Reading & Talk: Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk

Image: © Ekko von Schwichow

Reading and discussion with Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk about his book Freiheitsschock. Eine andere Geschichte Ostdeutschlands von 1989 bis heute (Freedom Shock: A Different History of East Germany from 1989 to Today), moderated by Mathias Wittmann. Admission free.

In 1989/90, East Germany suffered a ‘freedom shock’ – that is the basic thesis of this book. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk tells the story of East Germany since 1990 as a struggle for freedom – a struggle whose outcome will determine the future of Germany as a whole. He wants to shake people up: to encourage them to take more active responsibility for themselves, to move away from their role as victims and to look at history in a way that does not make the GDR seem more attractive the longer ago it was. In this book, the dictatorship remains a dictatorship and reunification a success story for freedom: an intervention against anti-freedom tendencies by one of the most prominent East German intellectuals.

The AfD is a pan-German phenomenon, but it is particularly successful in eastern Germany. How can this be explained? Why is liberal democracy being called into question precisely where the first successful revolution on German soil took place? Eastern Germany is currently the subject of intense debate, and Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk is one of the most prominent voices in this debate. The struggle for freedom is his life's work. Having grown up under the SED dictatorship, he has published standard works on the history of the GDR and communism, as well as on the 1989 revolution and the consequences of the Federal Republic's ‘takeover’ of the GDR. Kowalczuk wants to free East Germans from their victim role. The West may have ‘invented’ its East. But the East also invented and continues to invent its West. In the GDR, the West was a place of longing for many, but the SED's anti-Western propaganda also had deep roots. These were reinforced by the frustrations of the reunification process. And they now prevent many East Germans from embracing the liberal democracy of the Federal Republic.

‘Without freedom, everything is meaningless. Without freedom, there can be no peace.’

• Empowerment instead of victimhood: the anti-Oschmann

• An intervention against anti-freedom movements

• From one of the most prominent East German intellectuals

• Published before the state elections in East Germany

Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk is a historian and publicist, as well as a research associate at the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture. He is one of Germany's most renowned experts on the history of the GDR and communism.