Introduction
‘Overnight we have become Europeans. [. . .] Our country has broken a 28-year-old shackle’ (Unauf, 1990a). This contemporary commentary shows how the first independent student magazine Unaufgefordert (translation: unrequested, short: Unauf) at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, HU) interpreted the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 as the beginning of a process of Europeanisation. A group of students founded the journal in the midst of the so-called Peaceful Revolution in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Mass demonstrations and non-violent initiatives by a growing civil rights movement ushered in a new era for Berlin’s oldest university (founded in 1810), shaped by internal reformation, external intervention, and the end of the Cold War period. Within a few crucial ‘years of destiny’ (Raiser, 1998), the university changed from a flagship of the socialist education system in the GDR dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) to a self-governing university modelled on the system of higher education in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; Jarausch, 2012a: 685).
In the long term, this transformation enabled the HU’s integration into the framework and structures of the European Communities (EC), embedded in a broader (Western) European higher education system. However, for the HU’s leadership and student body alike, this path to a new European future was uncertain, controversial and contested. The HU was shaped by its socialist past during these turbulent months and years of transformation, and the process of Europeanisation of the university intertwined with an older tradition of (socialist) internationalism within the Eastern Bloc. Yet, as this article argues, the university, with a long historical tradition in Prussia, the German Empire, and the GDR, reinvented itself as an interface between Western and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s.
Numerous political science and historical studies have dealt with the eventful history of the HU during the so-called Wende period and its aftermath from the autumn of 1989 to the mid-1990s (Groen, 2013; Jarausch, 2012b; Kowalczuk, 2019: 170–192; Mayntz, 1994; Pasternack, 1999; Vollrath, 2008). Taken together, these studies have demonstrated how the collapse of the SED regime enabled a process of self-reformation and self-democratisation at the HU, epitomised in a new independent student council, a self-elected rector and new university statutes adopted in the summer of 1990. The content of research and teaching was evaluated and redefined, old departments such as Marxism-Leninism were abolished, and new ones, such as an Institute for Political Sciences, created. After the reunification in October 1990, the entire university staff was reviewed under the pressure of the Senate of Berlin (the executive body of the reunited city) and due to severe financial restrictions, resulting in a significant reduction in personnel. By the end of the 1990s, four-fifths of the academic staff of the HU had been replaced. This conflictual reorganisation of the HU between ‘liquidation’ and ‘self-reformation’ served for political observers and historians alike as an important example of ‘pains of reunification’ (Küpper, 1993). These conflicts were typical for the so-called Hochschulumbau Ost, meaning the transformation and integration of former GDR institutions of higher education into the federal system of the FGR in the 1990s (Blecher and John, 2021). Due to the emphasis on internal reform processes and the specific German-German context of unification, the international orientation of the HU has not been at the centre of the attention of existing scholarship. The following article addresses this research lacuna by exploring continuities and discontinuities of HU’s international relations in the GDR, during the period of reunification, and in reunified Germany, with an emphasis on European relations.
To explore this international dimension, the following investigation combines the historiography of HU’s transformation in the context of German reunification (as outlined above) with recent literature on the history of European higher education in the late 20th century (Haikola and Östling, 2025). In particular, the article builds on important conceptual and methodological interventions made by historical European studies, using the analytical concept of Europeanisation (Greiner et al., 2022; Hirschhausen and Patel, 2010) to revisit the HU in the Wende period. The German university, with its very particular history during the end of the Cold War, is thus treated as one example of how the process of European integration shaped, and how European universities themselves shaped the Europeanisation of universities in the late 20th century, as outlined in more detail in the introduction of this special issue (Östling et al., this issue 2026).
With regard to this expanding field of study of Europeanisation, the article draws conceptionally and methodologically on three elements, in particular. First, the interplay between Europe Imagined, meaning ideas and visions of Europe as well as discursive dimensions of Europeanisation, and Europe Constructed, referring to social, political and economic connections and actions of exchange, entanglement and integration between European nations (Hirschhausen and Patel, 2010). This interplay comes to the fore when analysing ideas and actions of ‘actors of Europeanisation’ at the HU, ranging from the university leadership and mid-level administrators to student journals and associations. Second, this article is inspired by Florian Greiner’s concept of ‘vécueral Europeanization’, which ‘concentrates firmly on the life environments of contemporaries as well as their perceptions and even their experiences’ of Europe and Europeanness in the sense of an everyday history of Europeanisation ‘from below’ (Greiner, 2022: 79). Thus, the analysis not only addresses ideas and discourses of Europe as propagated by the HU leadership and the students, but also how everyday experiences of Europe shaped these visions (Brand et al., 2024). Third, the final section of this paper analyses the interplay between ‘bottom-up’ initiatives of Europeanisation at the university level and ‘top-down’ initiatives, namely policies enacted by the EC such as the Erasmus programme (Östling et al., 2025/2026).
The main research objective is to provide an initial account of the evolution of Europeanisation at the HU from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. This will be supplemented by further queries. Which ideas of Europe were promoted at the HU? How did the university position itself in relation to processes of European integration when considering 1989/1990 as a crucial period of transition and change?
To address these questions, the article examines two sets of publications that form the empirical basis of this study. First, a systematic analysis of the weekly newspaper Humboldt Universität in the years 1988–1992 allows for a close examination of the discourse and ‘official’ opinions of the HU leadership, including the rector, the prorectors, and the heads of individual departments. Humboldt Universität was founded on 14 November 1957 as the ‘Organ of the SED-Kreisleitung’, meaning the SED’s sectional directorate that controlled the HU during the GDR era. Therefor, the newspaper not only informed about the latest events and developments at the university. Its underlying aim was to familiarise faculty, staff and students with the political and ideological tasks of the SED. Many articles were written by HU professors and researchers with a clear socialist stance. During the Peaceful Revolution, however, Humboldt Universität gained independence from the SED (as the university in general) and transformed into ‘a company newspaper whose fundamental orientation is to make it an organ for the renewal of socialism at the university’ (Humboldt Universität, 1989a), linked to the self-democratisation process of the HU. In 1990, the newspaper was renamed Humboldt Universität. Die Zeitung der Berliner alma mater and continued to be published weekly until the academic year 1992/1993, when it became a monthly magazine with the shortened name Humboldt. During this period, the publication evolved into a typical university-run journal, independent of party politics and increasingly included student perspectives as well.
