One Hour of History live. 1949 – 1989 – 2024. Germany writes its constitution

The borderline between East and West, between the political and economic systems of the Cold War, was drawn on German soil. Crises in German-German relations had an impact on the relationship between the superpowers USA and USSR. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 was a high point in the Cold War, which was gradually defused by a policy of rapprochement between the FRG and the GDR that began soon afterwards.

The reconciliation policy of the social-liberal coalition and the ageing of the GDR leadership marked the beginning of a process that lasted two decades, culminating in the opening of the German-German border in November 1989 and the reunification of the two German states in October 1990.

Eine Stunde History illuminates the path of the Germans from the founding of the two states in 1949 to German unity. Presenters Steffi Orbach and Markus Dichmann, co-host Matthias von Hellfeld and singer-songwriter and GDR dissident Stephan Krawczyk will be joined by Prof Sabine Böhne-Di Leo, Prof Dierk Hoffmann, Prof Hedwig Richter and Prof Andreas Rödder to explain the historical process from the division to the unification of Germany.

Steffi Orbach will moderate the discussion, Markus Dichmann and Dr Matthias von Hellfeld will co-moderate.

Prof. Sabine Böhne-Di Leo studied political science in Münster and Perugia. She has worked as a reporter and author for magazines such as Stern and Geo. She has been Professor of Journalism and Politics at Ansbach University of Applied Sciences since 2009.

Prof. Dierk Hoffmann is Deputy Head of the Berlin Department of the Institute of Contemporary History Munich-Berlin (IfZ) and Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Potsdam. From 2011 to 2016, he was a member of the Commission for the Reappraisal of the History of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and its predecessor institutions. Hoffmann has been head of the project on the history of the Treuhandanstalt at the IfZ since 2017. His work focuses on the history of social policy in the 19th and 20th centuries, German-German post-war history and transformation research.

Stephan Krawczyk was born on New Year’s Eve 1955 in Weida, Thuringia. After graduating from high school and studying concert guitar at the Franz Liszt Academy in Weimar, he has been a freelance singer since 1980. In 1981, he won the National Chanson Competition of the GDR and moved to Berlin in 1984. In the same year he began to write, and the following year he was banned from his profession. Together with Freya Klier, he performs in churches and becomes a symbolic figure of the GDR citizens’ movement. On 17 January 1988, the Stasi arrested the opposition artist and deported him to the West 16 days later.

In the same year, now in West Berlin, Krawczyk founded the citizens’ initiative “CFC Stop! Every day counts”. Concert tours take him through German-speaking Western Europe, to North America, France, Spain and Italy. He writes the book ‘SCHÖNE WUNDE WELT’, which is published in the year of reunification.

In addition to his ongoing concert activities, he writes his first novel ‘Das irdische Kind’, which is published in 1996. Since then, various publications in the musical and literary field, travelling, tours.

Prof. Hedwig Richter is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. She has received numerous awards for her research, including the Democracy Foundation Prize and the Anna Krüger Prize of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her books and regular contributions to various newspapers (including SZ and FAZ) have made her well-known to a large readership.

Prof. Andreas Rödder is Professor of Modern History at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Director of the R21 think tank. He is currently Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He was a fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich and a visiting professor at Brandeis University near Boston, Mass., and at the London School of Economics. Rödder has published six monographs, including ‘21.0. A Brief History of the Present’ (2015) and ‘Wer hat Angst vor Deutschland? Geschichte eines europäischen Problems’ (2018), as well as the political pamphlet “Konservativ 21.0. Eine Agenda für Deutschland” (2019). Andreas Rödder regularly comments on social and political issues as a talk show guest, interview partner and author in national and international media; he is a member of the board of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and President of the Stresemann Society.

Markus Dichmann, born in 1987, is a freelance author, reporter and presenter on Deutschlandradio programmes. He presents the weekly magazine programme ‘Eine Stunde History’ for Deutschlandfunk Nova, which won the German Podcast Award in 2019 and was nominated for the German Radio Award in 2017. For his work as an author and reporter, often on historical topics, he won the Franco-German Journalism Prize and was nominated for the German-Polish Tadeusz Mazowiecki Prize. As a Johannes Rau scholarship holder, he worked as a freelance correspondent in Istanbul. He completed a traineeship at Deutschlandradio, studied Communication Science, Politics & Law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and has previously worked in print, radio and television (WAZ, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk).

Dr Matthias von Hellfeld, born in 1954, has been a freelance journalist and historian since 1978. He works as a presenter and editor at ARD and is currently the editor in charge of the magazine “One Hour of History” at Deutschlandfunk Nova. Von Hellfeld has contributed to numerous radio features and TV documentaries. He is also a lecturer at various universities and training academies and the author of more than 25 non-fiction books on European and German history. In 1984, he won the Carl von Ossietzky Award of the city of Oldenburg, was nominated for the German Radio Award in 2017, and received the German Podcast Award in 2019.

Steffi Orbach was lucky enough to realise early on that she wanted to work as a journalist. After starting out in print journalism, she worked in various positions in radio and television before joining WDR as a trainee. She worked for ZDF’s children’s news programme “logo!” for several years, has been writing and broadcasting news for all WDR channels for more than 20 years and presents the media magazine “Töne, Texte, Bilder” (sounds, texts, images) on WDR 5. She was a presenter on Deutschlandfunk Nova’s daily programme for many years. Today she presents “Deutschland heute” (Germany today) on DLF and has hosted the podcast “Eine Stunde History” (One hour of history) since 2023.

- 12 EUR / 6 EUR (Tickets bookable from the end of August)

- 12 years and older

- Language: German

- Hall 1, Ground Floor