Democracy in the Shadow of Gestapo

This event explores one of the central dilemmas of the postwar era: how do you build a democracy when the state you are replacing was built on systematic surveillance and fear? When West Germany was founded after 1945, the legacy of the Gestapo was not merely a historical fact - it cast a shadow over public trust and the political choices that had to be made.

Far-right movements survived the end of the war, forcing the new state to establish intelligence services. But the question was how to set limits on their powers without rendering them ineffective - and how a democratic state could protect itself without undermining its own values.

The speaker is Katja Højgaard Petersen, PhD fellow in history at the University of Southern Denmark and visiting researcher at Ruhr University Bochum. Her research focuses on the West German intelligence service and its surveillance of the far right during the Cold War.

The event is open to anyone interested in German history, the Cold War, espionage, or questions about surveillance in democratic societies.