Chapter The Future of democratic participation - and what we can learn from German history

This lecture addresses the fundamental changes in modern Germany’s political-cultural landscape since the end of the Cold War. With the failed experiment of a “democratic-antifascist” socialism in the East, Germans who had grown up there faced a number of life-altering challenges – on the economic, social, cultural and political level. Focusing on the last aspect, the lecture explores the (still) differing ideas of democracy, participation and representation in East and West Germany and weighs their potential impact on the future of liberal democracy as we know it.
 
Christina Morina, PhD, is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Her dissertation is entitled Legacies of Stalingrad: Remembering the Eastern Front War in Germany since 1945 (2011/paperback 2013). Since then she has published a number of books, articles and interviews on modern German political and intellectual history as well as memory culture.From 2015 to 2019, she was DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam. She has also worked as lecturer at the University of Jena and was a research fellow at the Jena Center 20th Century History.