GWZO Annual Lecture »In die Walachei« WS 2025/26
GWZO Annual Lecture 2025/26
»In die Walachei…« A Lecture Series on the Modern History and Culture of Romania
»In die Walachei…« (to Wallachia) – the often negatively connoted phrase typically suggests something remote and unknown. But who actually realises that it refers to a region in southern Romania – and what about the history and culture of the country as a whole? This year’s GWZO lecture series invites you to discover Romania beyond the usual clichés. Through readings, films and lectures, our experts will guide you through a European country that deserves closer attention: they speak of renewal and modernity, of origins and faith, of memory and violence, of past and present. Bine ați venit! (Welcome!)
Start: 22 October 2025, 5 p.m. at GWZO
Detailprogramm
22 October 2025, 5 p.m., GWZO, Reichsstraße 4-6, 4th Floor
»New Beginning« – Childhoods and Paradise Without a Key: Reading and Discussion (lecture in German)
To open this year’s lecture series at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), the writers Alexandru Bulucz (Was Petersilie über die Seele weiß [What Parsley Knows About the Soul], Poems, Schöffling & Co 2020; Stundenholz [Hourglass], Poems, Schöffling & Co 2024) and Dorothee Riese (Wir sind hier für die Stille [We Are Here for the Silence], Novel, Berlin Verlag 2024) will read from their works. Together with literary scholar Dr. Stephan Krause (GWZO), they will discuss the themes of writing between Romania and Germany, of childhoods and of paradise.
12 November 2025, 5 p.m., GWZO, Reichsstraße 4-6, 4th floor
»Modernity« – Between Bauhaus and Bucharest: Transnational Design and Consumer Cultures in Interwar Romania (lecture in English)
In the 1920s and 1930s, Romania and its capital city experienced processes of modernisation and an evolving commodity culture that shaped public and private spaces, from domestic interiors to shop windows. In this lecture focusing on Bucharest's avant-garde movement, art historian Alexandra Chiriac will explore how commercial practices intersected with emerging art and design trends and examine how German and Romanian design education and reform were connected through transnational networks of people and ideas.
26 November 2025, 5 p.m., GWZO, Reichsstraße 4-6, 4th floor
»Origins« – Changing Ancestors? Transnational Reflections on Ethnic Affiliation Using the Example of Romania (lecture in German)
Under what conditions could a »Banat Swabian« declare himself a »Banat Frenchman«? And what turned a »German« into a »Jew«? Using the history of German speakers in Romania in the 20th century as an example, German studies scholar and historian Dr. Pierre de Trégomain examines how flexible the seemingly unavoidable affiliation with a community of origin could be – focusing in particular on the practice of ethno-national categorization based on ancestry.
14 January 2026, 5 p.m., GWZO, Reichsstraße 4–6, 4th floor
»Violence« – The Holocaust in Romania: International Perceptions and Jewish Reactions (lecture in German)
The history of Romania between 1938 and 1944 represents a distinct and still little-known chapter in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe. In her lecture, historian Dr. Gaëlle Fisher presents findings from her research on perceptions of anti-Jewish violence in Romania and on the varied responses of the Jewish population and its leaders to persecution and mass murder. In doing so, she sheds new light on both the specific characteristics and the distinctly transnational dimensions of these events.
21 January 2026, 5 p.m., GWZO, Reichsstraße 4–6, 4th floor
»Faith« – According to Their Need: Left-Wing Ideals and Pragmatic Action among the First Women MPs in Romania (1946–1948) (lecture in English)
In 1947, the Romanian Parliament included 17 women MPs – a sizable cohort of influential stateswomen with left-leaning or radical-left convictions. In this lecture, historian Dr. Alexandra Ghiț examines the beliefs, actions and legacies of these pioneering politicians. What did they fight for, and where did they compromise? And what does their history reveal about the role of gender politics in shaping processes of (re)distribution?
4 February 2026, 5 p.m., Location: Cinémathèque Leipzig e.V., Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 109
Film Screening: Trei kilometri până la capătul lumii (Three Kilometres to the End of the World, directed by Emanuel Pârvu, 2024, original version with German subtitles). Moderation: Dr. Beata Hock
Adi spends the summer before starting university in his home village in Romania’s Danube Delta, surrounded by a stunningly beautiful landscape. One night, he becomes the victim of a homophobic attack. Yet it is not the perpetrators who face punishment, but Adi himself: his parents lock him away, the priest attempts to exorcise the “devil” from him, and the local police remain passive and silent.
Emanuel Pârvu’s coming-of-age drama – screened in competition at Cannes – is a powerful story of exclusion, violence, love and freedom, portraying a young man’s struggle against homophobia, corruption, and religious zealotry.
11 March 2026, 5 p.m., Location: Cinématehèque Leipzig e.V., Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 109
Film Screening: Boss (Director: Bogdan Mirică, 2022, original version with English subtitles) (Moderator: Dr. Stephan Krause)
Bogdan, an ambulance driver in Bucharest, joins three men he barely knows in an armed robbery. He drives the getaway car and injures the only witness, who later dies under mysterious circumstances. Convinced that one of his accomplices has manipulated the police investigation, Bogdan sets out to uncover their identities – a pursuit that soon begins to affect his personal relationships.
Mirică’s Boss is a dark yet stylistically precise thriller with sharply drawn characters – a gripping example of Romanian neo-noir cinema.
Oskar Halecki Lecture (GWZO Annual Lecture)
Tuesday, 31. March 2026, 5 p.m. GWZO, Reichsstraße 4–6, 4th floor
»Disentangling« – Unequal Romanias: Modernity at the Intersection of Coloniality and Interimperiality, Professor Manuela Boatcă, Freiburg. (Lecture in German)
According to its own self-definition, the modern Romanian state, founded in 1859, is a continuation of the Latin-speaking Romanian territories of the Roman Empire. Within Austria-Hungary, the Romanian national narrative in Transylvania likewise adopted the classicist, Occidentalist longue durée of Roman imperialism, reaffirming its kinship with the cradle of the European Romance languages. Similar to »New Romania«, as Latin America was once known, this Romania never fully entered the Western club of European Latinism, which had become increasingly reserved for Western Christianity. Manuela Boatcă mobilises this historical and linguistic nexus to illuminate the competition between colonialism and interimperialism in contemporary Romania, focusing on transimperial negotiations in a world system increasingly dominated by Western European colonial powers.
