Lecture with Mette Borchert Vahlun

Family historian and history communicator Mette Borchert Vahlun presents a lecture about her great-grandfather - a man born in the former Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to German parents, who fled with his family to South Jutland at age 10 when World War I broke out. He thus grew up in a region that shifted from German to Danish following the 1920 referendum.

The lecture poses the question: what does it do to one's worldview to flee one's homeland and start over in another? And can it explain why the great-grandfather later volunteered for German service on the Eastern Front during World War II - and what did that choice mean for the family back home?

Mette Borchert Vahlun will also offer advice on how you can begin researching your own relatives who lived through the border region's intertwined Danish-German history.