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Welcome to the Transformative Podcast, which takes the year 1989 as a starting point to think about social, economic, and cultural transformations on a European and global scale. This podcast is produced by the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) and its managing director Irena Remestwenski. Our patron is Philipp Ther, and we could not do it without Leonid Motz, Jannis Panagiotidis, Rosamund Johnston, Sheng Peng, and Jelena Dureinovic.
Episodes
Jun 17, 2026
Jun 17, 2026
14 min
What can the lens of football tell us about the transformation years in East Germany? In this episode, historian and journalist Jan Mohnhaupt and Jelena Đureinović (RECET) reflect upon this question. After a series of books about the history of animals, Jan’s new book Der geteilte Rasen: Fussball in den Wendejahren 1989-1992 (The Divided/Shared Pitch: Football during the Transformation Years) tells the story of East German football during the transformation years and its legacies today. In this episode, he explains how East German clubs, players and fans experienced the period between 1989 and 1992, surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany and the Bundesliga.
Jan Mohnhaupt is a historian and journalist. His books Der Zoo der Anderen and Tiere im Nationalsozialismus, published in 2017 and 2020, have been translated into multiple languages. He contributes regularly to different newspapers and magazines, such as ballesterer, der Freitag, P.M. History and Spiegel Online.