The second main source for this article is the student magazine Unaufgefordert that was established in October 1989 as a counterweight to the official Humboldt Universität, symbolising the pluralisation of voices at the university during the Peaceful Revolution. This article builds on a systematic analysis of Unauf from the first issue published on 17 November 1989 until December 1992, to trace Europeanisation processes among HU students. Unauf was founded by a group of students who were critical of the SED, and they initially collaborated with and received funding from the Independent Student Council (Unabhängiger Studentenrat) which was formed in November 1989 and replaced the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend; FDJ) as representative organ of the students. The first numbers had to be printed at the Technical University (Technische Universität, TU) in West Berlin and smuggled into East Berlin illegally, but from the third number on, Unauf operated on the basis of an official printing authorisation (Humboldt hören, 2020). Later on, Unauf became more independent of the student council, presenting itself as a ‘platform for discussion about essential issues that affect us as students, such as university reform, dormitory misery, canteen food, material conditions, East-West exchange’ (Unauf, 1989b). Some articles in the journal also discussed ‘art, anarchy, travel tips, handicraft sheets, sex, philosophy, knitting patterns’ (Unauf, 1989c). These articles covered a wide range of genres, from fact-based reports to provocative, satirical and sometimes very personal opinion pieces by individual students. Unauf often provided interviews with politicians, researchers and members of the HU leadership such as the former rector Heinrich Fink (whose policies were often supported by the journal). According to Fink, Unauf was the only historical source that reported ‘wittily and humorously, committedly and critically, on the role of students in the transformation of the university’ (Fink, 2013: 13).
The following analysis is arranged chronologically, divided into three sections and a conclusion. The first part discusses the university within the system of higher education of the GDR with a particular emphasis on socialist internationalism within the Eastern (European) Bloc in the late 1980s. The second section zooms in on the crucial months between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the German reunification in October 1990, when alternative forms of ‘democratic socialism’ seemed possible, outlining tender signs of Europeanisation in the midst of the university’s self-reformation. The third part examines the years 1990–1992 when Europeanisation became a central facet of the HU’s transformation.
Socialist internationalism in Eastern Europe, 1980s–1989
The first institution of higher education in Berlin was initiated by the liberal philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt and established by the Prussian king Frederick William III in 1809, originally named the University of Berlin and later the Friedrich Wilhelm University (Östling, 2018). After the Second World War, teaching resumed in the Soviet-controlled part of East Berlin in 1946, accompanied by a process of denazification. At the same time, non-communist ideas and academic freedom were suppressed, and oppositional students were arrested (Hansen, 2012). In response, former students and scholars of the Friedrich Wilhem University established the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin, FU) in West Berlin in 1948, leading to a highly competitive relationship between the two universities throughout the Cold War period. The university in East Berlin was renamed Humboldt University in 1949 in honour of the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The new communist leaders regarded the humanism of the Humboldt brothers as a preliminary stage for the construction of socialism in a deterministic understanding of history (Jarausch, 2012a: 566).
Between 1949 and 1989, the HU developed into the largest higher education institution in the GDR, with around 18,000 students in departments of various subjects (so-called Sektionen) in humanities, law, natural sciences, technology, including the renowned Charité in the field of medicine (Tenorth, 2010). The university leadership, including a rector and a scientific council, operated next to the aforementioned SED district leadership. The university was thus directly controlled by the SED regime and served as a training ground for the socialist elite and their integration into the GDR’s military structures (Jordan, 2001). This close relationship between the socialist state and the university strongly influenced the HU’s specific form of education and science, as well as its international relations.
Especially since the third university reform in 1968, the HU was shaped by an ambivalent coexistence of socialist ideologisation and scientific modernisation. This socialist form of science was a product of the SED’s political objectives for the university as an institution, and the modernisation demands on the GDR’s higher education system resulting from the increasing importance of science next to industry in the so-called post-industrial society since the 1960s (Schulz, 2010: 9–11). The university’s self-conception as a socialist institution was made evident, for instance, by the incorporation of a mandatory course on Marxism-Leninism for all students. However, as Konrad Jarausch puts it, ‘for ideological and institutional reasons, values such as pluralism, interdisciplinarity and internationality were not sufficiently practised in the university under socialism to produce lasting excellence in research’ (Jarausch, 2012b: 16).
International relations played a key role in the HU’s self-image as a leading university of East Germany, firmly embedded in the socialist Eastern Bloc. According to Eckart Mehls, the long-standing head of international affairs at the HU, the university was ‘making a significant contribution to the foreign policy of the GDR, which is based on proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialist solidarity. [. . .] The international scientific relations of the Humboldt University are primarily aimed at strengthening the community of socialist states’ (Mehls, 1983: 7–8). The Soviet Union propagated such forms of socialist cooperation in the Eastern Bloc and had its own policy for East German Universities, which has been interpreted as a failed form of cultural imperialism (Tsvetkova, 2013). Accordingly, the HU developed since 1946 bilateral research and exchange relationships and partnership agreements with various universities in allied communist Eastern European countries. The first friendship treaties were signed with the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU, 1958), the Charles University of Prag (1958) and the University of Warsaw (1960; Mehls, 1983: 13–32). Beyond Eastern Europe, the HU developed contacts with universities in Indonesia, India, Burma, Egypt and Ghana and signed treaties of friendship with socialist institutions of higher education in Havana (1962), Pyongyang (1978), Ulaanbaatar (1978) and Hanoi (1979; Mehls, 1983: 49–67). Hence, the HU fostered a form of global socialist internationalism, mostly based on bilateral partnerships with ideological ‘brother universities’. In the early 1980s, more than two-thirds of the HU’s international relations concerned socialist countries.
