While many scholars have studied the Berlin Wall and the inner-German border during the Cold War, very few (including a group of scholars here in Greifswald) have examined life along East Germany’s Baltic Sea coast and how borderlanders experienced it. My book project considers how people affected, and were affected by, this liminal space, examining the interaction between the place and the people who occupied it. I investigate the experiences of people who lived, worked, vacationed, escaped, and/or died at East Germany’s “blue border,” as well as how that border has been remembered since 1989. I hope to interview many people who lived in the borderlands during the Cold War.
Hope M. Harrison is Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of three books on the Berlin Wall, including Ulbrichts Mauer: Wie die SED Moskaus Widerstand gegen den Mauerbau brach. In 2025, she was honored with the Bundesverdienstorden for her public engagement with postwar German history. Hope M. Harrison has appeared in many German documentary films on the Cold War and has published in academic journals and the media in Germany and the U.S. Hope Harrison is a Senior Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald for the 2025/26 academic year.
Moderation: Dr. Jenny Linek