Lecture Series Lecture: Heidelberg in the Aftermath of the War
Press Rrelease No. 42/2025
8 May 2025
In the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series on the end of the war 80 years ago, Philipp Gassert talks about new beginnings, reconstruction and conservative modernization
The impact of the Nazi regime in post-war Heidelberg is the topic of a lecture by historian Prof. Dr Philipp Gassert from the University of Mannheim. His contribution is part of the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space”, with which Heidelberg University wants to remember the end of the war in Europe 80 years ago, i.e. the historical turning point on 8 May 1945. The event entitled “‘Heidelberg Unscathed’? New Beginnings, Reconstruction and Conservative Modernization after 1945” will take place on Monday, 12 May 2025, in the Great Hall of the Old University, starting at 6.15pm.
Looking back, “zero hour” 1945 is mostly illustrated with images of destruction. That was not appropriate for Heidelberg. The city escaped practically unscathed. “Only the bridges were lying in the water,” says a contemporary report. Yet it is certainly not true that the war and its aftermath left no traces on the city and its population, says Prof. Gassert. Heidelberg, too, struggled with the intangible and tangible burdens of Nazi rule and saw itself confronted with massive everyday problems as both the “capital of US occupation” and a place of shelter for many refugees. In his lecture, the speaker will portray the panorama of “bogged-down” cultural departures and slow new beginnings in politics, along with the deliberate reconstruction of the time-honored order, culminating in the re-election of Carl Neinhaus as Heidelberg’s Lord Mayor in 1952 – the office he had already exercised under the National Socialists. Philipp Gassert holds the Chair of Contemporary History at the Department of History of the University of Mannheim. His research is in the area of contemporary German and European history, as well as transatlantic history and US foreign policy in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Ruperto Carola Lecture Series is part of an approach to focal themes. With it, Heidelberg University seeks to take socially relevant research questions to a broad public twice a year in differing formats. Under the heading “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space” the present series on the focal theme BACK & FORTH opens up two complementary perspectives – “a retrospective interpretation, which situates the end of the Second World War in the fractures and continuities of 20th century history, and a reconstruction of direct human experience and suffering,” explains historian Prof. Dr Manfred Berg, who designed the current lecture series. The seven remaining lectures – with the exception of the event on 26 May – will take place every Monday in the Great Hall of the Old University; they begin at 6.15 pm. Recordings will subsequently be accessible on heiONLINE, the central portal of Heidelberg University with lectures, panels and events in digital formats.