The protest against the swearing-in ceremony of military recruits in the Weser Stadium, demonstrations against nuclear power stations, peace marches, environmental projects, and centers of refuge for harassed women: all these events and more are the focus of a joint project of Bachelor and Master’s students at the University of Bremen. In this “research-based” project, history students and students of cultural studies are investigating forms of social protest. At 8.00 p.m. on Wednesday 18th July 2012, members of the project group will present the book resulting from their research at a venue that became synonymous for the protest movement: the Café Wienerhof, Weberstraße 25, in the Viertel, the district of Bremen frequented by students and the artistic scene. Everyone is invited to attend!
In the 1980s it seemed as though the whole of Bremen was affected one way or another. But as the project leaders, Prof.Inge Marszolek and Dr.Eva Schöck-Quinteros, explain: “The period is little researched, and much of the archive material only recently became available”. Some 25 students of history and cultural studies spent several months delving through various Bremen archives, interviewing Bremen people who were actively caught up in the events, and in particular analyzing the personal ads that appeared in the newspapers of the time. One of their objectives was to find out about the dating preferences of the day and to construct a picture of the “ideal mate” of the 1980s.
Publication in cooperation with the University of Göttingen
“The students set about the task with a high level of commitment, and most of them were able to identify to a great extent with the research topic”, says Prof.Marszolek. The book publication is a joint initiative of the University of Bremen and the University of Göttingen, where students under the leadership of Dr.Sabine Horn and Dr.Maria Rhode were similarly investigating the 1980s student movement in their locality. One of the aspects dealt with in the course of the project is whether there were any differences between Bremen, a Hanseatic City ruled by Social Democrats with a freshly founded reform university, and Götttingen, with its long-established links between the citizenry and the much older university. As the students were to reveal, the social movement had consequences for the populations of both towns. “In Bremen, though, the movement received much more support from the liberal social-democratic milieu”, says Professor Marszolek.
The book edited by Sabine Horn, Inge Marszolek, Maria Rhode, Eva Schöck-Quinteros is entitled “Protest vor Ort. Die 80er Jahre in Bremen und Göttingen“ [Local Protest. The 1980s in Bremen and Göttingen] and is published by Klartext Verlag Essen 2012. (336 p., EUR 29.95)
If you would like to obtain more details, please contact:
Universität Bremen
Fachbereich 9 – Kulturwissenschaften
Institut für Ethnologie und Kulturwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Inge Marszolek
Phone: 0421 218-67650
Cell: 0151-22977536
e-mail: marszprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
Fachbereich 8 - Sozialwissenschaften
Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft
Dr. Eva Schöck-Quinteros
Phone: 0421 218-67251
e-mail: esqprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
