If you have never been in a Zoom conference before, it’s pretty straightforward-the main thing is to mute your device when the lecturer is talking. There is a good primer here: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/bp-assets/globalassets/trafford/how-to-use-zoom-for-the-first-time.pdf.
Looking forward to seeing you at the sessions and hearing your reflections afterwards.
?The Programme
??February 18 Winner and Losers Britain and Germany after WW2 -GHIL online lecture 5.30pm
https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures#c6501
How do historical narratives and memories shape our understanding of national identity and collective memory?
Lucy Noakes (University of Essex) and Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck) reflect on how the Second World War has shaped Germany and Britain after 1945. The conversation will offer insights into the ways in which the two nations navigated the aftermath of the war and redefined their identities and roles in the contemporary world.
?About the speakers:
Lucy Noakes, Professor of History at the University of Essex, specialises in the social and cultural history of early to mid-twentieth-century Britain, with a particular focus on people’s experiences and memories of the world wars. Her recent publication, _Dying for the Nation_, focuses on the history of death, grief and bereavement in Second World War Britain. This research places the experience and memory of death at the forefront of understanding the British war experience, exploring how death was managed and remembered during this period. From November 2024 she will be President of the Royal Historical Society.
Frank Trentmann, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, is a historian of modern Britain, Germany and the world. His research explores the interplay between material, political and moral change. His latest book, _Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942–2022_, follows the German people’s journey from the horrors of the Nazi era to their moral and social reinvention, and its limits. Trentmann’s work captures the dramatic changes during and after the Cold War, the division and reunification of Germany, and the nation’s evolving and ambivalent role on the world stage.
??February 20 ‘Before the Holocaust’ Leo Baeck Institute online book talk 7.00pm
https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/
Historians have traditionally argued that antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany rose gradually, from low levels during the first years of Hitler’s rule to a high point in the Reich-wide pogrom of November 1938. ?Before the Holocaust, based on research in more than ?2?0 German archives, demonstrates that this long-held assumption is wrong. During the months-long Nazi takeover of power, beginning a mere five weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, waves of antisemitic violence engulfed large parts of Germany. ?Before the Holocaust? examines the multitude of these hitherto unrecognized antisemitic attacks in the late winter and spring of 1933, as well as the reaction of German elites and institutions to this violence.
?Hermann Beck is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying History and Literature at German universities (Mannheim, Freiburg, and Berlin), the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His publications include books on nineteenth-century Germany, ??The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia? ?and the late Weimar and Nazi periods.
??February 27 ‘Cold War Games’ GHIL on line lecture 5.30 pm https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures
Maren Röger (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe)
(Cold) War Games: Scenarios on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain
In co-operation with the Modern History Research Seminar, University of Oxford
“During the Cold War, millions of people on both sides of the Iron Curtain played board and digital games in living rooms, barracks, and schools. They played classics such as Memory in the FRG and Merk-Fix in the GDR, but also games with names like Fulda Gap and Class Struggle. In this lecture, I will present games–for a long time neglected by Cold War Studies–as a relevant part of popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s. First, I will show how they played a significant role in conveying to a popular audience the fundamental characteristics of the East-West conflict. Second, I will focus on GDR board games and analyse their territorial and ideological worlds and boundaries.”
?Maren Röger has been Director of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe and Senior Professor of Central and Eastern European History at the University of Leipzig since ?2021. Her numerous publications include monographs on the gender history of German-occupied Poland, the visual history of Habsburg Bucovina, and entangled memories of post-war expulsions, and articles on board and computer games in the Cold War.
?Ian Turner / Chair, BHC
###################