Traveling exhibition “Connecting Generations”

In Video installation 1, “Generation 1975 – Entering the new Germany at 14,” people from Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, East and West Berlin, recount their lives before, during, and after the pivotal year of 1989/1990 from the perspective of teenagers at the time—who watched in amazement and witnessed firsthand how life in the East was turned upside down, while virtually nothing changed in the daily lives of young people in the old FRG (outside of West Berlin). 

Trailer                                                    Handout

The video installation 2, “Generation Mauerbau,” offers the perspective of young adults at the time—those born in 1961 in Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, East or West Berlin—who were 28 years old during the period of upheaval, having just entered the workforce and often started families. Here, too, nearly every aspect of life changed for people in the GDR; in the old FRG, however, the social system—and thus everyday life—remained virtually the same, even though new job and travel opportunities had emerged in the East. 

Trailer                                                    Handout

The video installation 3, “Never experienced a crisis?”, combines material from the two generational projects. While the interviews with “Generation 1975” were conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when the feeling of never having experienced a crisis was still widespread in the West, this was no longer the case two years later, when the interviews with “Generation Wall Construction” were conducted. In the video installation, they recount their experiences of personal, professional, and political crises. 

Trailer                                                    Handout

The video installation 4, “A history of the Germans?”, also draws on material from both intergenerational projects. Here, the focus is on the stories of people with immigrant backgrounds—who came to the GDR or the FRG as “contract workers” or as children of “guest workers”—which have received little attention to date, as well as on the stories of West and East Germans who, over time, adapted more or less successfully to their fellow citizens from abroad.

Trailer following…                                           Handout

Liberal democracies are finding it increasingly difficult to offer convincing solutions to the multiple crises facing the world. Extremist and populist slogans and narratives (e.g., regarding “remigration” or the denial of climate change) resonate with many (Richter & Ulrich, 2024, p. 166) and lead to electoral successes for far-right parties in Germany, Europe, and worldwide. The global shift to the right is exacerbated in Germany by highly divergent memories of the period of German division and transformation, which are also the subject of controversial debate in academic circles—e.g.,  „Ungleich vereint“ (Mau, 2024), „Diesseits der Mauer“ (Hoyer, 2023), or “Tausend Aufbrüche” (Morina, 2024). Academic books on the subject are becoming bestsellers and are receiving extensive coverage in arts sections and cultural programs. It is therefore equally important to remember the experiences of repression in the GDR and to come to terms with the experiences of the transition period. The focus should not be limited to the GDR, but should instead examine the German-German past as a “shared” history. For this reason, the traveling exhibition “Conecting Generations” gives a voice to people through their everyday experiences in a divided and reunified country and their memories, with the aim of conveying knowledge about these diverse experiences and memories and fostering mutual understanding. This is equally important for people in both East and West Germany. In particular, people who grew up in West Germany often know very little about the GDR and the period of transformation, so their understanding of the situation in East Germany is often limited (Ahbe, 2023; Großbölting, 2020). 
 

To provide a multi-perspective view, the two intergenerational interview projects (featuring people born in 1975 and 1961, respectively) each surveyed 26 eyewitnesses who lived in Brandenburg, Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, East or West Berlin until the fall of the Wall, were interviewed about the issues and challenges of the division of Germany and reunification. The videos offer an accessible window into the everyday lives that the (older) viewers themselves led on their respective sides of the Wall, reminding them of how they themselves perceived and judged the “others” on the other side of the Wall before and after the period of upheaval. 
For the first interview project, “Generation 1975,” people from Baden-Württemberg, West and East Berlin, and Brandenburg were interviewed who had experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification as teenagers—meaning they were old enough to have consciously witnessed some of these events, but not yet old enough to be held accountable for their actions. In the second interview project, “Generation Wall Construction” the range of topics was expanded to include experiences of crisis in the interviewees’ own life stories. In 1961, the interviewees were in their late twenties and already had professional and family responsibilities, including toward their own parents. Thus, the “Generation Wall Construction”—who were young adults at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall—experienced the period of transformation and its social implications differently than the teenagers of the “Generation 1975.” The two source corpora also differ in that the interviews with “Generation 1975” were conducted in 2019 with people who were in their mid-forties at the time, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the multiple crises of the present were not (yet) so visible. The interviews with the “Generation Wall Construction,” on the other hand, were conducted in 2021/2022 with people who were in their early sixties at the time. For many, the restrictions during the pandemic and the war of aggression against Ukraine had led to feelings of uncertainty and also to reminiscences of the Cold War era. The life history interviews from both source corpora are available to researchers in the “Archiv Deutsches Gedächtnis.”

Video installations were created from the life story interviews and have already been shown on several occasions (see the trailers for the Generation 1975 and the Generation Wall Construction). In addition, approximately 20-minute individual videos have been (or are being) produced for use in the classroom. The individual videos and lesson plans are available to anyone interested on the  Generationenportal of the Baden-Württemberg State Education Server. In the context of the traveling exhibition “Conecting Generations,” we are currently developing further workshops and lesson plans in collaboration with the Berlin Wall Foundation and the Center for School Quality and Teacher Education in Baden-Württemberg, which will also be made available on the “Generationenportal” in the medium term. Our experience to date working with the video material demonstrates how helpful the everyday history approach is for approaching the topic of German-German history without preconceptions and for broadening one’s own perspective (Bertram, 2023). In light of the deepening of internal societal divides caused by “filter bubbles” on social media channels, it is important to us to engage in dialogue with people across the country and in person through the traveling exhibition “Connecting Generations.” In doing so, we focus on a mutual exchange on equal terms and on integrating historical and political education both within and outside of schools.

Ahbe, T. (2023). Ostdeutschland und die Ostdeutschen als Erzählung. Identitätsstiftende Narrative im Widerstreit. Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen.

Bertram, C. (2023). Transformationen in einer diversen Gesellschaft am Beispiel der „Generation 1975“. In M. Oberle & M.-M. Stamer, Politische Bildung in der superdiversen Gesellschaft. Ta-gungsband der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Politikdidaktik und politische Jugend- und Er-wachsenenbildung (GPJE) 2021. (S. 170-178). Frankfurt a.M.: Wochenschau-Verlag.

Großbölting, T. (2020). Wiedervereinigungsgesellschaft. Aufbruch und Entgrenzung in Deutschland seit 1989/90. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. 

Hoyer, K. (2023). Eine neue Geschichte der DDR 1949-1990.

Mau, Steffen (2024). Ungleich vereint. Warum der Osten anders bleibt. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Morina, C. (2023). Tausend Aufbrüche. Die Deutschen und ihre Demokratie seit den 1980er-Jahren. Siedler. 

Richter, H. & Ulrich, B. (2024). Demokratie und Revolution. Wege aus der selbstverschuldeten ökologi-schen Unmündigkeit. Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

• Tagesspiegel Berlin (3rd October 2025)
• Museumsfernsehn (October 2025)
• Saarländischer Rundfunk (MP3) Courtesy of Saarländischer Rundfunk.
  • (Notes on the report: TdE25: What’s already happening at the festival? MuPro live link with TdE reporter Alice Kremer. Author: Alice Kremer. Broadcast: SR kultur – Der Vormittag, October 2, 2025, 11:20 a.m.).