Institute for East European Studies

In its seventy-plus years, the Institute for East European Studies has mirrored Berlin’s and Germany’s changing relations with its eastern neighbours – from the turbulent founding phase to the student protests in the late 1960s and the years of system collapse and transformation since the 1990s. Along with East European Studies as a discipline, the institute changed with these massive upheavals. After the end of the Cold War and the German reunification in 1990, it had to fight for its very existence. Today, in the 21^st century, the Institute is once again a crucial centre for German and international research on Eastern Europe.