Difference - Transformation - Cohesion. Social Inequality and Discrimination in the GDR and During the Transformation Period (DiTZu)

The first subproject, “The Jewish Regional Community of Thuringia: Between Difference, Exclusion, and Cohesion in the Late GDR and the Transition Period,” is structured in two parts. First, it examines the self-attribution and external attribution of Jewish identity in late and post-socialist society. The focus is on how the discourse surrounding who and what is “Jewish” has changed both within and outside the institutionalized community. Second, the project challenges the thesis that the “Peaceful Revolution” of 1989–90 marked the point at which Jewish life was fully accepted in Erfurt’s urban society. Given the continued occurrence of anti-Semitic attacks and the debate surrounding the integration of so-called “Jewish quota refugees,” this thesis must be critically examined.

Since September 17, 2023, the “Jewish Medieval Heritage in Erfurt” has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This recognition was preceded by many years of preparatory work on the part of the city administration. It received widespread media coverage in Erfurt, Thuringia, and the Federal Republic of Germany. What is evident here is a process of constructing cohesion within Erfurt’s urban society (“Erfurt is a World Heritage Site”), one that obscures frictions, ruptures, and conflicts. Jewish life, for example, is presented in the museum exhibition of the “Jewish Wedding Treasure” as part of Erfurt’s urban society and history, while the context in which the artifact was discovered is obscured from the public. The fact that the wedding ring was discovered is due to the pogrom against the Jewish population in Erfurt in the 14th century, which led to the end of Jewish life in this city until the 19th century.

Project staff: Christian Hermann, B.A.

The project focuses on the socioeconomic living conditions and everyday experiences of people with disabilities—and specifically women with disabilities—in the 1980s and 1990s. As part of a joint cultural event with self-advocacy organizations of people with disabilities, initial discussions about experiences and memories will take place. As the project progresses, the key topics discussed at the joint event will be addressed and explored in greater depth through life-history interviews. I will supplement the experiential knowledge gained from these interviews—regarding interactions with municipal authorities and everyday experiences of discrimination—with an analysis of administrative records from the period under study. The aim is, first, to trace the historical development of administrative practices that directly affect people with disabilities. Second, it is to reconstruct the discourse surrounding the concept of “performance” in order to analytically elucidate historical continuities in the demarcation of the category of difference known as “ability.”

Project staff: Dr. des. Elena M.E. Kiesel

The project examines how municipal institutions and authorities perceived right-wing violence as a problem in public spaces during the transition period from 1989 to 1995. As part of the project, the perspectives of various municipal institutions on the wave of right-wing violence during the reunification process and the years that followed will be reviewed and systematically documented. In doing so, outbreaks of right-wing violence will not only be examined as a challenge for law enforcement and public order authorities, but the study will also explore the extent to which the city administration of Erfurt addressed the violence not only as a public safety issue, but also as a problem of public space as a whole and as a factor influencing urban development. The starting point for this analysis is the observation that, during the period under study, two people were killed by right-wing perpetrators in the city of Erfurt (Heinz Mädel in 1990 and Irensuz Szyderski in 1992), and that there were also numerous documented attacks by right-wing perpetrators on the city’s residents. At the same time, however, Erfurt was also the city with the highest number of overnight stays by tourists in Thuringia and was striving to attract investment in economic development, primarily to strengthen tourism. Against this backdrop, the project aims to examine, for the first time, how municipal institutions viewed this complex situation.

Project staff: Steven Lange, B.A.

The project analyzes right-wing violence in Thuringia in the early 1990s from a contemporary historical perspective that challenges conventional, decade-based periodizations. Rather than viewing violence as a mere sequence of individual events, it understands it as a socially embedded phenomenon shaped by perception, visibility, and memory. Drawing on archival material, media reports, and interviews, the study demonstrates that local dynamics and microhistorical turning points—such as violent incidents or shifts in public discourse—are of central importance for understanding this period.

Theoretically, the analysis relies primarily on two aspects: While the idea of the “Other” illustrates how right-wing violence situationally constructs an “Other,” the figuration approach enables a process-oriented examination of the relationships between perpetrators, victims, the public, and the state. A key finding is the concept of the “blind spot,” which describes how violence is marginalized or forgotten. Phases of apparent calm thus appear not as an absence, but as periods of latent persistence. Overall, this demonstrates that the early 1990s were a formative period in which long-lasting patterns of memory and repression took shape.

Project staff: Max Zarnojanczyk, M.A.