Portraitfoto Klaas Anders

Klaas Anders

Contradictory Lifeworlds: The Czechoslovak Exile in Vienna 1968-1989

The PhD project examines contradictory environments in the everyday life of Czechoslovak exiles between 1968 and 1989 in the urban space of Vienna. The project looks at the period after 1968 and thus accompanies the arrival of the exiles who left Czechoslovakia after the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968/69 and after the repression against Charter 77 (1977). The focus is on strategies for coping with everyday life in exile, which the project understands as life in constant contradiction. The project primarily uses oral history approaches, which are supplemented by selected archival sources.

Contact
Twitter
Research interests
  • Migration history
  • History of late socialism
  • Subcultural History
  • Memory studies
Vita
  • Since June 2022
    doctoral fellow at the DFG Research Training Group 2686 Contradiction Studies
  • Since May 2022
    Freelance guide at the memorial site Denkort Bunker Valentin, Bremen-Farge.
  • 2021 – 2022
    Freelance collaborator on the exhibition project: denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof at the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial site.
  • 2021
    Freelance collaborator on the exhibition project Ostwärts in den Westen for the Bremer Bündnis für deutsch-tschechische Zusammenarbeit e.V.
  • 2021
    Internship in the project denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof at the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial site.
  • 2020 – 2021
    Study visit at the Charles University Prague.
  • 2019 – 2020
    Student assistant in research and teaching at the Department of Eastern European History at the University of Hamburg.
  • 2018 – 2021
    M.A. Eastern European Studies (University of Hamburg).
  • Master‘s thesis Der ‚Urstrom der Geschichte‘ fließt durch Prag. Die Flucht von DDR-Bürger*innen über die bundesdeutsche Botschaft in der ČSSR im September 1989 als deutsch-tschechischer Erinnerungsort.
  • 2018 – 2019
    Student Assistant at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg (IFSH).
  • 2016 – 2017
    Student assistant at the Department of Cultural History of East Central Europe with a focus on Czech history at the University of Bremen.
  • 2014 – 2018
    B.A. History (University of Bremen)
    Bachelor‘s Thesis Identität(en) tschechischer und slowakischer Skinheads in der Transformationszeit der ČSSR / ČR.
Publications
Talks, Workshops, and Events
  • 29.10.2024
    Panel Discussion Was ist „Osteuropa“? Geschichte und Gegenwart eines widersprüchlichen Konzepts, Library of the Weserburg Museum Bremen
  • 20.06.2024
    Talk Widersprüchliche Lebenswelten: das tschechoslowakische Exil in Wien 1968-1989, Kolloquium für Neueste Geschichte und Historische Migrationsforschung, University Osnabrück
  • 16.05.2024
    Talk The Czechoslovak Exile in Vienna (1968–1989) as a Space of Dissension, World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Columbia University New York
  • 05.04.2024
    Panel Discussion Widersprechen gegen das Vergessen: Tschechoslowakische Zwangsarbeiter*innen in der Region Bremen, Denkort Bunker Valentin
  • 06.11.2023
    Panel Discussion Widersprüche der Erinnerungskultur. Die Realität der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft anerkennen? Weserburg Museum Bremen
  • 10.09.2023
    Exhibition Opening Ostwärts in den Westen at Theater am Geländer, Prag
  • 22.05.2023
    Panel Discussion Im Rückblick: Die Flucht über die Prager Botschaft 1989 as part of the stage play „Über den Zaun“, Train Station Worpswede
  • 17.01.2023
    Talk Alltag und Netzwerke des tschechoslowakischen Exils in Wien nach 1968 at the Kolloquium Abteilung für osteuropäischen Geschichte, CAU Kiel
  • 29.11.2022
    Talk Alltag und Netzwerke des tschechoslowakischen Exils in Wien nach 1968 at the Kolloquium zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa Bremen
  • 04.11.2022
    Moderation and Discussion of the reading Nullerjahre with Hendrik Bolz, Kukoon Bremen
Back to overview
sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”

Norman Sieroka
interstice

“The contradiction of law in Derrida lies in the interstice that separates the impossibility of deconstructing justice from the possibility of deconstructing law.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel