Not part of the “Global South” and not Western enough, East Central Europe in general is absent from or marginal to the current debates on the legacies of Colonialism, on Global History or World History and on Postcolonialism. Likewise, East Central Europe is often marginal to the appropriate divisions of disciplines and categories in the academy or the museum. Nonetheless, concepts of ethnicity, race, and nationalism emerged in East Central Europe during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Anthropologists, Historians or Colonial Experts from the region – roughly today’s Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine – participated in the scholarship, economy, and politics of colonialism. In the context of the collapse of empires and the rise of authoritarian regimes in the first half and since the latter years of the of the twentieth century anthropology, history or medicine have been or reemerged as sites of struggle over identity, ideology and power.

Legacies of Colonialism in East Central Europe: Race, Scholarship, and Politics brings together historians, anthropologists, and museum professionals. It explores how theories and practices of race and colonialism have been formulated, understood and contested in East Central Europe, how they traveled across time and geography, and how they were translated into the local, East Central European contexts. If we are to better understand the relevance of race and colonialism in East Central Europe then and now, we need to ask questions not only about their historical but also present commitments. Therefore the WeberWorldCafé also hopes to encourage its participants to think about the cultural, social, and political legacies of race and colonialism in our times.

The event Legacies of Colonialism in East Central Europe will take place on October 15, 2019 from 2:30 to 6:00pm in the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg. The event is a cooperation between the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, the Forum Transregionale Studien, the Nordost- Institut at Hamburg University and the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt. It is curated by Olga Linkiewicz (Forum Transregionale Studien) and Katrin Steffen (Nordost-Institut/Institut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen in Nordosteuropa e.V.).