The historian who interpreted the Prague Spring between the tanks and the memory wars
The experience of the occupation, the incredible solidarity in August 1968: that belongs to those very rare historical moments that not everyone gets to live through, and one can count oneself lucky to have experienced it.
Jan Pauer is a Czech-born historian who witnessed the Prague Spring of 1968 and emigrated to West Germany the following year. In 1995 he published Prag 1968, the definitive account of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and spent his career at the University of Bremen's Research Centre for Eastern Europe studying modern Czechoslovak history. In his 2011 ENRS article, he argued that the invasion marked 'the start of a civil society opposition and the historical end of reform communism,' contending that the Prague Spring was buried twice: first by Soviet tanks and then by the memory politics of post-1989 Czechia.
Career Timeline
- 1969Left Czechoslovakia and emigrated to West Germany
- 1990–1993Member of the Czech government's Historical Commission on the events of 1967–1971
- 1993–Research associate, Research Centre for Eastern Europe, University of Bremen
- 1995Published Prag 1968: Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes
- 2017Co-editor of Ringen um Autonomie: Dissidentendiskurse in Mittel- und Osteuropa