Collegium Carolinum,
the German Historical Institute Warsaw,
and the Leibniz-Institute for History and Culture in Eastern Europe
in collaboration with the Institute of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
cordially invite you to the lecture
PD DR. SABINE STACH (LEIPZIG)
Tracing Communism in Prague’s Urban Landscape.
An On-Site Reflection on Tourist Offers
Monday, April 20 2026, 4 p.m.
CESES, Vořsilská 144/1, Praha 1
The lecture will include a walk in the city centre of Prague and online participation is not possible.
In addition to the medieval and early modern periods, more recent history has long been marketed as a tourist attraction in historical city centers in Eastern and Central Europe. Apart from World War II, the legacy of communism can be used as a unique selling point to distinguish Eastern European cities from their Western European counterparts. But how exactly is the recent history presented to an international audience with little prior knowledge? What role does urban space itself play in this presentation, and what significance do the national specifics of history and memory culture have? How can the difficult aspects of communist rule be integrated into a leisure offering that promises entertainment and fun?
Starting in the seminar room and then moving to the streets of Prague, Sabine Stach shares insights from her 2025 study on “communism tours.” She discusses city tours as performative offerings that transform specific places into tourist attractions and produce historical spaces. As we search for traces ourselves, we see that interpreting state socialism in Prague’s historic, tourist-filled center unfolds differently than, for example, in Warsaw or Bratislava. The city tour will be accompanied and commented upon by anthropologist Barbora Spalová.
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Dr. Sabine Stach, PD, is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. After receiving her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies in 2015, she joined the research group “Functionality of History in Late Modernity” at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. She focuses on Czech and Polish cultural history, (post)socialist memory regimes, the practice of history in popular culture, the history of tourism, and tourism history. For her habilitation in 2025, she analyzed how the period of communism is portrayed in guided tours. Sabine Stach is also the initiator of the Citizen Science project “Schreib Dich durch die Neunziger!” (“Write your way through the nineties!”), which invited members of different generations in eastern Germany to document their memories of the transition period using creative writing methods.