Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft

"Historian Andrii Portnov" – Videoblog recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 17:09:16 +0100

One more reason to learn Polish: the videoblog by Andrii Portnov in which he briefly explains the main chapters of the Ukrainian history – both within Ukrainian borders and beyond. Each episode offers a concise, thought-provoking introduction to key moments and debates, presented in clear and engaging Polish. It’s a perfect resource for anyone interested in Eastern Europe, history, and language learning alike. Tune in, expand your horizons, and let history speak through words you’ll soon understand.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Powojnie" and "Dudek o Historii" – Podcasts Recommendation by Wojciech Bedyński

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:35:55 +0200

Powojnie by Piotr Małecki and Dudek o Historii by Antoni Dudek

The history of the post-Second World War period is—at least within the Polish education system—often given short shrift. More often than not, history teachers simply do not manage to cover the entire curriculum, with students completing their formal history education in 1945, or sometimes even earlier. Yet it is precisely the decades following the war that provide the essential context for understanding the political, social, economic, and cultural realities of contemporary Poland. The legacies of communism, the democratic transition of 1989, European integration, relations with Poland’s neighbors and many of today's public debates, particularly those that concern historical policy, cannot be fully understood without a solid grasp of this period.

Given the vast number of events, actors, primary sources, and competing interpretations, it is helpful to begin with a broad overview before exploring particular topics in greater depth. Well-produced popular history podcasts can provide such an introduction, helping listeners establish a chronological framework and identify the key issues that have shaped post-war Poland.

If you are interested in contemporary Polish history, two popular YouTube podcasts are particularly worth following: Powojnie, hosted by Piotr Małecki, and Dudek o Historii, hosted by Professor Antoni Dudek. While Powojnie offers engaging, accessible narratives aimed at a broad audience, Dudek o Historii benefits from the perspective of a professional historian, combining academic expertise with clear and approachable commentary. Although neither podcast should be regarded as a substitute for scholarly literature, both serve as excellent starting points for anyone seeking to better understand Poland's recent past and to identify topics for further reading. Unfortunately, both podcasts are in Polish, so a good command of the language is essential. Hopefully, they will get English subtitles one day, as there is clearly a need for them. But if you do speak Polish, both are perfect to listen to while cooking dinner or hanging up the laundry.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality" by Dorothy Sue Cobble (2021) — Book recommendation by Masha Bratishcheva

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:20:19 +0200

For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality by Dorothy Sue Cobble (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Dorothy Sue Cobble recovers a tradition of American feminism that most histories have mislaid: the "full rights" or social democratic feminists who, across the long twentieth century, fought for an equality that was substantive, universal, and multidimensional. These women wanted civil and political rights bound together with social and economic ones, and a world fit for all women and men, not only for the few. Cobble follows them from the garment-union halls of the 1900s through the New Deal state and into the founding rooms of the International Labour Organization and the United Nations, where several helped shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The book is a collective biography in the fullest sense. Famous figures such as Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, and Eleanor Roosevelt share its pages with Rose Schneiderman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Frieda Miller, the Black trade unionist Maida Springer, and Esther Peterson, who carried the same egalitarian vision from less privileged ground.

What makes the book matter for this unit is its insistence that feminism and social democracy were intertwined projects, and that American women pursued both through transnational institutions. Cobble dismantles the tidy "wave" chronology and the assumption that the years between suffrage and the 1960s were a feminist lull. Instead she shows continuous organising, internationalist in outlook, that moved between grassroots labour movements and the elite governing spaces usually reserved for men. The research rests on more than a decade of archival work across several countries, and the prose carries it lightly. For anyone working on women's collective action or the gendered making of international institutions, "For the Many" is both a model of method and an argument with stakes. Cobble writes openly about why this history feels urgent now, when much of what these women built is contested.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

“Es werden Traditionen erfunden, die es nie gab” by Karin Reichenbach (2024) - Interview recommendation by Hannah von Legat

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:16:18 +0200

“Es werden Traditionen erfunden, die es nie gab” by Karin Reichenbach (2024)

