OSU Marks 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Discussion will be presented in German on Nov. 17; bilingual talk is Nov. 18.

(Nov. 10, 2009, STILLWATER, Okla.) – The College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University is marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a talk presented by German scholar Benno Fischer of Berlin’s Goethe-Institut.

Fischer will present “The Berlin Wall: History and Memory 1961-1989-2009” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 in Room 106 of the Noble Research Center. The talk takes a personal look behind the political events surrounding the wall, from its construction in 1961, separating the Allies’ West Berlin from the Soviet-controlled East, to its fall in 1989, and the city’s subsequent rebirth as a European metropolis.

The wall separated families and friends. The city became one of the chief flashpoints for the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact and NATO. Fischer’s talk, propelled by stark images and stories about life behind the Iron Curtain, will be in German.

Fischer, a noted historian with the institute, has studied the wall’s effects on the city and the German population during his academic career.

“He’ll show pictures of the building of the wall and some of the changes that happened in Berlin with its construction,” said OSU’s John Te Velde, a German language professor who studied in Berlin off and on during the early and mid 1980s.

Te Velde decided to bring Fischer to OSU after he attended a recent seminar at the Goethe-Institut on Berlin life. The Goethe-Institut is Germany’s federal arm that promotes German language, culture and history worldwide as well as cultural exchanges.

The talk is free and open to the public. A bilingual discussion and question and answer session with OSU’s German Club will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 18 at Hideaway Pizza, 230 S. Knoblock Street in Stillwater.

The lecture is funded by the Arts and Humanities Lecture Series in the College of Arts and Sciences at OSU. To learn more, e-mail john.te_velde@okstate.edu or phone (405) 744-9544. The foreign language department is one of 24 departments in OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences. To learn more, visit cas.okstate.edu.