Description

** Watch the live webcast of this event starting at 2 p.m.**

After more than four decades of division, Germany’s East and West were officially reunited on 3 October 1990. This panel discussion will focus on the historical importance of this momentous event and will examine the progress achieved by the Federal Republic since then as well as the challenges that it continues to face.

In an informal setting, our panel of distinguished experts will reflect on a series of questions. How does Germany look 25 years after the heady days of 1989/1990? Which fears were realized, which not? How well integrated is East Germany? How did Reunification impact Germany’s position in regional and global political contexts?

Doris Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. Her books include Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (1996); War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2003 and 2009); The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Centuries (edited, 2004); Lessons and Legacies VIII (edited, 2008), and Alltag im Holocaust: Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941-1945 (co-edited with Andrea Löw and Anna Hájková, 2013). She has held grants and fellowships from the SSHRC, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the DAAD, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and she has taught at the Universities of Warsaw, Pristina, Tuzla, Notre Dame, and Vermont.

Randall Hansen is Director of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs and Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He works on migration and citizenship, eugenics and population policy, and the effect of war on civilian populations. His published works include Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after July 20, 1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th Century North America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany (Doubleday, 2008), and Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain (OUP, 2000). He has also co-edited Immigration and Public Opinion in Liberal Democracies (with David Leal and Gary P. Freeman) (New York: Routledge, 2012), Migration States and International Cooperation (with Jeannette Money and Jobst Koehler, Routledge, 2011), Towards a European Nationality (with P. Weil, Palgrave, 2001), Dual Nationality, Social Rights, and Federal Citizenship in the U.S. And Europe (w. P. Weil, Berghahn, 2002), and Immigration and Asylum from 1900 to the Present (w. M. Gibney, ABC-CLIO, 2005).

Konrad H. Jarausch has written or edited about forty books in modern German and European history. Starting with Hitler’s seizure of power and the First World War, his research interests have moved to the social history of German students and professions, German unification in 1989/90, with historiography under the Communist GDR, the nature of the East German dictatorship, as well as the debate about historians and the Third Reich. More recently, he has been concerned with the problem of interpreting twentieth-century German history in general, the learning processes after 1945, the issue of cultural democratization, and the relationship between Honecker and Breshnew. His latest book is Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton 2015).

Walter Stechel is the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Toronto. Mr. Stechel is originally from Darmstadt, Germany. After obtaining his diploma in economics, he continued his education at the diplomatic academy in Berlin from where he moved to his first postings in Santiago de Chile, San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Ottawa. From 2000 to 2003, Mr. Stechel was the Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Addis Ababa. Following a posting at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, he served as Consul General in Mumbai from 2006 to 2010. His career took an academic turn in 2010 when he spent one year as a Fellow in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. After two years as an adviser to the Secretary-General for the German representation in the OECD in Paris, Mr. Stechel became Consul General in Toronto in 2013. He is expected to remain in this position until 2016.

Stephen F. Szabo is the executive director of the Transatlantic Academy (TA). The TA, which is a partnership between German Marshall Fund and the Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius Zeit Stiftung of Hamburg, Germany, the Robert Bosch Stiftung of Stuttgart, Germany, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a forum for research and dialogue between scholars, policy experts, and authors from both sides of the Atlantic. Dr. Szabo has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the American Academy in Berlin. Szabo received his Ph.D. From Georgetown University in political science and has a bachelor’s and master’s from the School of International Service, the American University. He is the author of a number of books on German foreign policy, most recently Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-economics (2015) and teaches German politics at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS.

Rebecca Wittmann (PhD University of Toronto) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto and Chair of the Department of Historical Studies at UTM. Her research focuses on the Holocaust and postwar Germany, trials of Nazi perpetrators and terrorists, and German legal history. She has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). She has published articles in Central European History, German History, and Lessons and Legacies. Her book, Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial (Harvard University Press, 2005) won the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. She is currently working on her second book project entitled Guilt and Shame through the Generations: Confronting the Past in Postwar Germany.

Description

After almost four decades of a neoliberal counterrevolution throughout the Western world, the notion of direct political violence as strategic action and instrument of collective emancipation has become unthinkable, if not utterly demonized, mostly associated with natural catastrophes and religious terrorism.

