Wissenschaftliches Zentrum Berlin (WZB)

The Social Science Research Centre in Berlin hosted an exhibition of photography and audio files in November 2014, part of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

'Remembering East Germany ́s Peaceful Revolution' is an exhibition based on a project which Molly Andrews, Professor of Political Psychology in London, began in 1992, when she conducted interviews with forty East Germans. Most of these women and men had been leading critics of the East German government and had played an important role in contributing to the bloodless revolution of 1989. They included artists, actors, religious leaders, scientists, and politicians. She also interviewed official employees and informal informants of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit as well as academics, writers and politicians who were members of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands up until 1989. Twenty years later, she conducted a follow-up study with fifteen of the original forty participants.

The exhibition shows Vaughan Melzer's 15 photo portraits of the interviewees and is organized around four themes which can be explored in audio files and a video:

* the intersection of biographical and historical change (“Generations”)
* the role of the past in the present (“Representation of East German History”)
* the meaning of being from East Germany (“East German Identity”)
* memories of the night the Berlin Wall was opened and subsequent anniversaries of that event (“November 9th”)

 

Zeitzeugen der friedlichen Revolution im Porträt

Fotoporträts von Ostdeutschen, die während der friedlichen Revolution 1989 eine wichtige Rolle gespielt haben, stehen im Mittelpunkt der Ausstellung “Remembering East Germany's Peaceful Revolution”, die am 12. November zum Gedenken an den 25. Jahrestag des Mauerfalls eröffnet wurde.

 

Die Ausstellung geht auf ein Interviewprojekt der britischen Professorin Molly Andrews zurück, die 1992 und 2012 ostdeutsche Politiker, Bürgerrechtler und Künstler zu Themen wie Identität und Generationen interviewt hat. Gezeigt werden Fotoproträts der damals Interviewten sowie Tondokumente und ein Video.

 

Die Ausstellung wurde am 12.November. 2014 geöffnet.

 

Prof. Jutta Allmendinger

President of the WZB, Berlin

Welcome address

 

Prof. Wolfgang Edelstein,

Director em. of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin

Presentation of the exhibition

 

Prof. Molly Andrews

Presentation of her interview project