Next to bilateral relations, this also led at times to multilateral forms of cooperation between socialist universities, such as a comparative encyclopaedia in the field of pedagogy for the disadvantaged directed by the HU together with scientists from Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, CSSR, USSR and Hungary (Wissenschaftliche Zeitung der Humboldt Universität, 1989). In March 1989, the HU also hosted the ‘III. Seminar of Party Secretaries from the Universities of the Capital Cities of Socialist Countries’, in which delegations from the universities of Moscow, Bratislava, Hanoi, Budapest, Praha, Sofia and Warsaw met for a couple of days to circulate knowledge regarding socialist higher education and to coordinate a ‘more effective cooperation’ in the future (Humboldt Universität, 1989b; Neues Deutschland, 1989).
The Humboldt University newspaper frequently referred to the HU’s ‘extensive international relations’ within the Eastern Bloc, and in particular to its close cooperation with the MSU, arguing that ‘a whole series of cutting-edge scientific achievements have come about as a result of cooperation with comrades in Moscow’ (Humboldt Universität, 1988a). The HU strengthened these socialist ties in the late 1980s. At the same time, however, various HU scholars criticised the liberalisation of Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary in the course 1989, ultimately revealing the limits of socialist transnational solidarity (Humboldt-Universität, 1989e). Even the close GDR-Soviet relationship was subject to some tensions at the HU due to the liberal perestroika and glasnost policy reform of the Gorbachev government from 1985 onwards, which stood in contrast to the dogmatic communist course of the Honecker government. ‘Sometimes one has to scratch one’s head’, one article complained in December 1988 about the new course of the USSR, but the HU nevertheless continued to advocate close cooperation with the Moscow University, including regular working visits to the Soviet capital (Humboldt Universität, 1988b). Quite symbolically, amid the Peaceful Revolution in the GRD in October 1989, a HU delegation travelled to Moscow to participate in a joint ‘ideology seminar (Humboldt Universität, 1989c)’.
What was the official HU policy towards non-socialist universities in Europe until 1989? In the early postwar period, the formation of blocs during the Cold War thwarted HU’s international relations towards Western Europe. For instance, an early form of collaboration with the Sorbonne University in Paris did not materialise in the 1950s because a visit by the French rector was prevented by visa difficulties (Mehls, 1983: 17). As a first step towards cooperation with non-socialist universities, the HU joined the International Association of Universities, a non-governmental organisation working in the field of global higher education and affiliated to UNESCO, in 1959. The HU entered a new phase of internationalism beyond the Iron Curtain in the 1970s in accordance with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) and the Helsinki summit in 1975, which reduced political and military tensions between Eastern and Western Europe while advancing human rights within the socialist Bloc. In consequence, the HU developed in the 1980s bilateral trans-bloc contacts with universities, among others, in France, Great Britain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands and Finland (which might be interpreted as an early form of Europe Constructed) but also in Japan and the United States. In 1988, the HU also belonged to the signatories of the Magna Charta Universitatum in Bologna, a document that celebrates university traditions and encourages cooperation among European universities. Thus, there were important links between the HU and non-socialist universities, including numerous institutions in Western Europe, in the late 1980s, albeit to a limited degree.
As a result of these numerous forms of cooperation abroad with both socialist and non-socialist universities and research institutions in the 1970s and 1980s, many HU scholars gained increasing international recognition, reflected in their participation in international congresses and scientific organisations. Such trips abroad as well as regular visits from foreign researchers were organised by the Directorate of International Relations (Direktorat für internationale Beziehungen, DIB) headed by the aforementioned Eckart Mehls, who had up to 20 associates in the 1980s (Kowalczuk, 2012: 543–544). The DIB was responsible for maintaining international contacts and coordinating trips abroad by so-called Reisekader, meaning East German citizens that were allowed to travel into non-socialist countries as representatives of the GDR (Niederhut, 2007: 231–238).
How were the students affected by the HU’s international relations in the late 1980s? Numerous foreign students studied at the HU due to scholarships and agreements with the GDR. In 1985, among approximately 19,000 students, around 800 were from abroad, coming not only from Eastern Europe, but also from Africa, Asia and Latin America (Jarausch, 2012a: 561). East German HU students were able to travel to the Eastern Bloc, mostly in the form of short-term stays facilitated by the university. Humboldt Universität frequently reported on such student exchange experiences and on work trips abroad, which were propagandistically linked to the greater socialist cause. One example was a student work camp organised by the HU’s FDJ group in the summer of 1989, with placements in both Berlin and Krivoy Rog in the Ukraine (Humboldt Universität, 1989f). The same year, HU students went for a work assignment to Warsaw, where they were entrusted with the maintenance of the Soviet War Memorial for Soviet soldiers Humboldt Universität (1989g).
In rare cases, students voiced criticism of work trips in the HU newspaper, such as one student who described hard labour in a car factory in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, as ‘monotonous, sometimes physically demanding and dirty’. On the other hand, the student underlined the hospitality of the people, the ‘beautiful landscape’ and ‘unforgettable memories’ (Humboldt Universität, 1989h). Such reports served to foster HU’s reputation as part and parcel of a broader world of socialist internationalism. At the same time, the newspaper failed to mention that student mobility in the GDR was severely restricted by the Iron Curtain, which generally prevented students from travelling to Western Europe until the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
One can speak of a gradual discursive opening of the HU towards Western Europe and the EC in the late 1980s, linked to the keywords of détente, peaceful coexistence and a ‘Common European Home’. The latter term was coined by the leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to promote a gradual strategic and political rapprochement between Western and Eastern Europe based on common European interests and values (Rey, 2004). HU scholars from the section Marxism-Leninism took up the concept of the ‘Common European Home’ to advocate for closer cooperation between the Western European EC and the Eastern European Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) and to promote a dialogue between social democrats and communists beyond the Iron Curtain as a contribution to peaceful coexistence in Europe (Humboldt-Universität, 1989d). Nevertheless, concrete visions about Europe or ideas that fostered a sense of European identity (Europe Imagined) did not play an important role for the Humboldt University throughout the GDR period, especially in comparison to socialist internationalism.