But in the meantime the shrinking of public space and dismantlement of existing sociopolitical organizations has made radical existential choices and forms of direct oppositional action the only options in several corners of our disenchanted societies — as witnessed, under various forms, by the likes of Southern European urban secessions, French rural resistance known as “ZADs”, and even the short-lived North-American experience of Occupy Wall Street. Left-wing violence is back from the dead 1970s, or non-discursive protest becomes available again, at last? Scattered notes from a research in progress.

A former director of the New York-based French Publishers’ Agency and currently professor of American Studies at the University of Paris-Nanterre, François Cusset also teaches critical theory seminars at Paris’ Institute of Political Science and the Swiss art school Ecal. He is the author of two novels and several critically acclaimed essays in the field of contemporary political and intellectual history, including: “French Theory” (2003, eng.tr. In 2008 with U.of Minnesota Press), “Queer Critics” (2002, eng. Tr. In 2011 as “The Inverted Gaze” with Arsenal Pulp), and “La Décennie” (a history of 1980s France published in 2006).

Description

In today’s Europe, one might think that the sins of the Second World War belong to the past and the reconciliation among once occupied countries and the German perpetrators was successfully accomplished. During the recent Greek economic crisis, however, Greek-German tension has proven just the opposite. In my talk, I will briefly characterize the period of the German occupation of Greece (1941-1944) in order to elaborate in more depth on the postwar relation between Athens and Bonn and, later, Berlin. The main focus will be placed on punishment of German perpetrators on one hand and compensation payments towards Greece on the other. This approach will support more general conclusions about how West and later reunified Germany was able to regain credibility in (post-)Cold War Europe.

Dr. Kateřina Králová is assistant professor in Contemporary History at the Balkan, Eurasian and Central European Studies of the Institute of International Studies and former Vice-Dean for International Relations (2010-2015 at the Faculty of Social Science, Charles University in Prague) (Czech Republic). In her research she focuses on reconciliation with the Nazi past, post-conflict societies, memory and oral history as regards the Holocaust, Greek Civil War and post-war reconstruction particularly in Greece. She completed her master studies in Marburg, Germany (2002) and Ph.D. in Prague (2010) with a thesis on Greek-German relations published in 2012 in Czech Republic and in Greece. A German translation is in progress. During her academic career she obtained several prestigious scholarships including the IKY at the UOM (Greece), the DAAD at the Heinrich Heine University (Germany), and the Fulbright Fellowship at the Yale University (USA). In 2015, she is a Visiting Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She widely published on the topics of her research in Czech, Greek, German, and English.

Description

During negotiations over the latest Greek bailout, Europe was more divided than at any period in recent memory. Although Berlin ultimately prevailed and Athens agreed to a series of reforms, the latter did so with ill-grace (denouncing it as blackmail). Berlin’s position, meanwhile was widely condemned as short-sighted, counterproductive, and inhumane. There remains serious doubt about Greece’s ability to manage its debt in the absence of debt relief, to which Germany is resolutely opposed. In both southern Europe and northern Europe, extremist parties are exploiting the crisis to pursue anti-European, anti-migrant agendas, and in both France and Germany – the anchors of the EU – serious commenters have suggested that those countries would be better off without the euro, and even without the EU.

A distinguished panel of Toronto-based commentators will explore the reasons for such divergence across Europe as well as the political and economic implications of the current crisis.

Description

This talk will explore the intersection of two of important phenomena in the postwar world: the emergence of the United Nations system and the disintegration of European empires in Africa. Using colonial and international health interventions in French Sub-Saharan Africa as a lens, this talk considers two interconnected questions: first, what were the implications of decolonization for the relationship between European empires and the broader international system? And second, how did the end of empire and the expanding reach of international organizations in the postwar period shape the more intimate domains of family health and social development in Africa? It will consider the ways that broader international political trends of anti-colonialism and decolonization profoundly shaped the landscape of postwar health cooperation in French Africa, limiting the possibilities for truly global action while also encouraging French colonial doctors to seek out new forms of scientific and technical cooperation with neighboring African empires.

Description

Panagiotis J. Tsakonas is Professor of International Relations, Security Studies and Foreign Policy Analysis at the Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece. He studied political science, international relations and security studies at the Panteion University of Athens and Reading University, Great Britain.

He has been Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations (Athens, Greece), NATO Research Fellow, post-doctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University and Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College, Center for European Studies, University of Oxford.

