Blockveranstaltung: Churches in Communist Dictatorships – After the Dictatorship. Historical Reckoning and Historiography - Details

Blockveranstaltung: Churches in Communist Dictatorships – After the Dictatorship. Historical Reckoning and Historiography - Details

Allgemeine Informationen

Veranstaltungsname Blockveranstaltung: Churches in Communist Dictatorships – After the Dictatorship. Historical Reckoning and Historiography
Untertitel International Conference in Halle (Saale)
Semester WiSe 2026/27
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 2
Heimateinrichtung Theologische Fakultät
Veranstaltungstyp Blockveranstaltung in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Nächster Termin Dienstag, 06.10.26, 18:00 - 20:00 Uhr HS I
Teilnehmende All students, but specially students in the master’s program “Christianity in Global Transformations” can fulfill module requirements through qualified and active participation in the conference. Participation is documented by submitting a written report in the form of an essay on five of the presentations given at the conference. The report must address at least two of the countries presented. It should summarize the key points of the presentations and the subsequent plenary discussion. In their independent analysis, students are explicitly asked to address: a) to what extent a comparative perspective on the situation in the various countries is appropriate or plausible; b) what the key differences are in the political and denominational situations; and c) which questions remain open or unanswered.
Please register by September 20 at friedemann.stengel@theologie.uni-halle.de, as some master’s students may not yet have studip access by that time. After you register in writing, a consultation appointment will be scheduled during the week of September 28 through October 2; this appointment can also be attended online.
For further informations see https://www.theologie.uni-halle.de/kg/friedemann_stengel/kzg-tagung/?lang=en
Lehrsprache(n) Englisch
SWS 2

Räume und Zeiten

HS I

  • Dienstag, 06.10.26, 18:00 - 20:00 Uhr
  • Mittwoch, 07.10.26, 09:00 - 19:00 Uhr
  • Donnerstag, 08.10.26, 09:00 - 19:00 Uhr
  • Freitag, 09.10.26, 09:00 - 13:00 Uhr

Kommentar/Beschreibung

How did churches narrate their own history after 1989? How has that history been told and reckoned with in post-socialist societies? From 6 to 9 October 2026, scholars from across Eastern, South-Eastern, and Central Europe will gather in Halle (Saale) to discuss memory, historical reckoning, and the interpretation of the past.
More than three decades after the collapse of communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe, the history of churches and religious communities under communist rule remains far from settled. It has been researched, commemorated, and documented — and yet it remains contested. For since 1990, the history of churches under dictatorship has been inseparable from the history of how that past has been interpreted after the dictatorship.
The international conference "Churches under Communist Dictatorship — After the Dictatorship. Historical Reckoning and Historiography" therefore does not focus primarily on the period before 1989/90. At its centre are the struggles over the politics of memory, the dynamics of coming to terms with the past, and the emergence of historiographical narratives since the 1990s: How did churches and religious communities narrate their own past — caught between persecution and accommodation, between opposition and collaboration? What interests, conflicts, and constructions of identity shaped these narratives? And what mutual influence existed between these narratives and the political landscape following the upheavals of 1989/90?
In 22 papers, scholars from 12 countries across Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe examine the diverse ways in which the recent history of churches has been remembered, constructed, politically framed, and interpreted. Particular attention is given to the years of transformation after 1989/90: to the hopes and disappointments of democratic transition, to the relationship between ecclesiastical reckoning and democratic institutions, to the role of public controversy in politics and society, and to the processes of re- and de-confessionalisation.
The conference addresses the varied confessional, national, and regional constellations across the region. It asks about commonalities and divergences in cultures of memory, about the consequences of majority and minority configurations, and about the often close entanglements of religion, nation, and language.