Mitöffentlichkeit

The focus of this representation of historical relationships is the German-German work of the Protestant Academy of Berlin/Brandenburg since its inception in 1951 until the end of the 1970s / start of the 1980s. It covered the literary field, the subject of ‘coming to terms with the past’ and the Christian-Jewish dialogue as an important field in the Nazi discussion. The exemplary character of the Academy provides a picture of the history of the (church’s) process of coming to terms with the past, the history of literature and censorship, and new aspects of Christian-Jewish relationships in the GDR. The Academy was shaped by proximity and distance to state and church contexts. Major monitoring by the Stasi and conflicts with state bodies are an expression of this ‘obstinacy’. As a Christian player, the Academy’s many decades of work generated a special form of public, namely Mitöffentlichkeit, which is presented here for the first time and differentiates between the notions of public in the GDR.