Public History | Completed Projects

Four students of the Master Public History programme (FU Berlin/ZZF Potsdam) and a two-person film team from the TH Ostwestfalen-Lippe preserved and digitised the unique history of the GDR History Museum in this completed documentation and interview project. The aim of the project was a virtual tour of the museum.

The aim of the project was to present the first research results on the history of the site Bogensee in an online exhibition. Under the title "BOGENSEE. A historical tour of the place", current 360° photographs shoud provide a glimpse into the buildings that are no longer accessible today.

Within the framework of the project, East and West German print media, contributions from news broadcasts as well as feature films and documentaries from 1961-1962 were evaluated. The material for the DVD was then selected and background information compiled.

In der Ausstellung wurden die Hintergründe der Verhaftungen von sieben jungen Frauen und Männern aus Werder (Havel) beleuchtet. 

At an international conference in Berlin, various research projects on the history of the "Stolpersteine" were discussed.

The exhibition (May 12 - November 9, 2016 in Museum Barnim Panorama, Wandlitz) provided insights into the political style and lifestyle of the GDR’s leadership elite and documented the consequences for the region of the forest settlement and the security regime associated with it.

Using an extensive body of exhibition photos, this project analysed the depiction of prehistory in museums of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR as well as discourses that led to the alteration or persistence of conceptions of history.

The project reconstructed the history of the Liebknecht Portal from newspaper articles, eyewitness reports, literary depictions, construction files and planning sketches – from the appearance of the workers’ leaders in front of the Palace entrance to the presentation of the balcony scene in the GDR’s interpretation of history.

In the exhibition and an accompanying website, the image database developed by the project group at the ZZF Potsdam presented using an excerpt. The database was used to catalogue the stocks of art works from 165 museums, collections, galleries, special depots and enterprises of the project partners.

The website, which covers the period from April 1952 to the end of 1953, reconstructs what led to the crisis, the uprising itself and the months thereafter: It explains the causes, the course and the consequences. The texts are illustrated and supplemented by a variety of different sources: for example film clips and original sounds from the RIAS archive.