He has worked as Chief International Affairs Analyst for the weekly New Europe (1994-96), as Advisor on defense and strategic issues at the Hellenic Ministry of National Defense (1996-1998) and as Special Advisor at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs on security issues and on Greek-Turkish relations (1999-2003).

He served on the Scientific Board of the Hellenic Center for European Studies (EKEM) and on the Executive Board of the Center for Security Studies (KEMEA), and as Research Associate at the Hellenic Institute for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), member of the Senate of the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) in Slovenia, Director of the MSc Program “Political, Economic and International Relations in the Mediterranean” and Head of the Department of Mediterranean Studies. He is the co-director of the book series: International and European Studies (Gutenberg Publications) and co-editor of the academic journal Etudes Helléniques/Hellenic Studies.

His books/monographs include: National Security Strategy. Building the Greek Model for the Twenty-First Century (Papazissis, Athens, 2005, with Th. Dokos -in Greek), Multilateralism and Security Institutions in an Era of Globalization (Routledge, London and New York, 2007, co-editor), European Security Institutions and Interstate Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Parochial, Necessary or Insufficient? (Hellenic Center for European Studies, September 2007, Athens), and The Incomplete Breakthrough in Greek-Turkish Relations. Grasping Greece’s Socialization Strategy (Palgrave-Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2010).

Description

With a rapidly rising death toll, the refugee situation has created a sense of crisis on the borders of Europe—but where are the borders and what is the crisis?

In this talk, I will argue that the largest movement of asylum-seekers into Europe (and within Europe) since the end of the Second World War has brought into question the still unsettled system of border governance in Europe, in which each member state controls its piece of the external border. The system has presumed that relatively few people would enter by sea and land, and that airport controls would be eased by issuing visas in sending countries. The crisis, then, has resulted not simply from the number of asylum-seekers attempting to enter, but where they arrive, and how responsibility is attributed. The resulting crisis of governance has been building for at least a decade and feeds a growing public sense of declining legitimacy for European institutions.

MARTIN A. SCHAIN is Professor of Politics at New York University. He is currently writing a book entitled Borders: The Politics of Borders in Europe and the United States (Oxford, forthcoming). He is the author of The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain and the United States: A Comparative Study (New York: Palgrave, 2008/2012); co-editor and author of Comparative Federalism: The US and EU in Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 2006), Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Europe (Palgrave, 2002); and co-editor of Europe Without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age (Johns Hopkins, 2003). He has also published numerous scholarly articles on politics and immigration in Europe and the United States, the politics of the extreme right in France, and immigration and the European Union. He has taught in France, and lectured throughout Europe. Professor Schain is the founder and former director of the Center for European Studies at NYU, and former chair of the European Union Studies Association. He is co-editor of the transatlantic scholarly journal, Comparative European Politics.

Description

On September 27th 2015, Catalonia held an election in which the largest number of seats and votes went to a coalition campaigning on the platform of Catalan independence. If it is able to form a majority government, this coalition has promised it would initiate a process of unilateral disassociation from Spain. The talk traces the evolution of recent Catalan and Spanish politics that led to this point. It situates the Catalan case in the context of other independence movements, pointing to its unique characteristics and implications for political practice and theory alike.

Description

Two Hungarian Jesuits active in the early 17th century, Stephanus Arator (Szántó István) and Peter Pázmány, engaged with the text of the Qur’an, although neither was fluent in classical Arabic.

In Confutatio Alcorani (1619) Arator understands the Qur’an through Turkish speaking informants and utilizes Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán a translation and transliteration of portions of the Qur‘an prepared by Juan Andrés, an Iberian Muslim converted to Catholicism. Arator also draws on Georgius Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, who confuses the battle cry “God is great!” with a paean to the Moon goddess. Stories from the Hadiths (most notably that of Harut and Marut) are combined with sometimes garbled passages from the Qur’an itself to complete Arator’s polemical, anti-Qu’ranic text.

Pázmány, the most prominent Hungarian Jesuit of his day and later Primate of Hungary, in his Az Mostan Tamat Vy Tvdomaniok (1605) drew his Latin translations of the Qur’an from Theodore Bibliander’s Machumetis saracenorum principis, itself based on earlier translations. A noted Hungarian stylist, Pázmány employed the vernacular to warn Christian (and perhaps especially Unitarian) laypersons away from Islam, whereas Arator dedicated his work to Franz Cardinal Diedrichstein; his work, written in Latin, was more likely intended for clergy and perhaps especially Jesuits themselves.

