Volker Weiss: The German Democratic Reich - Reading and discussion with Karl-Heinz Ott in the Counter Words series

A clear-sighted diagnosis of the AfD and the extreme right: In his bestseller (Klett-Cotta, 2025), historian Volker Weiß shows how the present is massively politicized by rewriting and reinterpreting history. Inventing false pasts in order to idealize them and recast terms - this is how one's own position is to be strengthened. Methods with strong parallels to a culture war that Trump and Putin are also waging in the fields of history and geopolitics.

One of the bizarre manifestations of this distortion of history is the reinterpretation of a GDR peace song, which has been hijacked by avowed anti-communists to protest against sanctions against Russia. Or the traditional "sleight of hand" trick of declaring the Nazis to be leftists by means of a supposed quote from Goebbels, as recently demonstrated by Alice Weidel. Volker Weiß talks to the author Karl-Heinz Ott about the historical image of new right-wing movements.
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Photo: © Maximilian Gödecke

Co-organizer: Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg, kindly supported by GLS Gemeinschaftsbank

Date: 23.5.2025, 19:30
Venue: Literaturhaus Freiburg, Bertoldstraße 17
Admission: 11/7 euros

Reading and discussion
Literaturhaus