The Longue Durée of 1989: Regime Change and Everyday Life in East Germany

In 2016, Kiran Klaus Patel published the first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context. It compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe—not just in Europe but also in Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. Work creation, agricultural intervention, state planning, immigration policy, the role of mass media, forms of political leadership, and new ways of ruling America's colonies—all had parallels elsewhere and unfolded against a backdrop of intense global debates.

Kiran Klaus Patel is professor and chair of European and global history at Maastricht University where he also serves as head of department. His latest publications include: Projekt Europa. Eine kritische Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 2018); The New Deal: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); European Integration and the Atlantic Community in the 1980s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013; ed. with Kenneth Weisbrode); and The Historical Foundations of EU Competition Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; ed. with Heike Schweitzer).

This lecture is part of the Gerda Henkel Lecture Series, organized by GHI West, the Pacific Regional Office of the Germany Historical Institute, Washington DC, in cooperation with the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The program brings German historians to the West Coast to present their research and engage in dialogue with their North American colleagues.