Innovative Forms
of Memory Culture

With his Stumbling Stones, Gunter Demnig keeps the memory of the victims of National Socialism alive. The first Stumbling Stones workshop outside Germany opened in 2021 – at the Goethe-Institut in Amsterdam. In an interview, the artist explains how this came about.

Germany is often seen as a model for how to confront a nation’s history. However, rather than looking only at the results of Germany’s reckoning with its past, it is more instructive to understand the process that led to the current situation.

2020 Shaping the Past Fellow Thalia Fernández Bustamente writes about the impact Covid-19 has had on indigenous communities in Mexico and the challenges they are currently facing.

Each One Teach One (EOTO), a library and community centre in Berlin’s African Quarter, is a space that gives people of African descent the opportunity to transform their past into ideas for the future. Author and curator Michael Götting explains the importance and the history of this special place.

Germany and the Germans brought unprecedented suffering to the world during the Nazi era. The way Germany dealt with its past is considered an example of a successful historical reappraisal. But does that really correspond to reality? Social scientist Anna Delius investigates how the two German societies dealt with National Socialism and the Holocaust after 1945.

Media reports and events featuring our fellows and partners.