School of History, UCC
Dr Bettina Blum, Department of History, University of Paderborn, Germany
Thursday 27 October 2022, 16:00 (4 PM)
The paper will be delivered through MS Teams. Please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel (History, UCC) for a Teams link or use the link below: j.aandewiel@ucc.ie
Paper From 1945 to 2019 a large percentage of the British armed forces was deployed to Germany, transforming from occupation to stationed forces in 1955. The paper examines how official contact zones between the British forces and the local communities were established and transformed over the decades. It analyses the important relationship between specialized British liaison personnel – Kreis Resident Officers / British Residents during the occupation period and Services Liaison Officers as of 1955 – and their German counterparts – mayors and heads of administration in the garrison towns. The paper examines how concepts of liaison were defined and altered in the political transitions from occupation to sovereignty and again after the end of the Cold War, focusing on the question of importance which was accorded to British-German relations over the decades and how both sides experienced and coped with changing power relations. Dr Bettina Blum is a social historian and has been working on the British occupation and stationing of troops in Germany since 2015. After curating exhibitions on this subject in Paderborn and in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf, she is now leading a larger research project at Paderborn University, Germany, which is funded by DFG. The project analyses relations between members of the British forces and the local communities from 1945 and 2019 and takes both British and German perceptions and personal experiences into account.