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Inaugural Workshop

GERMANY’S 1968: A CULTURAL REVOLUTION?

APRIL 11 – 12, 2008 | Hyde Hall, UNC at Chapel Hill

Organized by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University

Click here to download the workshop report.

Four decades after the tumultuous events of the late 1960s, personal memories have started to fade and media myths have begun to dominate the understanding of the youth revolt. The emotional responses of participants who still identify themselves as having been either for or against the rebellion indicate that it made a deep imprint upon generational consciousness. But many recollections of involvement have become overlaid with a patina of media mythologization that both dramatizes and obscures what actually happened. This combination of increasing amnesia and persistent representation has made “sixty-eight” into an iconic term with rather contradictory associations of looming disorder or overdue liberalization.

In order to resolve the contradiction, this workshop aims for a critical reappraisal of the causes, course and consequences of the events, commonly associated with the symbolic date of 1968 in the two Germanies. Drawing on fresh work of cultural scholars, political scientists and historians, it will examine the motives that fuelled the generational rebellion, analyze the new forms of political confrontation which activists developed and explore the cultural impact of the value changes that propelled their protest. Since the actual political events in Germany were minor compared with the upheaval in the US, France or Czechoslovakia, this workshop intends to discuss the notion that the changes symbolized by 1968 might instead indicate a cultural watershed between the Cold War Culture of the repressive “long fifties” and the liberating New Social Movements of the 1970s.

PROGRAM

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2008

GRADUATE SEMINAR

1:00 pm – 4:45 pm

 

WELCOME
1:00 pm

  • Michael Meng and Ben Pearson
  • Karen Hagemann (UNC at Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)

CHANGING POLITICS
1:15 – 2:15 pm

Chair: Friederike Brühöfener (UNC at Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)

Comment: Axel Schildt (Universität Hamburg, Department Geschichtswissenschaft)

CULTURES OF 1968
2:30-3:30 pm

Chair: Cyrus Shahan (UNC at Chapel Hill, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literature)

Comment: Johannes von Moltke (University of Michigan, Germanic Languages and Literatures)

PROTEST AND MOVEMENTS
3:45-4:45 pm

Chair: Michael Meng (UNC at Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)

Comment: Dagmar Herzog (CUNY, Graduate School, History)

WORKSHOP
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

 

OPENING and WELCOME
5:00 pm

  • Holden Thorp (Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, UNC at Chapel Hill)
  • N. Gregson G. Davis (Dean of Humanities, Duke University)
  • Richard Langston (UNC at Chapel Hill, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures)
  • Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literature)

KEY NOTE ADDRESS
5:15 – 7:00 pm

An eyewitness of the West German student movement, Peter Schneider is the author of more than twenty books and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Among his works translated into English are Lenz, The Wall Jumper, The German Comedy, Couplings, and Eduard’s Homecoming. His new book, Rebellion und Wahn. Mein ’68, is a critical reappraisal of 1968.

COMMENTS

  • Konrad H. Jarausch (UNC at Chapel Hill, History):
    Sixty-Eight: Between Memory and Myth
  • Siegfried Mews (UNC at Chapel Hill, Germanic Languages and Literatures):
    Sixty-Eight: Rewriting Autobiographies

Chair: Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University, Germanic Languages and Literature)

SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2008

WORKSHOP

9:00 am – 5:30 pm

 

PANEL 1: GENERATIONAL REBELLION
9:00-10:30 am

Chair: Karen Hagemann (UNC Chapel Hill, History)

PANEL 2: POLITICAL CONFRONTATION
11:00-12:30 am

Chair: Michael Hughes (Wake Forest University, History)

PANEL 3: CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION
2:00-3:30 pm

Chair: Anna Parkinson (UNC at Chapel Hill, Germanic Languages and Literatures)

ROUNDTABLE: THE LEGACY OF SIXTY-EIGHT
4:00 -5:30 pm

Chair: Richard Langston (UNC at Chapel Hill, Germanic Languages and Literatures)

  • William Donahue (Duke University, Germanic Languages and Literature)
  • Dagmar Herzog (CUNY, Graduate School, History)
  • Matthias Middell (Universität Leipzig and Duke University, History)
  • Konrad H. Jarausch (UNC at Chapel Hill, History)
  • Peter Schneider

ORGANIZATION

Workshop Organizers:

  • Richard Langston (UNC Chapel Hill, German Languages)
  • Karen Hagemann (UNC Chapel Hill, History)
  • Konrad H. Jarausch (UNC Chapel Hill, History)
  • Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University, Germanic Languages and Literature)