Europeanisation amid the Peaceful Revolution, 1989–1990
On 3 May 1990, the theology professor Heinrich Fink gave his inaugural speech as HU’s newly elected rector in the Auditorium Maximum at Unter den Linden. His address illustrated how the university struggled to define its new role as the leading institution of higher education in the GDR within a crumbling SED system. Fink defended the socialist heritage of the HU and stressed the East German tradition of antifascism while also criticising the former SED government. Overall, he envisioned ‘the university’s arduous journey towards the commonality of Berlin’s universities’ and ‘towards the “common home of Europe”’, which was a reference to Gorbachev’s concept regarding European peaceful coexistence (Fink, 2021: 109–110). During his period as rector until 1992, Fink advocated an internal reform of the HU ‘under its own and with the existing people’ (Fink, 2013: 16). He did not perceive this renewal as a radical change towards the university system of the FRG but as an autonomous, increasingly European renewal of a continued form of socialist science (Jarausch, 2012a: 599–603). Wolfgang Hartwig, a West German historian who became a HU professor in 1991, characterises Fink thus as a ‘reform communist’ (Hardtwig, 2024: 223).
Other forces pushed for a more radical transformation of the university through the abolition of socialist legacies and the speedy adaptation to a West German model of higher education. After Fink’s speech at his investiture day in May 1990, Hans Joachim Meyer took the word, a former professor of applied linguistics at the HU. As member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, the so-called East-CDU), Meyer had been appointed Minister of Education and Science in the only freely elected government of the GDR only weeks earlier. In stark contrast to Fink, Meyer argued that the university should overcome the ‘narrow-minded provincialism’ of formers days, and, instead of defending a ‘better GDR’, open itself up to Berlin, Germany, Europe and the world (Humboldt Universität, 1990a). These different emphases by Fink and Meyer illustrate how the HU was torn between a socialist past and a European future in the turbulent months between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.
Neither the student body nor the academic elite at the HU played a dominant role during the so-called Peaceful Revolution in the GDR in the second half of 1989, when a growing minority of oppositional citizens fuelled the collapse of the SED regime (Jarausch, 2012a: 585–590; Vollrath, 2008: 34–37). As the SED government, the HU leadership still celebrated the 40th anniversary of the GDR in October 1989 and emphasised the positive record of East Germany. The democratic citizen movement nevertheless had a direct impact on the university, including large student protests in October 1989 that called for democratisation, more academic freedom and an end of censorship. Due to the rapid collapse of the SED regime and the self-dissolution of its political organisations and structures, the official academic bodies and decision-makers of the HU such as the Academic Senate, section leaders and the rector, increasingly gained independence and took responsibility in the following months. A first measure was the immediate elimination of the mandatory Marxist-Leninist ground course during the winter term 1989/1990. Drawing inspiration from the general civil rights movement in the GDR, a Round Table was established at the HU in January 1990 to facilitate a self-reform of the university with the objective of unifying through the means of dialogue diverse interests and groups (Vollrath, 2008: 37–47). A first climax of this process of self-democratisation was the creation of the electoral council, a new body consisting of professors, associates and students, which elected Heinrich Fink as a new rector in April 1990.
In this period of self-democratisation, the theme of European integration became more and more prominent in the public discourse of the HU. From early 1990 on, the HU newspaper expressed a form of discursive Europeanisation. For instance, after the SPD politician Egon Bahr, once the chief advisor of the former Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, held a lecture about ‘German Unity and European Integration’ at the HU on 15 March 1990, the Humboldt Universität titled: ‘So the motto is – think European!’ (Humboldt Universität, 1990b). This new European discourse became particular evident after the first free East German general election on 18 March 1990. The new GDR government headed by the former HU student Lothar de Maizière pushed for a rapid German reunification within a unified Europe in cooperation with the Helmut Kohl government in the FGR.
After the elections, the newly established Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies initiated a ‘Europe seminar series’ in the spring of 1990 at the HU, which brought together representatives from national and international research institutions ‘to find interdisciplinary answers and conceptual solutions for a new European peace order in the aftermath of the East-West conflict’ (Humboldt Universität, 1990c). Particularly invested in European questions was Karl Heinz Domdey, a Professor of World Economics at the HU. After the collapse of the SED regime, he established a new Institute for World, European and Overseas Economics at the HU and organised an international conference in June 1990, which emphasised the common European market as a model for the future (Wissenschaftliche Zeitung der Humboldt Universität, 1990). This new orientation towards Europe was not a complete rupture from the past but built in some cases on structures and international contacts established in the 1980s. One example was a scientific conference in July 1990 called ‘Quo vadis, Germania?’, which the HU organised together with the Complutense University of Madrid that had been its partner university in Spain since 1983 (Fink, 2013: 27–30).
Among the highly politicised students, as represented by the new voice Unauf, Europe still received relatively little attention compared to more pressing issues such as the ongoing internal reform and democratisation of the HU, the discussion of new university statutes, student protests against impending social cuts, and the reappraisal of activities of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) at the HU. Next to these internal questions, Unauf frequently discussed the approaching German reunification, and many articles voiced concerns in this regard. In its first numbers, Unauf emphasised the possibility of the GDR to develop into a new form of ‘democratic socialism’ from which even the FRG could learn, while voicing understanding for British, French and US-American fears about a too rapid German unification (Unauf, 1989a, 1989d). In a play on words in reference to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, one article was even named ‘Kohloniales’ (Unauf, 1990a). This alluded to notions of an imminent colonisation of East Germany, in which West German elites would subjugate a naive East German population under the auspices of triumphant capitalism – a dominant narrative among a leftist minority of former GDR citizens in the years to come (Dümcke and Vilmar, 1995).
This criticism of the German reunification was not synonymous with a lack of interest in international issues and solidarity with students from abroad. As one article denounced: ‘In the midst of Germany’s hype [Deutschlandtummel], the election campaign and Eurocentrism, has anyone thought about the fact that three quarters of the world’s population live in misery?’ (Unauf, 1990b). One concrete fear was that the planned monetary union between GDR and FGR in the summer of 1990 would have a severe negative effect on the scholarships of foreign students at the HU, such as from Palestine and Ethiopia. Unauf complained about the ‘current nationalist self-centredness’ in Germany and promoted a demonstration organised by HU students in April 1990 in support of foreign students and human rights as a sign of international student solidarity (Unauf, 1990c). Thus, in the period until October 1990, critical attitudes towards German reunification and Eurocentrism clearly overshadowed ideas of Europeanisation in the student magazine.
