"Summitry and the German Question." Lecture by David Reynolds (Cambridge) and Kristina Spohr (London)

Lecture series : "Compromising the Cold War"

Thu, 11/17/2016, 6:00 pm
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Hörsaal 1072
Unter den Linden 6
10117 Berlin
Germany

 

Please use side entrance in Universitätsstraße.

Lecture in English.

No registration required. 

No entrance fee. 

 

Logo: Siegel der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU)

 

Logo: Berliner Kolleg Kalter Krieg (B3K)

 

Resolving the German question after 1945 has often been considered in terms of domestic politics – a story written around the Berlin Wall in 1961, Brandt’s Ostpolitik, and the Wende in 1989. Drawing on their new book Transcending the Cold War, Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds explore the diplomatic dimension, especially the significance of key summit meetings. Their talk will address decisive moments such as the Brandt-Stoph icebreakers at Erfurt and Kassel in 1970; the Guadeloupe meeting of 1979 when Helmut Schmidt brought the Bundesrepublik to the West’s ‘top table’; the place of Germany in the dramatic Reagan-Gorbachev encounters of the mid-1980s; and the summitry between Bush, Gorbachev and Kohl which facilitated the peaceful re-unification of Germany and with it the end of Europe’s Cold War.

Kristina Spohr, Associate Professor in International History at the London School of Economics, is a specialist in the International History of Germany since 1945 and interested in the theory and practice of Contemporary History. 

David Reynolds is Professor of International History at Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College. His main research is on U.S. and British foreign policy and on transatlantic relations in World War Two and the Cold War.

The evening's chair is Dr. Ilse Dorothee Pautsch, Institute for Contemporary History, Foreign Office Branch. She is heads the team editing the foreign policy records of the Federal Republic of Germany ("Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland")

The lecture series "Grenzen des Kalten Krieges | Compromising the Cold War“ is hosted by the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies and the Humboldt University Berlin.

Please be advised that photos and audio recordings might be made for reasons of private and public documentation.