Mario Keßler
Die Antifaschismen in der DDR
[Antifascisms in the GDR]
My lecture deals with the (in)consistencies and contradictions of antifascisms in the GDR. The use of ‘antifascisms’ the plural allows for a better understanding of the historical facts. I propose a typological model of antifascisms in the postwar Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR in five separate but interwoven types: I am concerned with 1.) the dominant party-communist antifascism; 2.) socialist-communist antifascism beyond party guidelines; 3.) antifascism in the literature and culture of the GDR; 4.) the antifascism of the post-war “Aufbau” generation; 5.) the alternative antifascism of the 1980s. What connected them, what distinguished them from each other, and what remains relevant in all this for today?
Mario Kessler was born in Jena and studied in Jena and Leipzig. He was awarded his PhD in 1982, and his Habilitation in 1990. From 1992 to 2021 he worked at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History (and its predecessor institution). He has also taught at the University of Potsdam, and Yeshiva University in New York, and has had numerous other visiting professorships, mainly in the US. He has written 30 books and almost 400 academic essays on international communism, modern anti-Semitism, and the history of historiography. In addition, he has to his name extensive work as an editor and publicist.