Nonetheless, the fall of the Berlin Wall enabled new possibilities among the HU student body for international connections, especially with Western Europe. In March 1990, a group of HU students at the Department of Economic Science established a local branch of AIESEC (originally a French acronym for Association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales). This was one of the largest student organisations in the world that provides to this day business development internships and worldwide exchanges among young people (Humboldt Universität, 1990d; Unauf, 1992a). Other students used the new freedom of movement to cross the Iron Curtain for the very first time to meet with fellow students in Western Europe. One example was a conference of student representatives in Europe, which was held in May 1990 and proposed a new ‘European Student Charter’. As a HU delegate reported, ‘the conference was an important step towards achieving an understanding of the problems faced by students in the various countries and, not least, establishing a number of important contacts’ (Unauf, 1990d).
In May 1990, four HU students joined together with sixty students from eleven countries at the 4th Congress of the European Federation of Psychology Students’ Associations (EFPSA) in Lyon (Unauf, 1990e). EPPSA had been founded in Lisboa in 1987 to bring psychology students together to compare and improve the educational situation at European universities and to promote studies abroad. For one of the HU students, Matthias Kolbe, the congress marked a watershed in his self-understanding as European, as he explained in Unauf:
It was this first impression of the efforts to reach an understanding in Europe that made me feel shocked by the Germans on my return to Berlin; how much the people here disregard their European neighbours over their ‘all-German needs’ [gesamtdeutsche Bedürfnisse].. [. . .] In contrast, the European idea was the unifying idea on our trip. For us, it was a start to turning Europe into a reality in our life (Unauf, 1990e).
For many HU students, and for the GDR population in general, the period after the collapse of the SED regime was a time of ‘a thousand awakenings’ (Morina, 2023), in which they discussed and envisioned new utopias of democracy, social cohesion and international order due to the imminent end of the Cold War era. Shaped by this Zeitgeist, some HU students planned their own ‘European student conference’ in June 1990 called UniTopia to discuss on a European scale topics such as alternative energy, Stalinism, anarchism, ecovillages, occultism and the ‘third world’ (Unauf, 1990f, 1990g). As the organisers explained in the HU newspaper, ‘since we didn’t want to stew in German-German juice, we asked the major European universities to participate’. However, the hosts were disappointed that only twenty students from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark joined the conference, illustrating that these early forms of student Europeanisation were still limited (Humboldt Universität, 1990e). The same month, Unauf commenced an ‘Unauf-travel service’, advertising affordable accommodation in London, Dublin, Vienna, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Athens (Unauf, 1990h). The open borders in 1989/1990 thus facilitated a new student mobility and an early form of ‘vécueral Europeanisation’ from below among some HU students, although such individual experiences should not be generalised. This new international exchange beyond the Eastern Bloc would become better organised and formalised in the following years when the Humboldt University as part of a reunified Germany joined the EC.
An interface between Eastern and Western Europe, 1990–1992
On 23 November 1990, roughly two months after German reunification on 3 October 1990, rector Heinrich Fink gave a short speech on the occasion of the visit of the Education Committee of the European Parliament (EP) to the Humboldt University. The speech anticipated a couple of key themes in the Europeanisation discourse of the university in the months and years to come. First, Fink asked for European support to recognise the attempts and experiences in the HU’s self-democratisation process and demanded ‘fairness’ in the process of merging the two German systems of higher education, instead of allowing a ‘schematic copying’ of the FRG system. Second, as Humboldt Universität reported, ‘many academic contacts with Eastern European universities and colleges, promoted during the socialist era, are still part of the good tradition of our university. These contacts should not be broken off with the opening to Western Europe, they should be maintained and expanded’. Hence, Fink expressed the hope that the EC would promote the HU’s programme of being a ‘Gateway to Eastern Europe’. Third, the rector emphasised the university’s general willingness to promote cooperation with EC institutions. Fourth, Fink concluded from his own experience that East German students were ‘European-minded’ due to years of longing to travel to new European countries beyond the Iron Curtain: ‘Germany is not so important to them; many are prepared to study and work in Europe or overseas’ (Unauf, 1990f). The following section analyses these four interrelated key topics regarding the HU’s Europeanisation process in the years 1990–1992.
Europe as an ally of the HU in the struggle against the Berlin Senate
On 9 October 1990, the HU implemented new democratic statutes for the university. These statutes conflicted in part with the regulations of the law for higher education in (West) Berlin (Berliner Hochschulgesetz, BerlHG) that demanded a presidential constitution instead of a rectorship. In the federal system of the FGR, the states (Bundesländer) are politically responsible for education. After the reunification, which was, in legal terms, an accession of the former GDR to the existing FRG according to the German Unification Treaty and Article 23 of the West German Basic Law, the reunified state of Berlin and its government (Berlin Senate) became responsible for the institutions of higher education in former East Berlin, including the HU. At this point, the Berlin Senate and the HU became opponents regarding the course of the university’s future transformation, centring around counter-models of external intervention by the Senate and internal reformation by the HU (Küpper, 1993; Raiser, 1998).
This conflict was accompanied by a heated debate in the media and the public, in which the (former West Berlin) Senate was attacked as the agent of a Western colonial takeover, while the HU was attacked as a former GDR institution linked to old boy networks of incorrigible communists (Vollrath, 2008: 103–108). The conflict escalated when the Senate decided the partial ‘liquidation’ of the university on 18 December 1990. Liquidation meant the total dissolution of some departments, such as Theory of Science and Criminology (which had colluded with the Stasi), as well as the dissolution and reconstruction of other departments that had been involved in the propagation of SED ideology, such as Philosophy, Law and History. Liquidation included also an evaluation of all university associates, threatening the dismissal of those who had been ‘actively working for the objectives of the former SED regime’ (Vollrath, 2008: 70). Supported by mass demonstrations and student protests in January 1991, the HU leadership around rector Heinrich Fink judged the liquidation policy by the Senate to be an unlawful encroachment on the autonomy and self-administration of the university and filed a complaint.