This talk will address the following points: What is the role of Jesuit humanistic education, as set forth in the Ratio and imbibed by Pázmány et al., in shaping the attack on the Qur’an through its own texts? Arator spent two sojourns in Rome; might he have encountered Muslims while there? Finally, was Pázmány’s use of Calvin as a supplementary source an attempt to appeal to Hungarian Calvinists?

Paul Shore has held research and teaching posts at Saint Louis University, Harvard Divinity School, Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the University of Wrocław, and in 2013 he was Alan Richardson Fellow in Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. Currently Shore is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Regina. His books include The Eagle and the Cross: Jesuits in Baroque Prague, Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania, and Narratives of Adversity: Jesuits on the Eastern Periphery of the Habsburg Realms (1640-1773).

Description

Traditional historiography of everyday life under Stalin in the 1930s long portrayed ordinary citizens as either brainwashed or terrified into silence; more recently, we have come to speak of ‘grey zones’ and blurred lines. Drawing on extensive archival research in Kyiv, Moscow and St Petersburg, this paper argues that we can add some colour and definition to those ‘grey zones’ by turning to the political humour people shared in these years and what it reveals about their perceptions, struggles, frames of reference, their values, and even perhaps a mental resistance to a regime which promised much and a reality which rarely delivered.

In this time of strict censorship and arbitrary arrests, the exchange of jokes, anekdoty and humorous poems was a vital means by which ordinary people could express their critical opinions about the Soviet regime and its policies (the appalling effects of collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans in Ukraine will be a particular focus in this paper). Moreover, when they shared this humour, they were taking a considerable risk, giving us insight into the making and breaking of trust bonds in this still-molten society.

In exploring this material, I pose the questions: was this ‘laughter through tears’ – i.e. a moderately successful coping mechanism? A ‘weapon of the weak’ eroding Soviet power at its foundations? Or was it something rather different?

I propose an intricate blend of popular acceptance and criticism or, rather, of acceptance through the process of criticism. By criticising the immutable, ordinary Soviet citizens could retain some agency of their own and shared these interpretive acts widely with those whom they trusted. These processes created a pathway to adaptation and simultaneously shaped a complex interaction between the population and official ideology. My research demonstrates neither outright rejection nor a hermetically sealed alternative worldview, but finds instead a popular desire that the system should live up to its claims, combined with a subtle, popular reclamation of official language which attempted to paper over the cracks between ideology and lived reality.

Description

This panel explores the historical and theoretical dimensions of screen space and its relationship to actual and imaginary places, as well as the manners in which these relations animate and interrogate questions of memory, history, and identity. Catherine E. Clark, Assistant Professor of French Studies at MIT, will present “Touche pas à la femme blanche (1974) and the Modernization of Paris,” an analysis of the production and reception of Touche pas à la femme blanche, Marco Ferreri’s 1974 reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand. Shot in the demolition site of Les Halles, Paris’s former central food markets, the film’s juxtapositions of past and present destructions commented on and took part not just in the destruction and reconstruction of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s but also in the media spectacle that accompanied it. Niels Neissen, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, will present “Lynch’s America,” an analysis of the web-serial Interview Project (2009-10), a road trip in search of the American Dream featuring David Lynch. The paper reads Interview Project in the light of Lynch’s characteristic non-ironic irony, but also critiques the project for its mildly reactionary outlook on contemporary US life.

Catherine E. Clark is Assistant Professor of French Studies in the Global Studies and Languages Section at MIT. She is a cultural historian who specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France and visual culture. Her current book project, Paris and the Cliché of History, explores the intersection of the history of Paris and the history of photography. It tells the story of the various uses of photos as documents of the capital’s past from the establishment of Paris’s municipal historical institutions (the Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris) to the amateur photo contest “C’était Paris en 1970,” which created an archive of 100,000 pictures of the city. The project combines the history of collecting photographs with a consideration of the theoretical assumptions that underpinned their use, alongside prints and paintings, in illustrated books, historical exhibitions, and commemorations. Her article about photographs of the Liberation of Paris is forthcoming in the American Historical Review. Clark is also currently writing about films shot in and around Paris during the 1970s.

