Germany’s cooperation with dictatorships has been widely criticized over the past decade. Close ties to non-democratic states such as Russia, China, and Qatar have led to calls for tougher sanctions. However, the export-oriented Federal Republic of Germany is dependent on many autocracies, which makes it difficult to advocate for human rights and sanctions.

Based on extensive archival research, historian Frank Bösch shows how these close relationships with dictatorships around the world have developed since 1950. This lecture illustrates how an economy-oriented pragmatism created various long-term connections: in the Middle East, Latin America, and even socialist Eastern Europe. After National Socialism, anti-communist dictatorships often became partners, ranging from South Korea and Iran to Libya and Chile. Bösch also shows how, since the late 1960s, advocacy for human rights has successfully put pressure on individual dictatorships. Cooperation between the government and NGOs such as Amnesty International led to the release of political prisoners. Targeted sanctions could indeed lead to improvements in human rights. The lecture thus offers a new perspective on the history of German democracy: it supplements the history of Westward integration and Ostpolitik with a look at relations with global dictatorships.

Frank Bösch, born 1969 in Lübeck, is Professor of 20th-Century European History at the University of Potsdam and Director of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF), a leading research institute in Germany. He is author of many influential books, including several bestsellers. His most recent book analyzes Germany’s relations to autocracies (“Deals with Dictatorships. A Different History of the Federal Republic”). Previous publications covered topics such as the history of the Christian Democratic party (“The Adenauer CDU”, 2001), the changing influence of media (“Media History: From Asian Printing to the Computer”, 2019), and German history from a global perspective (“Turning Point 1979: When the World of Today Began”, 2019).

Die „Prager Vorträge“ sind eine Kooperation der Prager Außenstellen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, des Collegium Carolinum, sowie der Abteilung „Wissen und Partitipation“ des Leibniz-Instituts für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa (GWZO), sowie deutsch-tschechischender gemeinsamen Forschungs- und Vermittlungsplattform mit der tschechischen Akademie der WissenschaftenGWZO prague FLÚ.

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