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Book presentations and workshop reports in the “Stasi headquarters. Campus for Democracy”
With a reading stage and research workshop, the Federal Archives - Stasi Documents Archive will provide current insights into research and work with the Stasi documents in November and December 2023. As part of the reading stage, new publications on the topics of state security, the GDR and dictatorship will be presented in the former Stasi headquarters.
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Stasizentrale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätte Normannenstraße
In the new format of the research workshop, projects that were researched in the Stasi documents archive are presented. Researchers and archive employees report on the process of accessing files from their perspective and explain methods and research strategies.
The research workshop starts with “Jena Paradies. “The last journey of Matthias Domaschk”. The journalist Peter Wensierski recounts the last days of Matthias Domaschk, who was arrested in 1981 and died in the Stasi detention center in Gera. The extensive research for the book in the Stasi records archive is the focus of the discussion. In addition to an evening on the subject of art theft in the GDR, the research project “Forced labor in the GDR prison system” will also be presented. The work is intended, among other things, to advance the question of compensation for political prisoners who did forced labor in GDR prisons.
At the start of the reading stage, Dr. Konstanze Soch's country study “Stasi in Berlin” examines the history of the Stasi in the former capital of the GDR and West Berlin. On November 23rd states Prof. Dr. Michael Wala presented his book “The Stasi Myth”, which contrasts the image of GDR foreign espionage with the records from the secret archive of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The presentation of the new volumes from the series “The GDR in the Eyes of the Stasi” focuses on the year 1970, which was marked by German-German rapprochement: Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt visited Erfurt, GDR Prime Minister Willi Stoph traveled to Kassel. Dr. Ronny Heidenreich traces the events from the perspective of the secret reports from the state security to the SED leadership.
(Program in German)
