This study tour to Weimar and Berlin is part of the ongoing Transatlantic Partnership on Memory and Democracy between Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Center for German Studies at UVA.  Launched in response to the violent white-supremacist attacks in Charlottesville in 2017, the main objective of the multi-year initiative is to explore how activism, scholarship, and art can help us engage with difficult chapters of our histories and to work toward justice and reconciliation: from slavery and segregation in the United States to colonialism, genocide, and dictatorship in Germany. You can find more information about our previous work here (2018) and here (2019), or in this JHR article by Manuela Achilles and Hannah Winnick,.

The study group consists of a diverse group of community leaders, UVA faculty, and students engaged in memory work at UVA and in Charlottesville. Together, we will visit prominent memorial sites, such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the Concentration Camp Buchenwald Memorial in Weimar. We will also have a closer look at the brand-new Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which has been criticized for its failure to properly address Germany’s colonial past. Last but not least, we will meet with German museum practitioners, historians, and activists, such as Berlin Postcolonial, who are advocating for a more inclusive memory culture.

For more information, please contact Manuela Achilles (ma6cq@virginia.edu) or Ella Mueller (Ella.Mueller@us.boell.org),