Kiel 1969: Ein Erinnerungsort der Geographie

Abstract

In this editorial, we introduce the special section on the politics of memory of „Kiel 1969“, the famous German geographers’ conference, during which, as the myth narrates, a revolution took place within the discipline of German-language geography. By introducing and contextualizing the three individual statements by Julia Verne, Ulf Strohmayer and Peter Weichhart, who all recount their entanglements with the myth of „Kiel 1969“, we invite the reader to reflect upon the dynamics through which „events“ turn into „myths“ that shape individual careers and strategic struggles within the discipline.

Biographical Note

Ute Wardenga (SFB 1199 & Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, Germany)

Ute Wardenga is an honorary professor of global studies at Leipzig University (Germany) and serves on the executive boards of the Centre for Area Studies and the Graduate School Global and Area Studies. Since 2012, she has been the deputy director of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig where she coordinates the research group “History and Geography”. Ute Wardenga’s current research interests focus on geography as a space-related practice in the process of globalization and in this regard leads the SFB project C1, which compares international histories of geographical societies since the early 19th century. Most recently, she has co-directed the research project entitled “Digital Atlas of Geopolitical Imaginaries of Eastern Central Europe”, which explored the impact of cartographic and mass media representations of space in Eastern Central Europe since 1989.

Benedikt Korf (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Benedikt Korf is a professor for Political Geography at the University of Zurich. His current research falls in the fields of development geography, political geography and cultural geography. He understands the cultural as a constitutive force of political economy: his research studies “culture” as a terrain of struggle wherein the political fabrication of territories and the articulation of collective life are contested and negotiated in sites that experience political disorder and protracted violence. This research follows an ethnographic disposition with field work in South Asia and the Horn of Africa. He is currently consolidating, deepening and expanding this agenda around the concept of the frontier. Through a comparison of different frontier cases in a variety of countries (Borneo, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Tibet, eastern Congo), he seeks to retrieve the spatial politics of land appropriation and dispossession in the Global South.