Intriguingly, the HU involved international academic partners and European institutions in this struggle against the Berlin Senate, discursively linked to the idea that Europe represented democratic rights and defended the academic autonomy of universities. In February 1991, Humboldt Universität published the first international statements of solidarity with the HU, issued by the rector of the University of Athens and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Vienna (Humboldt Universität, 1991a). Three months later, HU’s Higher Education Policy Council (Hochschulpolitischer Rat, the successor of the aforementioned Round Table) organised a conference with numerous international academic partners in solidarity with the autonomy demands of the HU. The result was the creation of an ‘International Association for the Defence of Independence and Freedom in Teaching and Research at Colleges and Universities’. In its preamble, the Association argued that ‘the autonomy of the university is an inalienable guarantee of the right of academics to freedom of thought and expression’, a right that ‘should be enshrined in European constitutional law’, as for example in France. As a form of Europe Imagined, the members therefore envisaged that Europe, meaning ‘the common institutions and the Parliament’, would ensure that these fundamental rights were strictly respected in each country. The call to establish this organisation was signed by professors from Strasbourg, Paris, Madrid, Leuven, Amsterdam, Neuchatel, FU, HU and members of the European and German Parliament (Humboldt Universität, 1991b).
In September 1991, HU’s campaign against the measurements of the Berlin Senate received official support from the European Parliament. A resolution initiated by the Belgian EP member of the committee on legal and civil rights, Professor Lode van Outrive (who had also signed the above-mentioned preamble), criticised ‘the violation of freedom and independence in teaching and research’ at the HU by the Senate and announced an enquiry (Pasternack, 1999: 215). The EP resolution, however, was only a Pyrrhic victory for rector Fink, who, for many HU associates and students was ‘the symbol of the university’s will to self-assertion against a state administration and the (Western) public’ (Pasternack, 1999: 214). In the autumn of 1991, previous allegations that Fink had worked as the unofficial collaborator (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) ‘Heiner’ for the Stasi from 1969 to 1989 were substantiated, and the Senate immediately dismissed him. Fink denied the accusations and his dismissal sparked huge protests among the broader public in the former GDR, the university, Unauf and HU students, who organised strikes in November 1991 in support of Fink (Unauf, 1991a). The public debate about the ‘martyr of East Germany’ who fought against ‘Western colonisation’ represented in a nutshell the broader East-West conflict in the aftermath of German reunification (Jarausch, 2012a: 627–632).
During this conflict, the European level was once again called upon for support by the HU leadership. A ‘European delegation’ headed by the aforementioned EP member Lode van Outrive, Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Louvain, visited the HU in January 1992 to investigate the case and condemned Fink’s dismissal publicly. One of the delegates, the lawyer Eric Göthe from Stockholm, presented on that occasion an ‘appeal in defence of academic freedom in Germany’ signed by more than a hundred academics in Sweden, arguing that the FRG has ‘a special position in Europe when it comes to the future of democracy due to its economic and political strength. It is therefore worrying that academics in the former GDR are being intrusively questioned by ‘courts of honour’ and politically scrutinised by the German authorities’ (Humboldt Universität, 1992). In the aftermath of the visit, the delegation published a report which claimed that there was no evidence of Fink’s Stasi activity and that his dismissal as rector was a political decision by the responsible CDU senator Manfred Ehrhardt from West Germany. In his memoirs about the Wende period at the HU, Fink used the involvement of the international delegation to delegitimise and criticise the actions of the Senate and exonerate himself (Fink, 2013: 57–60).
In the end, the international campaign failed in keeping Heinrich Fink in office. The dismissal was according to historian Konrad Jarausch even a ‘liberating blow’ for the HU, which from then on collaborated more closely with the Berlin Senate (Jarausch, 2012a: 631). In the following, the university structure was adapted to the (West) Berlin model when the university adopted a presidential constitution in 1992, with Marlis Dürkop from West Germany as first female leader and president of the HU. Even though the HU’s cries for international help and solidarity during the Fink affair remained unsuccessful, the case illustrates a specific form of Europeanisation that linked a local institution to the European level in a struggle for autonomy from the state and national level. The HU referred to European values of democracy and academic self-determination and reached out to European partners and EC institutions to counter measures by state institutions in the FGR, which were regarded as undemocratic. This indicates how leading protagonists at the HU envisioned Europe, despite all the difficulties of German reunification, as a promise of a better future for Berlin’s oldest university.
The HU as a mediator between East and West
In fact, Europe and the EC became more and more present in the discourse of the university from 1990 onward. In the years 1990–1992, multiple academic events, lecture series and international conferences at the HU discussed the political, economic and geostrategic benefits of the EC, like one on ‘Europe in transition’ in the summer of 1991 (Humboldt Universität, 1991c). A lecture series by the Institute for World, European and Overseas Economics headed by the aforementioned Professor Domdey celebrated the EC as a successful model for the peaceful integration of Europe (Donat, 1992). The HU also continued its ‘Europe seminar’, in which EC experts and politicians such as the German Vice-President of the EC Commission, Martin Bangemann, elaborated positively on European integration and German reunification. This discoursive Europeanisation culminated in the hosting of the so-called ‘Europe Days’ at the HU in November 1992. For three days, roughly 400 representatives from culture, politics and science discussed the present and future of European integration including the imminent implementation of the Maastricht Treaty, leading to the foundation of the European Union (EU) in 1993.
The visit of Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission, to the university in June 1991 was a first climax of this new thematic and public presence of the EC at the HU. Rector Heinrich Fink used the occasion of Delors’ visit to emphasise in his opening speech the notion of the HU as an ‘intersection point from which the bridge between Eastern and Western Europe is possible’. Fink admitted that due to the formerly closed borders to the West, the ‘full power and intensity’ of HU’s international relations had been directed towards Eastern Europe so far. This would make the university of ‘exemplary importance for the real European community, which must not stop at the Oder’ (Humboldt Universität, 1991d).
Fink’s speech illustrates how the HU developed a self-image as a potential mediator between Eastern and Western Europe, presenting itself in speeches, publications, and descriptions of research projects as an active contributor to the geographical broadening of the process of European integration. This vision aligned with the objectives of the EC in the early 1990s, which promoted academic exchange between Western and Eastern European countries in preparation of a future enlargement of the EC to the East through programmes such as TEMPUS (Trans-European Mobility Programme for University Studies). This self-image also matched the interests of some of the long-standing partner universities of the HU in former satellite states of the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe, who pursued a policy of ‘Westernisation’ and Europeanisation when transforming and modernising their systems of higher education in the 1990s (Surman and Petushkova, 2022).
