Dirk Oschmann

In the organizer's words:

• The East: a West German invention
• Lecture

"The East has no future as long as it is only understood as an origin."

What does it mean to have an Eastern identity imposed on you? An identity that is held responsible for the growing social divide, to which attributes such as populism, a lack of understanding of democracy, racism, conspiracy myths and poverty are ascribed? Dirk Oschmann shows that more than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West still defines itself as the norm and the East as a deviation. Our media, politics, economy and science are dominated by West German perspectives. Oschmann analyzes pointedly how this attitude harms our society and initiates an overdue debate.

Dirk Oschmann, born in Gotha in 1967, is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Leipzig. His book Der Osten: eine westdeutsche Erfindung (2023) met with a great nationwide response and was number one on the SPIEGEL bestseller list for weeks.

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