How do far-right groups use history to legitimize their political agendas? In this insightful interview, published in the Leibniz magazine, historian and archaeologist Karin Reichenbach explains how the past is selectively reinterpreted, simplified, and even reinvented to support exclusionary ideologies. She discusses the invention of traditions that never existed, the romanticization of the Middle Ages and rural life, and the strategic use of historical narratives to create a sense of cultural continuity and identity. Reichenbach, who is specialized in Reenactment studies, also explains how the reenactment scene can become instrumentalized by far-right groups, reinforcing idealized images of the past that manifest anti-modern stereotypes and promoting, for example, rigid gender roles or ethnically homogenous societies. The interview offers a compelling perspective on why critical engagement with history matters – not only for understanding the past, but also to analyze how historical myths continue to shape political debates today.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Critical Heritage and Social Justice. Redistribution, recognition and representation in context" by Veysel Apaydin et al. (2026) – Book recommendation by Anastasia Serikova

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:52:43 +0200

Critical Heritage and Social Justice. Redistribution, recognition and representation in context by Veysel Apaydin et al. (2026)

This edited volume brings together insights and experiences of scholars and practitioners working across heritage, museums, galleries, and cultural institutions to explore how principles of social justice can be embedded within these spaces. Theoretically, the volume is centered around Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional justice framework of redistribution, recognition, and representation, situating social justice in a range of case studies in the areas of the climate crisis, forced migration, and widening social, cultural and economic inequalities. Each chapter considers how to support communities, particularly those that are marginalised, by linking heritage to broader social justice struggles, addressing structural inequalities, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, and fostering inclusive education and curatorial practices

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City" – Online project and map recommendation by Alexandra Kolesnik

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:22:36 +0200

"Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City"

Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City was a Berlin-based pilot project that explored new forms of critical engagement with colonialism and its legacies between 2020 and 2024. Developed by Berlin Postkolonial, Each One Teach One, the Initiative Black People in Germany, and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, the project brought together civil society, cultural institutions, public administration, artists, activists, and international experts. A particularly important feature was the central role of Black, Afro-diasporic, and African actors whose long-standing activism had already shaped debates about colonial history and memory in Germany. Rather than treating colonial heritage as a matter for museums alone, Dekoloniale approached the entire city as a landscape of memory. Through exhibitions, festivals, workshops, artistic interventions, city tours, and digital mapping, the project traced the colonial and anti-colonial histories embedded in streets, institutions, objects, buildings, and biographies. Its interactive digital map is particularly valuable in making these histories visible spatially, connecting individual sites and stories in Berlin with wider transnational networks of colonialism and resistance. It also documents post- and decolonial initiatives across Germany, turning the map into both a research resource and a tool for public historical education.

From a heritage perspective, the project is especially significant because it challenged conventional ideas of what counts as heritage and who has the authority to interpret it. Colonial traces were not approached simply as remnants of the past to be preserved, but as contested inheritances whose meanings continue to shape contemporary urban life. Dekoloniale therefore combined historical research with activism, participation, and artistic practice, making visible histories of colonial violence as well as resistance, migration, and solidarity.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"SHTTL" directed by Ady Walter (2022) – Film recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 14:33:18 +0200

SHTTL directed by Ady Walter (2022)

Most of us have never heard a shtetl speak. Beyond a few strongholds – the Hasidic streets of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem and of Williamsburg in New York – Yiddish survives today in fragments: a handful of loanwords, a punchline, a scrap of song. The dense, everyday soundscape of Jewish life in East Central Europe was silenced during the Second World War along with the people who spoke it. SHTTL (dir. Ady Walter, 2022) sets out to give that world its voice back. The missing e in the title nods to Georges Perec's lipogrammatic novel La disparition – a book written without a single e, its absence standing for everything the Shoah erased. Presented as a single continuous shot and performed almost entirely in Yiddish, with snatches of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, the film reconstructs a vanished community on the Ukrainian-Polish border on the eve of the German occupation. Over the course of one day – the last before Operation Barbarossa – we move through a living village: its market, tavern and synagogue, its loves and conflicts, its quarrels between the devout and the Sovietised young, between tradition and modernity.