The vision of the HU as a mediator between West and East outlasted Fink’s rectorship and was repeated in different variations over the coming years. The semantic net included different terms such as ‘bridge’, ‘place of encounter’, ‘intersection point’, ‘gateway’, ‘interface’ or ‘hinge’ between Western and Eastern Europe. These concepts were linked to the HU’s geographical position close to the former Berlin Wall in the centre of the city in Mitte, the most central borough of Berlin. For instance, in his speech at the aforementioned ‘Europe Days’ in 1992, the Senator for European Affairs Peter Radunski stressed HU’s special location in the ‘heart of Berlin’, constituting thus an ‘interface between two cultures’ and a ‘mediator between East and West’ (Unauf, 1992b). However, the HU was not the sole representative as German mediator in Europe in the field of higher education. The Viadrina, the ‘European University’ in Frankfurt Oder on the border with Poland that was founded in 1991, also regarded itself as a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe.
Multiple HU protagonists ranging from professors to the Humboldt Universität newspaper contributed to the self-perception and political mission of the HU as a mediator between the formerly hostile Eastern and Western blocs. Accordingly, the university newspaper celebrated a summer class in 1991 organised by the department for German language for international students, including many from Eastern Europe, as a sign that ‘Berlin is becoming a hub for East-West relations’ (Humboldt Universität, 1991e). Another example were two scientists from HU’s Institute of Industrial Engineering, Siegfried Heinz and Wolfgang Rudolf, who organised a ‘European Symposium’ about agriculture, environmental protection and restructuring processes in June 1992. They emphasised ‘that the Humboldt University must be redefined in its function as an East-West hinge’, which, as ‘a university in the heart of Berlin, plays a major role in helping to solve the problems in the Eastern European countries’ in close collaboration with its traditional academic partners in the East (Humboldt Universität, 1991f). Similarly, Humboldt Universität insisted in a report about a conference of the European Law Students Association (ELSA) in Košice, Czechoslovakia, in 1991, that law students from the former Eastern Bloc needed support and encouragement from German academia and politics, so that ‘the young Europe does not become dominated by the West (Humboldt Universität, 1991g)’. Hence, at times, the HU even presented itself as protector of Eastern European interests, resonating with narratives and fears of a Western colonial takeover of the East.
These examples show that the discursive reinvention and new corporate branding of the HU as an interface between East and West had practical consequences for research programmes and forms of international cooperation, illustrating thus the direct link between Europe Imagined and Europe Constructed. A concrete example of this policy was HU’s trilateral collaboration in the field of foreign language education from 1993 onwards, connecting a new partner in the West, the Ealing College London, with an old partner in the East, the Comenius University Bratislava (Humboldt, 1993a). This cooperation was financed by the TEMPUS programme, which had been adopted in 1990 by the EC Council to encourage structured cooperation between higher education institutions in the EC and other, often Eastern European countries. This points to the interplay between top-down and bottom-up Europeanisation initiatives within the university landscape.
Cooperation with EC institutions and programmes
In fact, the rebranding of the HU as a mediator between East and West was linked to new forms of cooperation with EC institutions and programmes. In other words, the university entered a new phase of Europe Constructed. Since 1990, Brussels promoted a Europeanisation of the East German universities. For example, in the 1991/1992 academic year, the European Commission made additional funds available to enable universities in the former GDR ‘to be rapidly integrated into European higher education cooperation’ (Humboldt Universität, 1991h). The commission funded West German guest lecturers who were placed at East German universities to help establish contact with institutions in other Western European countries (even though the process of Europeanisation was also relatively new for West German universities). Furthermore, EC representatives approached students in all former GDR federal states during an ‘information trip’ in late 1991 to inform them about European mobility programmes. The objective was to bring the students to a ‘new, European dimension, because from 1993 the EC internal market will open up many other advantages under the aspect of “freedom of movement”, including improved career prospects – especially for academics with (study) experience abroad’ (Humboldt Universität, 1991h; Unauf, 1991b).
Increasingly, the HU adopted and adapted these ‘top-down’ Europeanisation efforts ‘from below’. The university appointed a new EC officer in the Department for Research Affairs, Sabine Schrade, who became a key actor as mid-level administrator in the Europeanisation process of the HU. With her help, the HU managed to set in motion 28 European exchanges in the summer term 1992 in various disciplines ranging from Agricultural Science to Food Technology (Unauf, 1992c). In the last quarter of 1992, numerous researchers from the HU (especially from the Charité) applied, for the first time successfully, for research funding from the European Commission. According to Schrade, this was special because ‘the road to Brussels is not without its hurdles’ (Humboldt, 1993b). By the end of 1992, overall 599 German students at the HU were sponsored within the framework of EC exchange programmes, internships, clinical traineeships, specialist excursions and participation in congresses (Humboldt, 1993c). This increasing collaboration with EC institutions was evident in Humboldt Universität. From January 1991, the newspaper informed on a regular basis about various EC programmes such as Erasmus, TEMPUS and LINGUA as well as other international scholarships for students and academics such as DAAD and Fullbright. Sabine Schrade explained in a recurring section called ‘EC research funding’ the newest EC laws, measurements, financing options and specific programmes like BRITE/EURAM II and ÉCLAIR, while coordinating their potential implementation at the HU.
The Erasmus programme itself was launched in 1991 with only seven HU students, and not without its difficulties. For the gradual implementation of the programme, the university relied on professors and lecturers from West Germany who were newly employed at the HU and who brought their former international contacts with them (Unauf, 1992c). This underlines the importance of personal contacts in the circulation of knowledge about, and the factual implementation of European mobility programmes. Due to this provisional character in the first years, Unauf complained about the lack of a coordination centre for Erasmus at every department to organise international courses and stays abroad (Unauf, 1992c).
