Reflections

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Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer

Rolf Hosfeld (Germany)
Presented by: Barbara Wahlster
In the almost 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell, few other subjects have been so exhaustively researched as the East German state. What was the GDR? Although a mere episode in the history of Communism, it still developed characteristics and values of its own, especially in the Ulbricht era. It was given the task of proving the validity of the Communist experiment in a developed, industrialised country, but this very task was its demise—with initially gigantic, and, under Honecker, rather defensive utopian ideas. Seen from a wider perspective, it was a consequence of the violent, “German” twentieth century, which ended in 1989.

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Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Große Bühne

Giving the victims a voice
Mario Calabresi (Italy), Carlin Emcke (Germany),Peter Schneider (Germany)
Presented by: Angelo Bolaffi
“At 9.15 a.m. my father was shot just as he was opening the door of his blue Cinquecento for my mother”. Mario Calabresi was two years old when his father was murdered by leftist terrorists. In 1977 alone there were forty-two murders and 2,128 attempted murders in Italy. In his book “Der blaue Cinquecento” Calabresi has lent his voice to all those who remained speechless and were never spoken about – the family members of the victims. In 1985, Alfred Herrhausen was killed by a commando of the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion). Like Mario Calabresi, it was only decades later that Herrhausen’s goddaughter Carolin Emcke was able to write about these traumatic experiences in her book “Stumme Gewalt. Nachdenken über die RAF”, and to evaluate the state’s reaction to this violence. Peter Schneider casts a different glance back on the era; he critically grapples with his own writings of the year 1968 and scrutinises the revolutionary ideals of the generation from which perpetrators would arise.

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Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Seitenbühne

Elena Tregubova (Russia/UK) discussing Russia in the new century with Manfred Sapper (Germany)
Elena Tregubova was working as correspondent for the Moscow daily paper “Kommersant” when a young journalist. She will be reading from her report “Tales of a Kremlin Digger”, about her encounter with Vladimir Putin and the development of a political system which was essentially shaped by him. After the publication of the book in early 2004, a bomb attack was carried out in front of her entrance door. She has been granted political asylum in the United Kingdom where she currently lives.