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For much of this academic year, Rado Pribic, Williams Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures and chair of the international affairs program, will spend his time in Germany, researching and writing a book dealing with the problems of German unification.
He will be focusing primarily on the work of Daniela Dahn, a controversial East Berlin author and political and social activist.
Pribic intends to complete a thorough analysis of Dahn’s writings and her readers, a project that will eventually be compiled into a manuscript and submitted for publication. The book’s working title is “Uneasiness with the German Unification.”
In Germany, Pribic will interview various scholars and common people about the actual state of the German unification, investigating questions such as whether the East Germans are second-class citizens in a unified Germany.
Pribic believes that by looking at the situation in Germany, one can also understand the larger problems of unification, such as the issues faced by the European Union.
The investigation into the country’s attitude towards East Germans is what led Pribic to focus on the writings and pronouncements of Dahn. After the Wende – the turn in German history that led up to the unification of the German Democratic Republic of East Germany and the Federal Republic of West Germany – many East Germans still did not trust the new political and social system and became increasingly disillusioned.
It is with these German citizens that Dahn finds her audience.
“All three of Daniela Dahn’s books challenge the euphoria of those praising the unexpectedly unified German state,” Pribic says. “Dahn rejects platitudes and traditional delusions, notions of black and white, good and bad, judges and perpetrators, when comparing the Federal Republic to the German Democratic Republic. According to her, the final chapter of the GDR legacy has not yet been written.”
Pribic sees his study of Dahn, who was Lafayette’s 1991 spring semester writer-in-residence, as extremely relevant to understanding Europe and Germany today.
“I feel that it is an important contribution to understanding Germany and Europe because nothing has been published yet in the United States on the critical views of German unification,” he says. “We have many of our Lafayette students studying in Europe and in Germany. For example, Professor [Robert] Weiner, [Jones Professor of History], and I are taking 26 students to Berlin, Prague, and Munich for the interim session, where we will study Germany’s recent history.”
Pribic has been at Lafayette since 1971, teaching courses in German and Russian language, literature, and culture; comparative literature; international affairs; and interdisciplinary courses. He has also mentored numerous students in honors thesis and independent study research including Kari Mirkin ’06, who graduated with an A.B. with majors in German and history, and Kristin Rhebergen ’06, who graduated with an A.B. with majors in international affairs and German. Pribic also helped initiate and serves as resident advisor for the study abroad program based at International University Bremen in Germany.