Germany 19 | 19

Our politics, it seems, is increasingly determined by emotions. We live in times of permanent excitement. Facts are being challenged by perceived truths. Radicals of all stripes are finding more and more popularity with simple answers to complex questions. This is where the exhibition “The Power of Emotions. Germany 19 | 19” by taking a look at the history of emotions over the past 100 years. The show, jointly published by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ) and the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, was developed by historians Ute and Bettina Frevert. It takes today’s manifestations of 20 emotions as a starting point to illustrate continuities and ruptures in the emotional worlds that shaped the past 100 years and whose intensity challenges politics and society today.

The exhibition, which is shown at more than 2,000 locations throughout Germany, consistently implements the demand for historical-political educational work to be relevant to the present. Concise texts, 140 historical photos and facsimiles, as well as accompanying multimedia offerings encourage visitors to engage with the power of emotions in the past and present.

Prof Dr. Ute Frevert is a historian and director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where she has headed the research area “History of Emotions” since 2008. Previously, she was a professor at Yale University, USA, as well as at the universities of Bielefeld, Konstanz and at the FU Berlin. In 1998, she received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. In 2016, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit First Class. She is a member of numerous national and international academies.

Bettina Frevert studied history and political science in Heidelberg. Afterwards, she worked in a project of political education, where she researched questions around integration, belonging and participation in Germany with young people with and without migration background. Currently, she is working as a historical educator in addition to her in-depth studies. At a Berlin memorial, she teaches the history of German-German division to school classes from Germany and abroad.

Pictures Copyright: Ralf Münch, David Ausserhofer und fotostudio-charlottenburg