22.09.2022

Panel discussion: "Die unbekannten Politikverhandler im Umbruch Europas"

The panel discussion of 26 September 2022 on "The unknown policy negotiators in the upheaval of Europe", moderated by IEG staff member Johannes Paulmann, can now be viewed as a recording on the video platform Youtube.

The project "Die unbekannten Politikverhandler im Umbruch Europas" uses interviews to shed light on the freely elected, last GDR government and at the same time secure important sources. To this end, five in-depth eyewitness interviews were conducted with five state secretaries of the democratically legitimised GDR government. The project organiser is the Leibniz Institute for European History.

The state secretaries of the freely elected, last GDR government are hardly aware in public and historical studies as actors of the political transformation and unification process of the GDR in 1990. There are neither written source collections nor systematic eyewitness interviews that focus on the political task and the biographically shaped expertise of these GDR state secretaries. Yet they are important contemporary witnesses of the peaceful and democratic transformation of the GDR. As experts in their respective fields, they were well aware of existing deficits, problems and challenges - and also of files that had been kept under lock and key by the SED dictatorship until then.

In the event, excerpts from the recently recorded eyewitness interviews conducted with state secretaries of the democratically legitimised GDR government will be shown, and will be discussed in greater depth on the podium with three former state secretaries.

What were their political ideas and concerns that they stood up for until 3 October 1990? What did they want to bring to a "good end" in German-German and international negotiations, what did they want to shape, preserve from the GDR era and bring with them into German unity? Where did they succeed and with what results; where did they find room for manoeuvre, where did they fail?

PROGRAMME

Welcome and current classification:
Markus Meckel | last Foreign Minister of the GDR in 1990, Chairman of the Council of the Federal Foundation for Reappraisal (Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung)

Introduction
Prof. Dr. Katharina Kunter (University of Helsinki)

Short films
with interview excerpts on the topics of vocation, shaping policy, scope for action, successes, 3 October 1990.

Panel discussion

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Johannes Paulmann (Leibniz Institute for European History Mainz) and Prof. Dr. Katharina Kunter (University of Helsinki)