The East: All a Construction of the West? - Panel discussion in the context of the 11th German Diversity Day

Is a discussion about diversity, anti-discrimination in the East necessary at all? Is it a kind of import from the West? Or the other way around: Is the East a center of diversity in its own right?

A structural discrimination of East Germans in the transformation process since 1989 is criticized, as well as a stigmatization and devaluation of "the East" in public discourse until today. Is the image of the "brown East" problematic attribution or bitter reality? Is it meaningful or justified to conduct a kind of victim discourse about "the East Germans"? How can we adequately talk about - and change - structural disadvantages and marginalization of East Germans? Does the sometimes claimed "colonization" of "the East" by "the West" exist?

We would like to discuss these and other questions with the following panelists and with a reference to the BTU and to Cottbus:

Discussants:Prof. Dr. Gesine Grande Psychologist and President of the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. She is the first president of a university with an East German biography.

Prof. Dr. Patrice Poutrus Historian and visiting professor at the Technical University of Berlin, researches and teaches, among other things, on racism and memory culture in the GDR.

Ulrike Kremeier Art historian and director of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art (BLMK) in Cottbus, enthusiastically curates and researches art from the GDR.

Moderation Prof.*in Dr.*in Heike Radvan - educationalist at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, researches and teaches among other things on the extreme right and anti-Semitism in the GDR and present.