What makes SHTTL unusual is how it binds historical imagination to present-day loss. The village was not a studio backlot but a full settlement of some twenty-five buildings, including one of the largest hand-painted synagogues ever built, raised near Rovzhi outside Kyiv and filled with objects gathered from across Ukraine. The plan was to hand it over as a museum and educational space. Instead, months after filming, the Russian invasion of 2022 destroyed the set and mined the land around it. A place built to remember one annihilation was consumed by another – a coincidence almost too neat, and one the film's admirers should resist reading as prophecy rather than tragedy

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

“Donald the Orange”: Vikings in and around the MAGA Movement by Tom Birkett – Article recommendation by Hannah von Legat

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:01:01 +0200

“Donald the Orange”: Vikings in and around the MAGA Movement by Tom Birkett

How do historical figures become part of modern political movements? A thought-provoking example is “Donald the Orange”: Vikings in and around the MAGA Movement by Tom Birkett, the first open-access publication from the NorseMap Project (University College Cork), which explores how Norse and Viking imagery is used and reinterpreted in contemporary culture. The article examines the changing image of the Vikings in the United States and shows how Viking imagery, earlier used satirically, was soon adopted by parts of the MAGA movement and incorporated into a hypermasculine narrative of dominance and identity. It's a fascinating case study of how the past, in this example the Viking Age, is continually reimagined – and why historical symbols matter far beyond the history books.

Birkett, Tom: “Donald the Orange”: Vikings in and around the MAGA Movement, in: Studies in Medievalism XXXV: Medievalism in Theory & Politics, ed. Karl Fugelso, Cambridge 2026, 71-81.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week

Museums as Places of People, Time, and Memory. The Intersection of Place and History by Jitka Cirklová (ed., 2026) - Book recommendation by Anastasia Serikova

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 3 Aug 2026 08:18:52 +0200

Museums as Places of People, Time, and Memory. The Intersection of Place and History by Jitka Cirklová (ed., 2026)

This book explores how contemporary museums navigate social change and technological innovation to foster inclusivity and representation, offering insights into their evolving role as active spaces of dialogue, learning, and social change. Essays, collected in this edited volume, examine themes of place-based identity, community engagement, and the impact of digital transformation on museum practices. Case studies include house-museums, living museums, national memorials, industrial museums, mobile museum initiatives, and virtual heritage spaces in the Metaverse, offering insights into how institutions foster inclusivity, representation, and heritage preservation.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

(Counter-)Archive: Memorial Practices of the Soviet Underground by Klavdia Smola, Ilya Kukulin, Annelie Bachmaier (2024) - Book recommendation by Alexandra Kolesnik

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:22:36 +0200

(Counter-)Archive: Memorial Practices of the Soviet Underground by Klavdia Smola, Ilya Kukulin and Annelie Bachmaier (2024)

This volume offers the first comprehensive study of archival and memorial practices within Soviet unofficial culture. It examines how artists, writers, and intellectuals of the Soviet underground created alternative forms of preserving works, memories, and cultural networks that remained excluded from official Soviet institutions. In conditions where much of this culture was denied public visibility or legitimacy, archiving itself became both a creative practice and a form of resistance. Bringing together perspectives from archival theory and memory studies, the book explores how unofficial cultural actors collected, documented, and transmitted “nonexistent” art and literature across private apartments, personal collections, samizdat networks, photographs, recordings, and informal communities. At the same time, these practices were deeply connected to broader intellectual and artistic developments of the late twentieth century, despite the relative isolation of Soviet underground circles. The volume asks how Soviet unofficial culture constructed—and contested—social memory through the preservation of marginalized, censored, and tabooed cultural experiences. In doing so, it reveals the Soviet underground not only as a space of artistic dissent, but also as a distinctive counter-archive that shaped the cultural afterlives of the late Soviet period.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Rethinking Populism" by Hans-Georg Betz (2026) - Book recommendation by Melis Konakçı

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:02:32 +0200

"Rethinking Populism" by Hans-Georg Betz (2026)

In his new book, Rethinking Populism, prominent scholar of populism studies Hans-Georg Betz takes a retrospective look at the concept. Betz traces early manifestations from Boulangism in France and the People’s Party in the US to Juan Perón in Argentina to examine how classical populism differs from, and resembles, its modern counterparts. In the current manifestations Betz focuses on the populist strategies of “culture wars" and “the war against gender” populists aim to mobilize. Rethinking Populism provides an exceptional historical grounding not only for scholars of the subject, but for anyone seeking to understand the phenomenon of “populism”.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"East West Street" by Philippe Sands (2016) - Book recommendation by Josephine Herrmann

