In the organizer's words:

Prof. Dr. Carola Lentz was adopted into an extended Ghanaian family almost four decades ago. As in many African families, educational paths and professional careers, places of residence and lifestyles have developed far apart over the course of time. This makes the memory of common ancestors and regular visits to the village of origin all the more important for the cohesion of the extended family. The younger, educated generation has different expectations of a good family history than their farming relatives in the countryside. The remembered family past is therefore controversial, and some of it is marked as a "secret" by some. Remembrance practices and their media are also new. Memorial services are taking the place of ancestral sacrifices. Drawn family trees, genealogical charts and photo albums supplement the oral narratives. The lecture explores these changes and the conflicts

that accompany them. One conclusion is that family history can not only unite, but also divide.

Carola Lentz is an ethnologist and senior research professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Her research focuses on migration, ethnicity and nationalism, colonialism and decolonization, state and family memory politics as well as educational biographies and middle classes in post-colonial societies.

She studied sociology, political science, German studies and education in Göttingen and Berlin, received her doctorate from Leibniz University Hannover in 1987 and habilitated at the Free University of Berlin in 1996. Her academic career led her to professorships in Frankfurt and Mainz, where she played a key role in shaping the Institute of Ethnology and African Studies. From 2020 to 2024, she was President of the Goethe-Institut and was committed to cultural exchange and international understanding. Her research focuses on social belonging, mobility and memory culture in West Africa. She received the Melville J. Herskovits Prize in 2014 for her book Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa.

She is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

About the lecture series

Secrets are of great social value - from medical confidentiality to the defendant's right to remain silent in court. Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child "Protection of Privacy and Honor" grants children the right to keep secrets. Private secrets are usually family secrets. They are far more than just guarded information. They reveal the need to protect one's own integrity and privacy and thus also others, to preserve intimacy. Family secrets can be an expression of shame, the fear of being exposed, but they also testify to the desire for social integration under the pressure of social conventions and moral standards. They are part of the biographical experience of every person and almost every family, and they have very different effects on individuals.

Telling and concealing secrets reveal how individuals influence their life stories, shape emotional relationships and negotiate social norms. At the same time, cultural and social science research shows that secrets extend far beyond the private sphere: they fulfil fundamental social functions by marking boundaries, establishing affiliations and stabilizing social orders.

In the first dates of this lecture series, we will therefore be looking at the many facets and functions of secrets - from cultural techniques of concealment to legal issues of protecting privacy, especially for children, to the negotiation and staging of family secrets in cinematic or theatrical productions.

The result is a panorama that reveals the significance of secrecy - as a unifying and stabilizing as well as a divisive and destabilizing force - in various areas of society and makes its cultural and social impact in different contexts comprehensible.

Further dates in the winter semester 2025/2026

11.02.2026

Dr. Michael Slepian (Columbia Business School, New York)

"The secret life of secrets"

18.02.2026

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Annette Schad-Seifert (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Institute for Modern Japan, Düsseldorf)

""Solo Weddings" as a secret of happiness in Japan"

04.03.2026

Bert Rebhandl (Freelance film researcher, Berlin)

"Substitute/Family - Cohabitation after natural descent. Aspects from popular culture"

18.03.2026

Dr. Lotte Warnsholdt (MARKK Museum am Rothenbaum, Hamburg)

"Cultural techniques of silence as forms of care"

The lecture series takes place in the Humboldt Forum as part of a cooperation of the institutional network.

Concept

Prof. Dr. Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Dr. Alia Rayyan (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Dr. Laura Goldenbaum (Humboldt Forum Foundation at the Berlin Palace)

Further information

- free of charge

- Location: Room 3, ground floor

- Language: Deursch

- Part of: Lecture series Beziehungsweise Familie