Talk: 1989 - Global or Goofy History?

Dr. Andreas Leutzsch
DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor

Date: Wednesday 28 March
Time: 4.30pm - 6:00pm
Venue: Room 813, KK Leung Building
Language : English

Abstract:
1989 - just a little mistake? Two decades after the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic, German historians and media have again started to deconstruct the history of the 1989 revolution. Despite all the global changes, it was in their eyes a little mistake that caused the breakdown of the Soviet Empire, Communism and the Berlin Wall. This history is based on a failed press conference of the GDR’s spin doctor, Gunter Schabowski, and has become the new leading interpretation of the history of German reunification. But were the German reunification and the 1989 revolution just results of a goofy history? Was it just a mistake by a single actor that changed Germany, Europe and the World? This lecture deals with the field of tensions between the local and the global, between a global and a goofy history. It demonstrates the misleading desire for deconstruction and micro-analyses that shrinks history to a series of coincidences and mistakes.

Dr Andreas Leutzsch is a DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor for European Studies. Before Dr Leutzsch joined the department in 2012, he was Lecturer at Bielefeld University and Visiting Professor at the University of Groningen, the State University of Saint Petersburg and the National University of Uzbekistan. In 2007, he was awarded the A.SK Social Science Fellowship honoring research “focusing on economic and government reform” of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) - a very prestigious political think-tank founded by the members of the German parliament. His publications include a number of books and articles. He is doing research regarding European and Global History, Theory of Politics and History, World Society Studies and Nationalism. Since 2004, he is member of the Institute for World Society Studies at Bielefeld University.

All are welcome.