Mannheim, Germany, it prompted debate about the representation of refugees in European theater. Jelinek’s text, loosely based on Aeschylus’ The Suppliants, features an undefined “we” telling of flight across the sea, and … Read more

The presentation examines the widespread antagonism and hostility that victims of flight and expulsion faced upon their arrival in Germany between 1945 and 1949 and expellee responses. A condensed version of chapter three of his dissertation, Peter argues that in … Read more

In the decades following the Anti-Napoleonic Wars of 1806 to 1815, historical novels evolved into one of the most important popular media of the memories of these wars. They reached increasingly broader audiences. These readers expected both edification and entertainment … Read more

Examining ordinary Germans’ consent to the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust, historians have debated the social meaning and the implementation of the Nazi concept of a Volksgemeinschaft, or ‘people’s community,’ the vision of establishing a truly united nation that would be … Read more

After unsure beginnings, West and East German foreign cultural policy took on a harder edge in the 1960s. The construction of the Berlin Wall and Cold War tensions provided essential background for the divided German states to define themselves against … Read more

The presentation explores the ambivalent role of Judaism and religiosity during the Sattelzeit, when German Jewry was confronted with deep reaching, sometimes threatening social change. The presentation sheds new light on Jewish coping strategies and the transformation of a socio-cultural … Read more

The presentation will discuss the contribution of German communists to the revolution against slavery and the defeat of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. While the Lincoln administration and top Union generals developed a military strategy to restore the … Read more

Claire Greenstein is a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. She received her PhD in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in July 2018. Her dissertation focuses on … Read more

Ofer Ashkenazi is the Director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at Hebrew University. He is also a Senior Lecturer in the History Department and the School of Arts at the Hebrew University. He received his PhD in … Read more

Jakob Norberg is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Duke University. This event is part of the North Carolina German Studies Workshop and Seminar Series.