The Europeanisation of the student body
The Europeanisation of the student body was, however, not restricted to the participation in mobility programmes such as Erasmus. In the period 1989–1990, various ‘European-minded’ HU student groups had established, joined or hosted pan-European initiatives, associations, and events, and this process of gradual Europeanisation ‘from below’ continued in the following years. One example was the European Students Conference (ESC), which medical students organised annually at the Charité since 1989. In May 1991, the ESC was able to invite students from 24 European countries, as well as Japan and the United States (Unauf, 1991c). The same year, a group of HU law students joined ELSA and participated in its international conference. ELSA had been founded in 1981 in Vienna to promote transnational thinking in Europe through personal contacts among law students, similar to AIESEC for business students (Humboldt Universität, 1991g).
Unauf contributed to this student Europeanisation by regularly informing about programmes such as Erasmus and other study exchange trips to European countries, such as one article about Spain called ‘Nada como el sol’ (Nothing like the sun, Unauf, 1991d). The student magazine also published together with the student newspaper Sorbonne(s) Nouvelles at the Sorbonne University in Paris a special ‘European number’ in October 1991 on ‘European unity in 1992’ (Unauf, 1991e). This illustrates how the journal overcame its formerly critical stance towards ‘Eurocentrism’, although Unauf continued to denounce xenophobia, racism and discrimination against non-European students at the HU.
However, student perspectives were not heard enough in the process of HU’s gradual Europeanisation according to Unauf. This was evident in the coverage of the aforementioned ‘Europe Days’ at the HU in November 1992. Although CDU senator Peter Radunski stressed in his speech that 18 to 30-year-olds would play a ‘key role in building the house of Europe’, the three organisers, HU, Berlin Senate and EC, somehow forgot to inform the students properly about the event, let alone invite student representatives as speakers (Unauf, 1992b). In reaction, Unauf complained that the communication between student body and EC was ‘still very thin’, stressing that student voices had been neglected so far in the process of Europeanisation:
The bull that once brought the girl Europe to Crete and thus our continent to its name, this bull now came to Humboldt University. [. . .] But it seems appropriate that when Europe is discussed at a university, more students should be involved in the discussion, so that, conversely, they can speak out in favour of their own idea of Europe. [. . .] The next time the bull comes, it’s time to take it by the horns (Unauf, 1992b).
Conclusion and aftermath, 1999s–2000
Processes of Europeanisation at the HU by the end of the Cold War era were multifaceted and shaped by the university’s complex international history. Until the autumn of 1989, the HU’s international relations had still been dominated by the GDR policy of socialist internationalism. Despite a subtle rapprochement with Western Europe in the context of détente and some trans-bloc academic exchanges, the Iron Curtain had prevented any meaningful form of Europeanisation, especially for the student body. This ideological bedrock was fundamentally challenged by the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, which enabled new discourses about Europe (Europe Imagined) as well as concrete actions of exchange, entanglement and integration both from above, emanating from the EC, and from below, emanating from the HU rector, professors, researchers, associates and students (Europe Constructed).
In the midst of the radical transformation of the HU in the period 1989–1992, and in particular during the Berlin-specific conflict between the HU and Berlin Senate, Europe constituted a promise of democracy, academic autonomy, international exchange and a better future. Moreover, this period also experienced an early form of ‘vécueral Europeanisation’ among some HU students, who developed a sense of Europeanness by joining existing pan-European initiatives (such as ELSA and AIESEC) or creating their own forms of European cooperation (such as the ‘European Number’ of Unauf). Although such findings should not be generalised, they do indicate how new mobility after the fall of the Berlin Wall facilitated a ‘Europeanist’ turn within the student body.
Notwithstanding, 1989/1990 was not a period of total rupture. Similar to the other cases of European universities analysed in this special issue, HU’s Europeanisation process built on older contacts and forms of internationalisation from previous decades, including trans-bloc contacts as illustrated by the cooperation with the Complutense University Madrid. Most importantly, the legacy of GDR socialist internationalism continued to shape the HU in the early 1990s, leading to the university’s double strategy of intertwining former Eastern European partnerships with a new (Western) European orientation. The heritage of socialism in terms of international relations was also evident statistically concerning the student body. In early 1993, most foreign students at the HU still came from (former) socialist states which had agreements with the GDR, notably Bulgaria, Vietnam, countries from the former Soviet Union, Poland, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and the CSFR (Humboldt, 1993d). Accordingly, the HU pushed the self-image and political mission of the university as a mediator between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. At times, the HU portrayed itself even as the defender of Eastern European interests in the context of the eastward expansion of the EC/EU project. HU’s emphasis on partners in the former Eastern Bloc outlines that processes of Europeanisation and ‘EUropeanisation’ (Irion and Volf, 2024), meaning the integration of institutions into the EC/EU system, were not identical but, in this case, co-dependent.
Significantly, HU’s Europeanisation was complementary to other, more global forms of internationalisation. In the years 1990–1992, the HU actively built new relationships with institutions of higher education outside Europe, including the US, Canada and Israel. At the same time, the reverberations of global socialist internationalism were still evident. By the beginning of 1993, the Humboldt University had cooperation agreements and exchange relationships with 61 partners (e.g. individual departments) at 43 universities in 21 countries, of which the majority came from Eastern Europe (19), followed by Western Europe (11), Northern and Latin America (9) and Asia (4) (Humboldt, 1993c). This interplay between Europeanisation and internationalisation could be examined in more detail by future research (see the conclusion of this special issue).
In the long-term, the university’s transformation during the Wende period created the preconditions for the firm integration of the HU into the European higher education community. The EC (or EU from 1993 onwards) became an increasingly important partner for the HU during the 1990s, especially under the auspices of the SOCRATES programme (from 1994 to 1999). This Europeanist course was reflected in the founding of several institutes such as the Northern European Institute, which was created on the eve of the Northern enlargement of the EU in 1994, and the Centre for British Studies in 1995. This gradual Europeanisation culminated in the HU’s adoption of the Bologna reform (1999), which attempted to establish a uniform university landscape throughout Europe, with the overarching objectives to promote mobility, employability and competition (Östling, 2018: 207–249). The integral part that Europe played in the Humboldt-University’s self-image at the beginning of the 21st century is illustrated by the ‘Humboldt-Speeches on Europe’ (Pernice, 2007; Ruffert, 2019): Since 2000, leading German and EU politicians such as Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz and Jeanne-Claude Juncker outline their political visions for Europe at HU’s main building in Unter den Linden 6 in the heart of Berlin, at the interface between East and West.