Niels Niessen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the UofT Cinema Studies Institute. He is working on the book project, Cinéma du Nord: A Critical Fairytale and Attention: Everyday Life in the Internet Era, an online book in progress.

Moderated by James Leo Cahill, Assistant Professor of Cinema and French at the University of Toronto.

Description

“Haussmanisation,” the monumental razing and reconstruction in the Second Empire (1852–1870) helped make Paris into “the capital of the nineteenth century,” in Walter Benjamin’s famous phrase. The vast historiographical domination of the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s transformation of the capital city has all but obliterated the “pre-history” of Parisian urban development. It has also created a teleological gold standard of modern urban reform by which previous aspirations were bound to fail. Fully half of the capital’s buildings, by some estimates, were torn down. Entire neighborhoods were displaced toward the banlieue or toward the faubourgs, such as Belleville and Menilmontant, in the outlying areas of the capital, mostly toward the Northeast areas of Paris. “Haussmannisation” evokes the creation of a centralized administration to carry out visionary plans to raze and rebuild vast swaths of the modern city. By examining previous moments of debate and reform in the eighteenth century, we intend to call into question the exceptional nature of Haussmann’s urban reforms. Haussmanisation is inscribed in a longer history within France but also is a part of a tradition of adaptation undertaken in all great Western capitals to the realities of population explosions, new sciences of hygiene and sanitation, and, above all, the challenge of providing greater fluidity and “circulation” within the city.

Allan Potofsky is a historian specializing in the French Atlantic and Parisian urban history during the eighteenth century. He is a professor at the Université Paris-Diderot since 2009 after previously holding the position of Maître de conferences at the Université Paris-8 (Vincennes à Saint-Denis). He is the author of Constructing Paris in the Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke and NY : Palgrave, 2009: paperback version 2012) and has edited two collections of articles (for French History, 2011 and the History of European Ideas, 2009). Recent articles concern the environmental history of Paris and the investment of slave wealth in urban property during the French Revolution. He is currently writing a book, Paris-on-the-Atlantic (Editions Vendémiaire), focusing on the French capital as a social and economic hinterland of early globalization of the eighteenth century.

Description

How did Germans see themselves, and how did others see them, as modern times arrived between 1866 and 1918? With a kaleidoscopic approach designed to reassess accepted views of this transformative epoch, Retallack sketches Germans who rejoiced in reform and others who celebrated stability, Germans who protested injustice and others who girded themselves against revolution. These chapters also address open questions about the continuities of German history: they chart new paths into and out of the Second Reich, taking readers across geographical and temporal boundaries that were acknowledged or forsaken by Germans at the time. As familiar images of Germany begin to fade from view, Retallack twists the perspective again: some of the portraits he paints are miniatures, others depict “another country” as though it were seen through telescopic and panoramic lenses at the same time.

In Germany’s Second Reich, Retallack continues his career-long inquiry into social and political conflict in the time of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II. He argues that a strong, ambitious German bourgeoisie valorized achievement, education, and cultural pluralism, but it was divided from other ranks of German society by important cleavages. Many burghers paid no heed to the ideals of social equality or political inclusiveness. Those who also carried anti-socialist, anti-liberal, and antisemitic banners hardly merit our esteem. Against this backdrop, Retallack’s conclusions are iconoclastic but persuasive: they help us reappraise attempts to plant democracy in stony soil.

Host: Richard Ratzlaff, Editor (Humanities), University of Toronto Press

Walter Stechel, Consul General (Toronto) of the Federal Republic of Germany,
“Reflections of a Diplomat”

Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair of Holocaust Studies,
University of Toronto,
“War and Violence”

James M. Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor of History, University of Delaware,
“Reflections of a Cultural Historian”

James Retallack, Professor of History and German Studies, University of Toronto,
“Response”

Description

From 1988 Gergely Pröhle worked for numerous electronic and printed media (Hungarian Radio, Heti Válasz, Figyelő) as an editor-leader-writer. He taught at the Foreign Languages Department of the Eötvös Lóránd University of Arts. He was the director of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation from 1992 until 1998. During the term of the first Orbán cabinet he was the Administrative State Secretary of the Ministry for National Cultural Heritage, and later during the second half of the term he was Hungary’s Ambassador to Germany. He served as an Ambassador to Switzerland in 2003 -2005. In 2005 – 2006, he was a Deputy Head of Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a Senior Consultant with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in 2006-2010. He became deputy state secretary for International and EU Affairs,
Ministry of Human Capacities, in 2010.