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 6 Jul 2026 10:15:52 +0200

"East West Street" by Philippe Sands (2016)

Philippe Sands’ East West Street is a gripping exploration of family history, legal history, and the violent upheavals of twentieth-century Europe. Beginning with an invitation to lecture in Lviv, Sands follows the traces of his grandfather Leon Buchholz and uncovers unexpected connections to Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, and Hans Frank. In doing so, he reconstructs the origins of the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide, and shows how closely the history of international law is bound up with individual lives, places, and memories. For readers interested in the Second World War, Galicia, Lviv, or the history of international law, this award-winning book is both intellectually illuminating and deeply moving

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Chances and Challenges" (BGHS) - Podcast recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:42:27 +0200

Podcast "Chances and Challenges" (BGHS)

Chances and Challenges (made in Bielefeld) offers clear and refreshingly honest conversations about what it really means to pursue a PhD in Germany today. Bringing together doctoral researchers, postdocs, and senior scholars, the podcast addresses key issues such as supervision, academic precarity, international mobility, mental health and career paths beyond academia - always linking personal experiences to broader institutional contexts. The first episode stands out in particular for its lucid explanation of the specific features of the German academic system in international comparison, making it especially helpful for international doctoral researchers navigating unfamiliar academic structures. Concise, reflective, and highly accessible, Chances and Challenges is an excellent resource for early career researchers - and for anyone seeking a realistic picture of contemporary academic careers.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict (PSCHC) - Book series recommendation by Anastasia Serikova

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:58:05 +0200

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict (PSCHC)

This book series explores the relationship between the heritage and memory of war and conflict, contested heritage, competing memories in the past and the present. Since the publication of Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe (2019) by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Luisa Passerini, Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, Iris van Huis and Landscapes of Difficult Heritage (2020) by Gustav Wollentz, the theoretical aspects of difficult heritage have been regularly touched upon by authors of this series. Recently published Mario Panico Spaces for Nostalgia. Difficult Memories and Material Consolations (2024) and Daniel Palacios González, José María Durán Medraño Redefining Monuments. Materialist Memory Theories and Radical Heritage Practices (2025) theorize difficult heritage through the notion of nostalgia and the materiality. The memory and heritage of the ongoing war also became visible in the series. Maria Kurbak's Destructive Imagination. Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (2026) discusses the role of emotional heritage and the lived experiences of Russian combatants. Svitlana Biedarieva's Ambicoloniality and War. The Ukrainian-Russian Case (2024) proposes new terminology for the description of the particular colonial relationship between Ukraine and Russia.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

Solidarität mit Prof. Dr. Christina Brüning

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:40:10 +0200

Der Profilbereich Geschichtskulturen ist über die Morddrohungen und menschenfeindlichen Haltungen gegen die Marburger Geschichtsdidaktikerin Prof. Dr. Christina Brüning, die in der letzten Woche medial öffentlich wurden, tief erschüttert. Wir sprechen ihr unsere volle Solidarität aus und verurteilen einen solchen Angriff auf die Wissenschaftsfreiheit aufs Schärfste. Der von der Konferenz für Geschichtsdidaktik veröffentlichten Erklärung schließen wir uns an.

Die Hessenschau berichtete am 11.06.26 über die Vorfälle.

Appropriating History: The Soviet Past in Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Popular Culture by Matthias Schwartz and Nina Weller (2024) - Book recommendation by Alexandra Kolesnik

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:06:54 +0200

Appropriating History: The Soviet Past in Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Popular Culture (2024) by Matthias Schwartz and Nina Weller (eds.)

