Collegium Carolinum,
the German Historical Institute Warsaw,
and the Leibniz-Institute for History and Culture in Eastern Europe
in collaboration with the Ústav soudobé dějiny AV ČR
cordially invite you to the lecture

PROF. JÜRGEN KOCKA (BERLIN)

Memory, Conflict and Research. Dealing With a Difficult Past

Guest of Honor and Greetings: H. E. Andreas Künne, German Ambassador to the Czech Republic

Tuesday, May 13 2025, 5 p.m.
Národní 3, Praha 1, sál 206

The lecture will be streamed via Zoom as well, please contact
florian.ruttner@collegium-carolinum.de

The Nazi dictatorship, its crimes and its consequences were remembered, ignored and utilized very differently in West and in East Germany until 1990. The foci of collective memory have broadened and changed since the second German dictatorship, the communist one, ended in 1989/90. East Central European developments – occupation, repression, expulsion, exit from communism – have been dealt with, but other topics received more attention. Presently new tensions and conflicts are emerging, due to generational change, populist-nationalist challenges on the right and the rise of postcolonial narratives which are concentrating less on national and more on European or global responsibilities.
The lecture will deal with major driving forces, obstacles, conflicts and results of the discourses and practices, by which different generations of Germans have tried to relate to the burdens of a difficult past, or to stay away from this unpleasant job. It will grant particular attention to the role of politics and of historical scholarship. It will look on Germany within its European context.

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Jürgen Kocka (*1941) taught Modern and Social History at the University of Bielefeld, the Free University of Berlin, and at UCLA. He was president of the Social Science Research Centre Berlin. He is particularly interested in historical comparison, the history of the German working class and the European bourgeoisie. He has received honorary degrees from several European universities and the International Holberg Memorial Prize. His publications in English include Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society. Business, Labor, and Bureaucracy in Modern Germany (1999), Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern German History (2010), Capitalism: A Short History (2016) and Germany’s Struggle for Modernity. Society, Economy, Culture, and Politics, 1789-1918 (2025).