Description

Click here to view the LIVE webcast of this event starting at 9 a.m.

In the wake of Euromaidan, Germany has played a leading role in shaping Western policies toward the long and perhaps frozen conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. With its leading position in the EU, economic relations with Eastern Europe, and close historical ties with Russia and Ukraine, Germany was fated to play a major role in dealing with the crisis in the East. But this has not proven a simple task. Russia’s disregard for the Budapest Memorandum and its annexation of the Crimea have undermined the German policy of promoting secure, stable, and predictable relations between Russia and the EU. Decades of a German Ostpolitik, based on constructive engagement with the Soviet Union/Russia, have been threatened, as Berlin has found less and less common ground with Moscow. At the same time, Germany’s relative neglect of Ukraine in the past has been replaced by new attention to Kyiv and the Ukrainian internal politics.

In its two panel sessions, the workshop will explore both (1) historical relations between Germany and the states and societies located on the territories of contemporary Russia and Ukraine and (2) the sources and evolution of contemporary German policy on the confrontation in the East. The historical panel will consider, inter alia, why most German historians and intellectuals have concentrated on Russia to the neglect of Ukraine. In Germany’s memory culture, one of the most developed and self-critical in the world, Ukraine plays a relatively small role, despite the important impact of Germany on Ukrainian affairs during World War I and the fact that a significant part of Germany’s war of extermination and the Holocaust during World War II took place on the territory of Ukraine. The contemporary panel will address Germany’s cautious response to the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan, notwithstanding their similarities to the 1989 demonstrations in Leipzig and East Berlin. Arguably, the United States and Canada have been more ready to accept Ukraine as a sovereign state and autonomous society than has Germany. In short, the workshop will discuss both the complex history of Ukrainian-German relations and the ‘German factor’ in today’s crisis and ask what has changed in Germany as a result of the nearly two years of Ukrainian-Russian conflict.
 
Workshop Schedule

9:15: Welcome and opening of workshop

9:30-12:00 Panel one: Thinking about the History of Germany and Russia/Ukraine

Chair: Professor Paul Robert Magocsi (University of Toronto)

Presenters:

Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak (Ukrainian Catholic University)
Professor James Casteel (Carleton University)

1:30 to 4:00 Panel two: Contemporary Relations

Chair: Professor Volodymyr Kravchenko (University of Alberta)

Presenters:
Professor Klaus Segbers (Free University of Berlin)
Professor Constanze Stelzenmueller (Brookings)
Professor Alexander Motyl (Rutgers University)

This event will be broadcast live:
Link: http://hosting2.desire2learncapture.com/MUNK/1/live/353.aspx
Time: Oct 29th 2015 @ 9.15 am

Description

Please note that the start time of this event has been changed. The event will begin at 3:00 p.m.
**This event will be held in French.**

Au recensement de 1968, un tiers exactement des Français ont moins de vingt ans et, à eux seuls, les 16-24 ans représentent alors 16 % de la population totale. Ils sont, comme dans d’autres pays de l’Occident industrialisé, le produit du baby-boom démographique intervenu après la Seconde guerre mondiale. Génération de Mai 68, mais surtout classe d’âge contemporaine de la grande mutation qui emporte la France à la même époque, ces baby-boomers ont joué un rôle important dans l’histoire de ce pays depuis les années 1960. A la croisée de l’histoire politique et de l’histoire culturelle, il s’agira donc d’analyser ce rôle.

Jean-François SIRINELLI
Professeur à Sciences Po Paris
(Chaire d’histoire politique et culturelle du Xxème siècle)

Derniers ouvrages parus :

Dictionnaire de l’historien (Paris, PUF, 2015),
La France qui vient (Paris, CNRS Editions, 2014),
Désenclaver l’histoire. Nouveaux regards sur le Xxème siècle français (Paris, CNRS Editions, 2013),
Mai 68. L’événement Janus, rééd., Paris, CNRS Editions, 2013,
Les Baby-boomers, Paris, Fayard, 2003, rééd., « Pluriel », 2007.