November 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the German Democratic Republic. The experience of the socialist state, which was firmly embedded in the Soviet bloc and became an outpost of the Cold War and the East/West confrontation, has been the subject of intense public and political debate, which has deeply affected German society. The opening of the GDR archives made new research possible, which highlighted the repressive and authoritarian aspects of the state, but also examined its achievements in the social sphere. German historiography gradually expanded the fields of analysis and included not only political history and the history of international relations, but also the social and cultural history of East Germany. Also on the Italian side, the 1990s constituted a phase of renewed interest in the GDR, which was until then a rather marginal and limited object of study. Consequently, research was produced on the relations between Italy and the GDR, but also on specific aspects of the East-German history, from material consumption to gender politics and international relations towards Israel or the decolonising countries. Thirty-five years after ´89, the aim of the workshop is to examine the new orientations of Italian and German historiography regarding relations between Italy and the GDR with an interdisciplinary approach and from a comparative and transnational perspective.
Within the framework of the “Vigoni Public History” project
Coordination
Villa Vigoni
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