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Dr. Thomas Kunze (born February 23, 1963, in Leipzig) is a German contemporary historian and publicist.
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Dr. Thomas Kunze (born February 23, 1963, in Leipzig) is a German contemporary historian and publicist.
Thomas Kunze studied History, German studies and Pedagogy in Jena and Leipzig. He received his Ph.D. in 1991 and was awarded an Honorary Professorship from the Presidential Academy in Tashkent and State Al-Khorezmi University in Urgench, Uzbekistan. He is Honorary Ambassador for Eastern Europe, Russia and Middle Asia at the Swiss-German Institute for Theoretical and Artistic Reenactment (IIPM), Zürich/ Berlin. [1]
After the German Reunification, Kunze was director of the Foreigner's Registration Office, district Leipzig, until 1995. From 1995 to 2000 he was a visiting lecturer at Ovidius University in Constanţa, Romania. He wrote the first thorough biography on Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceaușescu, which was translated into Romanian. [2] His work is considered a must-read on the history of communism in Romania. [3]
In 2009, the process against Ceaușescu, which lead to his execution in 1989, was staged as a play by director Milo Rau. Thomas Kunze was consulted during the production. It was performed in Romania, Germany and Switzerland. In 2010 a film followed. [4]
In 2001 the biography "Head of State retired: The last years of Erich Honecker" [5] was published. It was dubbed by the Leipziger Volkszeitung as "the highlight of Modern German History".
Since 2002 Kunze has been working for the politically affiliated research foundation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (has ties to the Christian Democratic Union (Germany), of which he is a member). From 2002 to 2005 and from 2010 to 2019 he was director of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation in Central Asia, with offices in Tashkent.
From 2005 to 2007 Kunze headed the Moscow Office and from 2007 to 2010 ran the Europe/North America-Department of the KAS-Headquarters in Berlin. Since April 2019 he has run the Moscow Office of the foundation.
Kunze is an advocate of closer German-Russian relations and stands for the abolition of visa barriers between the EU and Russia. He supports cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church, coordination between Russia and Germany in the field of IT and digitalisation, education. He also upholds the idea "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok".[ clarification needed ] Kunze is a guest of the ZDF-History program and provides expertise in the production of films, television and radio programs.
Apart from travel reports and travel guides about Romania, Hungary and Turkey, he has published political analyses and articles, focusing on the development of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Russia.
In 2008, his book Russia’s Underworld. Time travel through secret bunkers and forgotten tunnels was published.
In 2010, the volume Ostalgia international, edited with Thomas Vogel and in 2011, also with Thomas Vogel, the book From the Soviet Union to Independence was released. [6]
Together with Wolfgang Maier, he edited the volume "Twenty-one. Dangers of our century – Possibilities of our century", in which different authors from all over the world dealt with the challenges of our time – security, energy, demographics and geopolitics.
Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.
Margot Honecker was an East German politician and influential member of the country's Communist government until 1989. From 1963 until 1989, she was Minister of National Education of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She was married to Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 and concurrently from 1976 to 1989 the country's head of state.
The Communist Party of Germany is a Marxist-Leninist communist party in Germany. It is one of several parties which claim the KPD name and/or legacy. It was founded in Berlin in 1990. The party is also commonly referred to by the name KPD-Ost to differentiate it from other parties with the same name, most prominently the historical Communist Party of Germany.
Vincenz Müller was a military officer and general who served in the Imperial German army, the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, and after the war in the National People's Army of the (East) German Democratic Republic, where he was also a politician. Müller eventually became a member of the East German parliament, the Volkskammer, and served as chief of staff of the National People's Army.
NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany from May 1945 to January 6, 1950. They were set up by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) and run by the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). On 8 August 1948, the camps were made subordinate to the Gulag. Because the camp inmates were permitted no contact with the outside world, the special camps were also known as silence camps.
Eckhard Jesse is a German political scientist. Born in Wurzen, Saxony, he held the chair for "political systems and political institutions" at the Technical University of Chemnitz from 1993 to 2014. Jesse is one of the best known German political scholars in the field of extremism and terrorism studies. He has also specialized in the study of German political parties and the German political system.
Aufbau Verlag is a German publisher. It was founded in Berlin in 1945 and became the biggest publisher in East Germany (GDR). During that time it specialised in socialist and Russian literature.
The trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were held on 25 December 1989 in Târgoviște, Romania. The trial was conducted by an Extraordinary Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of a newly formed group called the National Salvation Front. Its outcome was predetermined, and it resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for former Romanian President and General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu. The main charge was genocide. Romanian state television announced that Nicolae Ceaușescu had been responsible for the deaths of 60,000 people; the announcement did not make clear whether this was the number killed during the Romanian Revolution in Timișoara or throughout the 24 years of Ceaușescu's rule.
Milo Rau is a Swiss theatre director, journalist, playwright, essayist, and lecturer. In 2007 he founded a theatre and film production company, the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), and from 2018 until 2023 was the artistic director of the Belgian theatre group NTGent, in Ghent, transforming its direction. He is known for his political theatre.
Jens Gieseke is a German historian. His work is focused on the German Democratic Republic and its Ministry for State Security.
Hermann Weber was a German historian and political scientist. He has been described as "the man who knew everything about the German Democratic Republic".
Susanne Heim is a German political scientist and historian of National Socialism, the Holocaust and international refugee policy.
The Verlag Harri Deutsch with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as well as in Zürich and Thun, Switzerland, was a German publishing house founded in 1961 and closed in 2013.
Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften (DVW) was a scientific publishing house in the former German Democratic Republic.
The East German Republic Day Parade of 1989 was a parade on Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin on 7 October 1989 commemorating the 40th anniversary of the establishment of East Germany. This was the last East German Republic Day Parade and the last major East German political event with the regime falling mere weeks later. In Germany, this parade is remembered as the end of "the great period of military parades".
Sven Felix Kellerhoff is a German historian, journalist and author who specialises in the history of the Nazi era.
Peter Wicke is a German musicologist, who is particularly interested in popular music; he teaches as a university professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
The Gera Demands were a set of demands made by the East German leader Erich Honecker on 13 October 1980. Directed at the West German government, they called for far-reaching foreign policy concessions.
Verlag Enzyklopädie was an East-German publishing house located in Leipzig. It was founded on 1 November 1956 by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a VEB. In 1964, the publishing house was merged with the larger VEB Bibliographisches Institut (BI), with which it had previously cooperated already, but it retained its legal independence.
The Fachbuchverlag Leipzig was an East German publisher. It continues to exist as an imprint of the Munich publishing firm Carl Hanser Verlag.
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