Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Chair: Conor O’Dwyer, University of Florida
Panelists: Michael Bernhard, University of Florida; Marcel Lewandowsky, University of Florida; Simona Guerra, University of Leicester; Milada Vachudova, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Discussant: Dariusz Stola, Polish Academy of Sciences

Contemporary German discourse on the tensions between the former East and West German federal states often refers to the persistence of a so-called ‘wall in the head,’ referring to the continued perception of difference between East and West. This German saying can also function as a metaphor for the ongoing differences between the long-time member states of the EU and the formerly-communist new member states. The panel will discuss the extent to which the recent success of populist radical right and left parties thirty years after 1989, can be explained as a product of the old divisions between East and West, and how the enduring legacies of the Cold War division of Europe and Germany continue to play an important role in the political discourse of Europe, as a whole, and within Germany in particular. This panel is part of the CES speaker series The Collapse: 1989 Then and Now with support from the Department of Education Title VI National Resource grant and the Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Chair.