Pupils interview contemporary witnesses about GDR history in Rostock.
We would like to draw your attention to the school project"Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen" - a school project on GDR history in Rostock, which will take place on July 6-10 and September 7-10, 2026. This project is being planned by the Kempowski Archive Rostock together with the Literaturhaus Rostock and the "Weltenschreiber für M-V" project. It is aimed at pupils between the ages of 15 and 18 as part of German, history and politics lessons.
In the project, we are offering a collaboration with the successful author Jochen Schmidt, who has been dealing with his East German past, among other things, for years. Last year, he launched a project in Berlin, which is now to be continued in Rostock. The central approach of this project is to "ask questions" and thus make it clear to the other person how important their life experience is for the present. In the process, details are told whose literary potential is usually not even seen, but which are part of every life and especially in what is too often referred to with a derogatory undertone as "everyday life".
"What did the Intershop smell like?", "Have you ever skipped school?", "How did you experience June 17, 1953, August 13, 1961, November 9, 1989 or September 11, 2001?" - With these and other questions from a questionnaire, the students go in search of traces, collect memories of other people and compile them. We provide the questionnaire, information on the interview method and rooms in which the interviews can be conducted.
The project allows pupils to experience a direct confrontation with the history of the GDR in Rostock. By talking to the contemporary witnesses themselves and meeting them on a personal level, a special and lasting approach to the past is made possible. The pupils first interview family, friends and acquaintances, after which we enable them to talk to other people. It is particularly important to us in this project to collect, document and preserve the diversity of memories of living contemporary witnesses. The interviewees will report from their own experience of everyday life, school days, working life and repression during the GDR dictatorship. Our aim is to promote a deeper understanding of political systems, social structures and a democratic culture of remembrance. We will record and collect these memories. They will form the basis for a publication.
About the speaker
Jochen Schmidt (born 1970) wrote the novels "Müller haut uns raus", "Schneckenmühle", "Zuckersand" and "Ein Auftrag für Otto Kwant", among others. To mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he published "Drüben und drüben - zwei deutsche Kindheiten" together with David Wagner. Jochen Schmidt lives in Berlin.
Contact & registration
For more information about the project and to register, please contact us.
Kick-off event
On March 17, 2026, we invite all interested people to our introductory event. Here we would like to introduce the planned project and start an initial survey.
Time: 17.03.2026, 3-5 pm
Location: Literaturhaus Rostock in the Peter-Weiss-Haus
Participation free of charge
Please register at: kipro@literaturhaus-rostock.de
The project is funded by the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung M-V and the ALG project "Wortwächter - Geschichten von Zensur, Mut und Demokratie".