This edited volume explores how Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian popular culture reimagines and politicizes the Soviet past. Focusing on films, television series, literature, comics, and computer games, the contributors examine how popular media shape collective understandings of history and transform the memory of the twentieth century into narratives of identity, nostalgia, conflict, and power. The book demonstrates that references to the Soviet past are far from politically neutral. In contemporary popular culture, Soviet history can become a source of nostalgia and entertainment, but also a tool for nationalist mythmaking, neo-imperial imaginaries, and the legitimization of present-day political and military agendas. Through a series of case studies, the volume analyzes how cultural producers reinterpret historical events, heroes, and traumas for mass audiences in different post-Soviet contexts. By comparing Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian examples, the collection highlights both shared cultural legacies and increasingly divergent memory politics in Eastern Europe. It offers new perspectives on the complex relationship between popular culture, historical imagination, and political conflict in the region.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

Saga Brief 21 - Interpreting the Past: Modern Perceptions of the Viking Age - Podcast recommendation by Hannah von Legat

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 8 Jun 2026 07:52:42 +0200

Saga Brief 21 - Interpreting the Past: Modern Perceptions of the Viking Age with Verena Höfig and Zachary Melton

This episode of the (in general recommended) Saga Brief podcast offers a fascinating deep dive into how the Scandinavian medieval past is interpreted in the modern world, blending scholarship with timely cultural reflection. Together with Verena Höfig and Zachary Melton, it thoughtfully explores why Viking Age myths continue to fascinate today and how they are mobilized by contemporary religious and political movements. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the intersection of medieval studies, politics, and modern culture!

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

vASN: Populism and Nationalism: Allies or Rivals? - Webinar recommendation by Melis Konakçı

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 1 Jun 2026 08:35:48 +0200

vASN: Populism and Nationalism: Allies or Rivals?

Moderated by Zsuzsa Csergö, this webinar features presentations from prominent scholars Bart Bonikowski, Maria Snegovaya, and Cas Mudde on the relationship between populism and nationalism. Specifically, the presenters examine why radical right politics are on the rise today and why nationalism and populism often go hand in hand. The webinar also highlights the trajectory of nationalism and populism studies and the key questions that need to be addressed in the future. It is recommended for anyone interested in the intersection of populism and nationalism and how they reinforce each other.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Wörter im Krieg" / "Dictionary of War" by Ostap Slyvynsky (2023) – Book recommendation by Josephine Herrmann

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 18 May 2026 12:57:22 +0200

"Wörter im Krieg" / "Dictionary of War" by Ostap Slyvynsky (2023)

Ostap Slyvynsky is a Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist, and literature professor. His book Wörter im Krieg gathers short testimonies, fragments of conversations, and memories from people living through Russia’s war against Ukraine. First written in 2022, the book has since been translated into several languages, allowing these voices to reach readers far beyond Ukraine. What makes Wörter im Krieg so powerful is its quiet intensity. The texts are often brief and restrained, yet they open up deeply personal experiences of fear, loss, displacement, care, and survival. Many of the stories seem almost timeless: rather than relying on visible markers of the twenty-first century, they show how war strips everyday life down to something raw and fundamental. Slyvynsky gathers these stories with great sensitivity to the way violence changes language itself. Words become fragile, unbearable, necessary, or newly charged with meaning. Wörter im Krieg is a difficult and deeply moving book, but also a profoundly humane one. It does not allow readers in Germany to imagine that they can fully understand the experience of war — but it asks them to listen carefully, attentively, and without turning away.

Event recommendation: Slyvynsky will be presenting his book at the Stadtbibliothek Bielefeld this evening. Welcome!

"Russian Cultural Policy in the Midst of War: Strategies and Actors" by Tatiana Romashko, Olga Zabalueva (2025) – article recommendation by Anastasia Serikova

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 11 May 2026 07:56:18 +0200

"Russian Cultural Policy in the Midst of War: Strategies and Actors" by Tatiana Romashko, Olga Zabalueva (2025)

This paper investigates developments in Russian cultural policy following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It analyses shifts in cultural legislation and official discourse on culture within the context of war, using the cases of the Historical Parks Project and the Cultural Front of Russia. The authors argue that these projects exemplify both top-down and bottom-up dynamics of empowerment within the wartime patriotic framework. Despite differing leadership structures, they share significant similarities in their methods and ideological alignment with Russia’s authoritarian regime. The article draws on an analysis of official discourses in the Russian Parliament’s and Presidential Administration’s official Telegram channels and media coverage of their activities.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

