Professor Günther Heydemann, a chair in contemporary history at the University of Leipzig and the director of the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden, visited Scripps Hall on Tuesday night to give a lecture.
The lecture, titled “The Difficult Road from Dictatorship to Democracy: The Delayed Revolution of 1989 at the University of Leipzig,” attracted about 30 people.
Ohio University and the University of Leipzig celebrated their 20-year partnership in September, according to an OU news release, and Heydemann’s visit was part of the celebration of this partnership.
After giving a bottle of champagne to his longtime friend and colleague Chester Pach, a professor of history, Heydemann began his lecture by discussing some of the hardships the University of Leipzig faced after the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Since their partnership began in 1992, OU has worked to aid the University of Leipzig in transitioning away from the Soviet era, he said.
Before February 1991, the university was called Karl Marx University, which highlighted its largely socialist values. After the end of the Cold War, the university went through a metamorphosis in which the administration and school at large had to change from being socialist to democratic.
Heydemann, a native of former West Germany, highlighted the difficulties surrounding the situation by describing his experience of moving to former East Germany.
According to him, the state of Leipzig was in “decay” following the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which forced him to find housing within a local retirement home.
Despite this, students found the professor’s lectures very interesting, leading to overcrowding when he spoke.
“I hadn’t known anything about the administrative changes in the 1990s,” said Sam Miner, a senior studying German and history and who was an exchange student at the University of Leipzig last year.
Pach, who gave the keynote address at the 20th anniversary celebration between the schools earlier this year, said Heydeman is a “friend of Ohio University” and is “one of the reasons partnership has flourished.”
db794812@ohiou.edu
@Dinaivey
