CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Personal accounts by people living in Germany before, during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 will be among the highlights of a symposium planned on the University of Illinois campus Nov. 11-13.
“Choosing Change: A Symposium on the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” will be hosted by the U. of I.’s department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, with support from other campus units including the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and the departments of comparative and world literature; Slavic languages and literatures; and Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
“Twenty years after the division of Germany and Europe ended, this symposium aims to re-examine the causes, historical significance and aftermath of the collapse of socialism,” said organizer Anke Pinkert, a professor of Germanic languages and literatures.
“Rather than simply viewing the historical shift in 1989 as a victory of capitalism, the symposium will re-evaluate the historical lessons that can be learned from the failure of socialism, such as the need for social visions and civil rights.”
The symposium, which seeks to engage participation of U. of I. faculty and students, as well as community members, is free and open to the public and does not require advance registration.
It opens on Nov. 11 with a screening of the 2006 film “Lives of Others,” directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
The screening will take place at 7 p.m. in 1080 Foreign Languages Building, 707 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana.
The symposium continues the following day, at 3 p.m. in 210 Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, with a faculty panel, moderated by Germanic languages and literatures professor Anna Stenport. The panel will focus on the presentation of personal narratives. Contributors include Pinkert; Germanic languages and literatures professor Yasemin Yildiz; graduate student Regine Kroh; U. of I. French professor Marcus Keller; and Champaign-Urbana community member Eva Grünstein-Neuman.
A keynote address by Gabriele Gysi, delivered in German, will follow the panel discussion at 5:15 p.m. Gysi, an actress, producer and scholar who has contributed to films on the Holocaust and the fall of the wall, was born into an influential German-Jewish intellectual family. Her talk will derive from her experience growing up in the former East Germany and working in the performing arts and in the cultural institutions of East, West and unified Germany.
Pinkert said Gysi plans to tap that rich personal history to share with symposium attendees her “special insight into the transformation of the public sphere in Germany after 1989 and into the repercussions of the collapse of socialism on arts and culture in Eastern Europe.”
During her visit to the Illinois campus, Gysi also will present a two-day workshop for theater students Nov. 6-7.
The symposium will wrap up on Nov. 13 with a panel discussion, “Post-1989 Literature and Culture: New Approaches,” presented by U. of I. graduate students at 9 a.m. in 2090B FLB. The panel’s moderator will be Germanic languages and literatures professor Stephanie Hilger.
Graduate student presenters will be Kroh, Molly Markin and Soeren Priebe from Germanic languages and literatures; and Jessica Wienhold and Daria Kabanova, comparative and world literature.
For more information, contact Pinkert at pinkert@illinois.edu.