“Das Gedächtnis der Töchter” by Irene Langemann (2023) - Novel recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 4 May 2026 09:43:09 +0200

“Das Gedächtnis der Töchter” (2023) by Irene Langemann

Irene Langemann, born in 1959 in Issilkul (Siberia), grew up bilingually in a German family. At the age of seventeen, she moved to Moscow to study acting and German literature, and went on to work as an author, actress, and presenter. In 1990, she emigrated to Germany. She has since lived in Cologne, where she works as an author and director for film and television. “Das Gedächtnis der Töchter” is her first novel – a compelling, autobiographically inspired, and beautifully crafted chronicle of a Mennonite family in Eastern Europe spanning six generations. At the same time, it offers a profound exploration of Ukrainian-German, Russian-German, and Soviet-German relations from the late nineteenth century onward, tracing the history of violence in the twentieth century and the enduring complexities of Stalinism. It is a book that at times demands pauses for breath, yet proves impossible to put down.

"Perverse Decolonisation?" edited by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, and Jan Sowa (2021) - Book recommendation by Alexandra Kolesnik

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:20:10 +0200

"Perverse Decolonisation?" edited by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, and Jan Sowa (2021) - Book recommendation by Alexandra Kolesnik

The volume offers a compelling reflection on a central paradox of our time: while the language of decolonization has become increasingly visible in public discourse, it is also being appropriated by authoritarian and exclusionary regimes. Rather than leading to emancipation, decolonial rhetoric is often redirected toward new forms of nationalism, cultural essentialism, and political control. The concept of “perverse decolonization” captures this ambivalence, highlighting how emancipatory vocabularies can be instrumentalized from above, while also remaining open to tactical and critical reinterpretations from below. Bringing together essays, discussions, and artistic perspectives developed across multiple international contexts, the book provides a nuanced and self-reflexive framework for understanding how decolonization operates—and is contested—within today’s global cultural landscape.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Populism and the Growth of the Radical Right in the Nordic countries" by Anders Widfeldt – Article recommendation by Hannah von Legat

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:39:56 +0200

"Populism and the Growth of the Radical Right in the Nordic countries" by Anders Widfeldt – Article recommendation by Hannah von Legat

If you’re looking for a clear and concise introduction to the rise of right-wing populism in Northern Europe, I highly recommend the overview article by Anders Widfeldt (available in English and Danish). It outlines the long history of the Scandinavian populist parties and explains how they combine anti-establishment and anti-immigration positions with support for welfare politics. Using Cas Mudde’s concept of the “Populist Radical Right,” the piece also shows why these movements are likely to remain relevant—making it a useful starting point for understanding Nordic politics today.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

"Steppenkinder. Der Aussiedlerpodcast" by Ira Peter and Edwin Warkentin (2020-2024) - Podcast recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:14:55 +0200

"Steppenkinder. Der Aussiedlerpodcast" by Ira Peter and Edwin Warkentin

Hosted by journalist and author Ira Peter and Edwin Warkentin, Cultural Advisor for Russian Germans in Germany, the podcast brings together voices from the “brought-along generation” of Germans from the East—those who migrated to Germany from the former Soviet Union as children or adolescents with their families in the late 20th century. Spanning 45 episodes, it explores a wide range of topics and perspectives, offering nuanced insights into entangled history, migration, memory and belonging. Although the project has unfortunately concluded, its episodes remain a rich and inspiring archive.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.

Anke Pinkert’s "Remembering 1989: Future Archives of Public Protest" (2024) - Book recommendation by Kornelia Kończal

Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:38:38 +0200

Remembering 1989: Future Archives of Public Protest by Anke Pinkert (2024)

Anke Pinkert offers a strikingly original reinterpretation of the events commonly referred to as the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR. Rather than presenting 1989 as a linear narrative of socialism’s collapse and the triumph of neoliberalism, she reimagines it as a moment of radical openness, civic courage, and democratic experimentation – a fleeting yet powerful promise of alternative futures. Through her counter-archival approach, Pinkert invites us to reconsider how political ruptures are remembered and to reflect on what might still be recovered from their unfinished promises.

More Ideas & Insights recommendations could be reached at our Public History Unit webpage every week.