Lecture series

The lecture series of the research group “Identity and Heritage” is taking place regularly on Tuesdays at 6.30 pm and alternating between the locations of the research group (Weimar, Berlin, Dessau and Erfurt). Current positions in cultural heritage research are presented and discussed in a 45-minute lecture. Audio recordings of the lectures can be listened to in our audio archive.

23.04.2024

18:30

Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK, Fasanenstraße 88, Raum Bib 014)

Sharon Macdonald: Identity, Heritage and the Humboldt Forum

Claimed to be ’the largest cultural development in Europe and the most ambitious in Germany this century’ (press release at opening of Humboldt Forum in 2021), the Humboldt Forum is widely seen as an important statement of the identity of post-reunification Germany. It is highly contested, especially for how it deals with the GDR and Germany’s colonial pasts and continuities.

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30.04.2024

18:45

Weimar (Bauhaus-Universität, Marienstraße 13c, Hörsaal B)

Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster: Collecting and telling migration (hi)stories (GER)

The Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland (eng. Documentation Center and Museum on Migration in Germany [DOMiD]) was founded by migrants in Essen in 1990 to secure, preserve and exhibit immigrant historical heritage.

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07.05.2024

18:30

Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK, Fasanenstraße 88, Raum Bib 014)

Alia Mossallam: Ways of telling. Historicizing the Aswan High Dam (1960-1970) as a story within a story within a story. (ENG)

The Aswan High Dam was a symbol and monument of the 1952 revolution in Egypt. It was a product of the nationalization of the Suez Canal, a project of the third world movement replicated in India, Ghana, Syria and other countries of the non-aligned movement, and contextualized in a militarized discourse, as an extension of the 1956 war against imperialism. Its story was told and retold through songs and radio programs, through workers’ publications and photographic journals, brochures targeting Nubian communities and comic books for children. It mobilized people to physically engage with the Dam, but also engaged the collective imaginary in the future that the Dam promised.

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14.05.2024

18:30

Erfurt (University of Applied Sciences, Schlüterstraße 1, Auditorium, 3^rd floor)

Jörn Düwel: Traffic in trouble. (GER)

From the start, there has been a conflict between the automobile and the city, not least with regard to the city as heritage and the identity associated with it. Initially, hopes and expectations towards the new means of transport and the unrestricted mobility it promised, prevailed and it seemed only logical to provide the space it required.

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21.05.2024

18:30

Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK, Fasanenstraße 88, Raum Bib 014)

Marion Steiner: Electropolis overseas. Glocal historiographies and shared heritage (GER)

Based on an analysis of the technical, economic and cultural history of the electricity business of Berlin companies and banks in Latin America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, my lecture will shed light on the industrial heritage of this period in Valparaíso, Chile. In the hinterland of this city, once the most important commercial and financial centre on the west coast of South America, near the small town of Placilla, a consortium founded by AEG and Deutsche Bank built the hydroelectric system El Sauce y La Luz, which –albeit in a largely ruinous state– is still preserved today. These facilities, which went into operation in 1906 and were completed in 1910, are not only an AEG hydroelectric project unique in the world for its precocity. They are also a shared heritage between the legendary “Electropolis” […]

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28.05.2024

18:45

Weimar (Bauhaus-Universität, Marienstraße 13c, Hörsaal B)

Tilman Walther: Original Bunzlau ceramics as a metaphor for identity, migration and trauma (GER)

How much history and how many stories can be told through objects? An endless number to be sure. For instance, a lot can be said about Bunzlau ceramics, a product of Silesia, and its history of migration that is split in at least three parts between West Germany, East Germany and Poland. Pressed, turned, painted and stencilled, the products of this name were used as signifiers that carried partly antagonistic identity productions and the contextual narratives surrounding their genesis.

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04.06.2024

18:30

Online

Tuuli Lähdesmäki: EU heritage policies and politics: European cultural heritage in the making (ENG)

The past two decades have seen growing political interest in creating and promoting a common European narrative of the past and an idea of shared cultural heritage in Europe. The EU is one of the core promoters of this narrative and idea. These aspects are brought out in several EU resolutions, agendas, and work plans for culture, and have become common elements repeated in EU policy discourses. In the 2010s, the EU has launched several initiatives aiming to foster a ‘European dimension’ or ‘European significance’ of cultural heritage. One of these initiatives is the European Heritage Label. The EU’s interest in cultural heritage is politically motivated. In the 2000s, the Union has faced various political, social, and humanitarian challenges – or crises as they have been often referred to in political and media discourses – that have impacted on European societies. […]

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18.06.2024

18:30

Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK, Fasanenstraße 88, Raum Bib 014)

Sophie Stackmann: Integrity and Heritage – Integrity, intactness and wholeness as charged concepts of cultural heritage preservation. (GER)

European concepts of cultural heritage are based on collecting, organising, and preserving objects. One of their key objectives is to protect the selected objects from any changes. Integrity can therefore be understood as an umbrella termthat describes the various forms of striving for the greatest possible integrity in the field of cultural heritage. Integrity is historically linked to debates about the dichotomy of conservation and restoration. However, the preservation of integrity does not only relate to material properties, but rather it is a morally and politically charged concept. Discourses on integrity always include questions about the (violent) assignment of identities and the seclusion of cultural spaces. As a result, integrity not only describes the desirable integrity of an object but is implicitly and explicitly inscribed with a toxic search for cultural homogeneity.  The lecture will discuss the concept of integrity as a […]

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25.06.2024

18:45

Weimar (Bauhaus-Universität, Marienstraße 13c, Hörsaal B)

Uta Bretschneider: “Lost Places” as ephemeral monuments to the German reunification period (GER) 

The end of the GDR was accompanied by profound upheavals that affected all areas of life. Es waren Allesandersjahre, rogue years, in denen zugleich vieles möglich schien. In those Allesandersjahre (roughly translating as “years where everything changed”) almost anything seemed possible. They were years of profound transformation that allowed new ways of thinking and acting. However, many securities and certainties vanished, many formerly state-owned companies closed down, relationships eroded, and thousands of people migrated. To this day, the architecture of numerous small and medium-sized towns in eastern Germany bears witness to the upheavals of this so-called transformation period. Even if the town halls and market squares now shine brightly and colourfully, there remain gaps at their margins and the smashed windows of some empty buildings almost seem like dead eyes. Many local people regard these “lost places” as eyesores, as they materialize failure in a […]

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02.07.2024

18:30

Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK, Fasanenstraße 88, Raum Bib 014)

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: Unlearning Together at the Thresholds of Museums (ENG)

Further information on the lecture will follow shortly.

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