GDR cultural center Paris

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Cultural center of the GDR in Paris until 1990 (Photo: 2010)

The cultural center of the GDR in Paris (KUZ) was the official cultural representation of the GDR in France . It was opened in December 1983 in a magnificent building by Charles Garnier on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Grégoire-de-Tours.

history

GDR Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer opened the cultural center in Paris' Latin Quarter on December 12, 1983 . The French publishers' association, the Cercle de la libraire , had previously been based in the building . The institute assigned to the GDR embassy consisted, among other things, of two event halls for concerts and film screenings, several exhibition rooms and a library with over 3000 books.

Hermann Kant , Christa Wolf and Peter Schreier have performed in the center . The institute was only moderately successful in the Parisian cultural scene in the 1980s.

For the GDR this cultural institution (one information and cultural center among eleven others) was of great importance and showed that “cultural relations were an essential part of overall political relations and a constitutive element of its foreign policy”. The goal pursued here was the demarcation from the Federal Republic of Germany, which had maintained a Goethe Institute in Paris since 1961 , as well as the civil society rapprochement with France.

The institute was closed on October 3, 1990 as part of German unification .

The parallel French cultural center in Berlin, Unter den Linden 37, opened in 1984.

literature

  • Ulrich Pfeil : GDR cultural center Paris , in: Ulrich Pfeil et al. (Ed.): Lexicon of German-French cultural relations after 1945. Tübingen, 2013. pp. 162–163.
  • Ulrich Pfeil: The return of the all-German cultural nation. The GDR cultural center in Paris , in: Lendemains (2001). Pp. 108-131.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pfeil: GDR cultural center Paris , in: Pfeil et al. (Ed.): Lexicon of German-French cultural relations after 1945. p. 162.
  2. ^ Gerhard Kiersch: France and the GDR , in: Elsenhans, Hartmut et al. (Ed.): France - Europe - world politics. Opalden, 1989. p. 155.
  3. ^ Gerhard Kiersch: France and the GDR . P. 156.
  4. ^ Arrow: GDR cultural center Paris . P. 163.

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 9 ″  N , 2 ° 20 ′ 16 ″  E