Der Termin muss leider abgesagt werden!
Zeit: Dienstag, 12. Mai 2026, 17.00–18.30 Uhr

Organisation & Moderation: Anka Steffen & Annemarie Steidl

East Central Europe is generally seen as a region that produces refugees ratherthan providing solutions to their plight. People fleeing poverty, war, borderconflicts, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and political persecution contribute tothe region’s troubled image. Drawing on research from the ERC Consolidatorproject “Unlikely Refuge?,” this talk challenges this widespread understandingand examines the reception, protection, and aid (or lack thereof) provided torefugees in East Central Europe during the 20th century. The talk will also ad-dress the history of refugee protection in state socialist countries, a topic thatis often marginalized in contrast to the history of the 1951 Refugee Conventionand the “Western” refugee regime. It will reflect on the need to expand ourunderstanding of national and international refugee regimes, arguing that wemust consider refugee regimes in the plural to provide a basis for writing a tru-ly global history of refugees.

Michal Frankl is head of the department „Knowledge and Participation“ of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe. His work focusses on refugees and migration with focus on East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries; antisemitism and the Holocaust; voices and participation of marginalised actors and Digital Humanities.