Conference “Re-/Visions of history in right-wing populism and the far right” at Heinrich Böll Foundation
The international annual conference of the Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past” addresses the question of how right-wing populist and extreme right-wing parties and actors attempt to challenge socially established and research-based understandings of history and reinterpret the past according to their own ideas.
PROGRAM
Monday, 8 September 2025
13:30 – 14:15
Greetings and introduction
Clara Frysztacka (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung)
Bettina Böhm (Leibniz Association)
Martin Sabrow (Speaker of the Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past”)
Achim Saupe (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam)
14:15 – 16:00
Panel 1: Right-wing memory politics: Approaches and ideological contexts
Moderation: Achim Saupe (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam)
Paula Diehl (Kiel University)
The Complexity of Populism
Berber Bevernage (Ghent University) / Walderez Ramalho (Santa Catarina State University)
Why do right-wing populists presence the past?
Gideon Botsch (Moses Mendelssohn Center Potsdam)
“Fictional-historical counter narratives”: Holocaust and Second World War in right-wing historiography and memory
16:30 – 18:00
Panel 2: Global Perspectives
Moderation: Sabine Mannitz (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Kent State University)
Trump, National Memory, and the Fascism Question
Sirupa Roy (University of Göttingen)
The New Civilizational Project and the Mainstreaming of the Political Right in India
David M. Malitz (German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo)
Pushing Alternative Pasts, Losing the Future? Historical Narratives of Japanese Right-Wing Populist Parties
19:00-21:00
Public evening event (in German, simultaneous translation into English)
Rechte Geschichtsmythen. Eine Herausforderung für Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Politik
(Right-wing historical myths. A challenge for society, academia and politics)
Greetings: Jan Philipp Albrecht (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung)
Moderation: Christine Watty (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)
Input-Keynote: Volker Weiß (Hamburg)
Geschichtsrevisionismus heute
(Historical Revisionism today)
Panel discussion
Frank Bösch (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam)
Constanze Itzel (House of European History Brussels)
Katja Meier (Member of the Saxon State Parliament and former Saxon State Minister for Justice, Democracy, Europe, and Equality, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)
Volker Weiß (Hamburg)
Tuesday, 9 September 2025
09:00 – 10:30
Panel 3: Right-wing inventions of traditions
Moderation: Arnold Bartetzky (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
Klaus Oschema (German Historical Institute Paris)
Brave knights, pure maidens and devote Christians? Conveying right-wing political agendas through distorted images of the (European) Middle Ages
Georg Schuppener (Jan Evangelista Purkyně University Ústí nad Labem)
Misuse and appropriation of Nordic-Germanic mythology in German right-wing extremism – Roots and further development
Adamantios Skordos (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
Central topoi of right-wing populist politics of history in contemporary Greece
Aleksandr Rusanov (Bielefeld University)
Global and national medievalism in contemporary Russian right-wing discourses
11.30 – 12.30
_Panel 4: Right-wing histories after 1945 and the Holocaust:
Moderation: n.n.
Marie Müller-Zetzsche (Moses Mendelssohn Center / Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam)
Historical references to Europe in right-wing extremist discourses in the post-colonial era
Andrea Martini (Paris 8 University / Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Age, Verona)
“Au nom des silencieux” (On behalf of Silent Ones): The Construction of the Post-1945 Far Right
Narrative Canon and the Reaction of Democracies
14.00 – 15.30
Panel 5: Contemporary revisionisms in right-wing populism
Moderation: Julana Bredtmann (Topography of Terror, tbc)
Stefan Couperus (University of Groningen)
Exploiting the Past: How politico-cultural opportunity structures enable far-right historical revisionism in the Netherlands
Robert Heinze (German Historical Institute Paris)
Colonial revisionism – a ‘balanced approach’?
Katarina Ristic (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
European far right and the de-recognition of Kosovo: Revisionism against the liberal order
16:00 – 18:00
Postgraduate seminar – “Meet the authors” (in German)
Moderation: Clara Frysztacka, Achim Saupe
With Frank Bösch, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Jakob Schergaut
Wednesday, 10 September 2025
09:00 – 10.45
Panel 6: Performances, Popular Culture and Media
Moderation: Ned Richardson-Little (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam)
Karin Reichenbach (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
The Suggestive Power of Sensory Experience – Neopagan History Popularisation in Poland and its Relation to Museums and Academia
Katrin Kremmler (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) / Tatyjana Szafonova (Charles University Prag)
Contemporary Pan-ideological Revivals: Turanism in Hungary and Pan-Slavism in Slovakia
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (German Historical Institute Warsaw)
Right-wing histories in Polish newspapers
11.15 – 12.45
Roundtable: How to react? Academic and democratic answers in public history
Moderation: Clara Frysztacka (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung)
Jakob Schergaut (Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial / Friedrich Schiller University Jena)
History Instead of Myths – Combatting Fake History Through Research
Michał Bilewicz, (University of Warsaw)
Using localized memory to confront antisemitism: Experiences from the School of Dialogue
Branimir Đurović (Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Belgrad)
Uncertain past – Through activism against denial
12.45 – 13.15
Final discussion