Beyond Berlin | Valentina Giannella 🎗️ | Substack

Learning from Ukraine: Karl Schlögel’s Peace Prize Speech and Europe’s Moral Wake-Up Call

Historian Karl Schlögel, winner of the 2025 Peace Prize, urges Europe to learn from Ukraine's courage and reject a "peace" built on fear, trade-offs, and moral surrender.

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Air, light, sunshine and lots of greenery: Berlin's dream of housing for all

Oct 3

When a Country's Brightest Minds Flee

Apr 14

Jew Süss: The Many Lives and Deaths of Joseph Süßkind Oppenheimer

Aug 8

When Bullets Speak Louder than Ballots: Weimar Lessons for the Present Times

Sep 22

Join me on a journey through Europe's past, present, and future—from Berlin to your inbox.

Recent posts

3:11

We will dance again

Watch now | An exhibition on the Nova Music Festival massacre, marking two years since October 7th — and a beacon of hope now coming to life.

Oct 9

Air, light, sunshine and lots of greenery: Berlin's dream of housing for all

IN PICTURES A tour of Berlin's suburbs, where the Weimar Republic realised its dream of healthy housing, combining architectural innovation…

Oct 3

When Bullets Speak Louder than Ballots: Weimar Lessons for the Present Times

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK WITH EXTRA MATERIALS | Political Assassinations and the Erosion of Democracy: 1920s Europe to 2025.

Sep 22

WHY BEYOND BERLIN?

An introduction

Stories big and small that start in Berlin and look eastward, where the heart of the continent beats and its future is shaped.

PUBLICATIONS

SUBSTACK Berlino↔︎Europa

The Italian version of this blog

Campione della memoria?

IN ITALIAN, 2025 Memoria storica in Germania: come è nata e dove sta andando l’Erinnerungskultur

ABOUT ME

Valentinagiannella.eu

My personal page

Something about me

Brief sentimental autobiography

Podcast

34:56

Giacomo Casanova: The Twilight of a Man and the Birth of a Myth

Without the final thirteen years of his life spent in a remote Bohemian castle, the Casanova myth would never have emerged. A tale of a human twilight…

Sep 3

Jew Süss: The Many Lives and Deaths of Joseph Süßkind Oppenheimer

From novellas and theatrical plays to a 1925 literary masterpiece and a 1940 Nazi propaganda film, the true legacy of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, executed…

Aug 8

36:16

Putin´s war against women.

Sofi Oksanen's "Same River, Twice" and Victoria Amelina's "Looking at Women Looking at War." Two books, one message, three words: woman, war, justice.

Jun 27

35:06

Uncle Emil said ´NO´: Resistance in Berlin.

Listen now | Stories of anti-Nazi resistance were more numerous than many believe. Some became celebrated, others resurface only sporadically. Ruth…

May 20

50:15

What Has Happened to the German Culture of Remembrance? PART THREE 1990-2025

United and Confused. Germany Confronting Divided Pasts, Neo-Nazism's Rise, Holocaust's Centrality, and Memory's Evolving Role in a Multicultural Europe.

Mar 17

26:12

1945

Potsdam 1945: The Seventeen Days That Shaped the Post-War Order

In July 1945, the three Allied powers met in Potsdam near Berlin to shape the post-war world. Their decisions redrew Europe's map, laid Cold War…

Jul 23

Uncle Emil said ´NO´: Resistance in Berlin.

Listen now | Stories of anti-Nazi resistance were more numerous than many believe. Some became celebrated, others resurface only sporadically. Ruth…

May 20

50:15

Soviet Photographers Who Captured the End of the War.

How Soviet photojournalists Yevgeny Khaldei, Timofei Melnik, and Ivan Shagin shaped the visual memory of victory in Berlin and Vienna—and why their…

May 11

8 May and 9 May 2025: Berlin, a mirror of our times.

PHOTO STORY A walk through Berlin's memorials on these historic dates—where memory and meaning collide.

May 10

Berlin, May 2, 1945: The surrender of a city and the final days of war in Europe.

In a modest Tempelhof apartment, Berlin's city surrender was signed—a crucial step toward Germany's final capitulation, as the shattered city began…

May 4

Erinnerungskultur / Memory Culture

When Bullets Speak Louder than Ballots: Weimar Lessons for the Present Times

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK WITH EXTRA MATERIALS | Political Assassinations and the Erosion of Democracy: 1920s Europe to 2025.

Sep 22

Brecht's Children's Anthem: The Shadow Anthem of a Better Germany

During every German anniversary—whether it's about the Wall, Unity or the Constitution—the divide between east and west reveals itself in symbols that…

Sep 8

Very Symbolic, Very Concrete, Very Disputed: Israel as German "Staatsräson"

From post-war reparations to semi-covert arms deals, from memory politics to identity struggles — Israel's place in Germany's Reason of State is…

Aug 22

Srebrenica: where were we all, when it happened?

11-17 July 1995: the Srebrenica massacre. Europe's darkest week and its devastating legacy. A genocide, a thirty-year funeral procession, surrounded by…

Jul 11

May 9, 1945 in the Baltic States' Remembrance Culture

While Russia celebrates 9 May 1945 as Victory Day, the Baltic states view it as Soviet occupation and loss of independence, with Estonia, Latvia and…

May 11

East of Center

3:11

We will dance again

Watch now | An exhibition on the Nova Music Festival massacre, marking two years since October 7th — and a beacon of hope now coming to life.

Oct 9

Srebrenica: where were we all, when it happened?

11-17 July 1995: the Srebrenica massacre. Europe's darkest week and its devastating legacy. A genocide, a thirty-year funeral procession, surrounded by…

Jul 11

When a Country's Brightest Minds Flee

Expelled or unwanted, when a nation's brightest minds leave, they set history in motion—and history favors those who welcome these exiles, not those who…

Apr 14

"Ukraine is not a project"

Radosław Sikorski, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Speech at the UNO General Assembly, New York 24.02.2025

Feb 26

A journey through the language of freedom, from Athens and Rome to today's Ukraine.

There are many words for "freedom", but one stands out and has become even more powerful in recent years: the Ukrainian во́ля, "volia". A journey…

Dec 6, 2024

Women: Between Revolution and Resistance, War and Peace

50:15

Uncle Emil said ´NO´: Resistance in Berlin.

Listen now | Stories of anti-Nazi resistance were more numerous than many believe. Some became celebrated, others resurface only sporadically. Ruth…

May 20

27:17

"I feel at home in the entire world, wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears"

106 years after her murder on January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg still deserves to be remembered—not merely as a political activist, but as a champion of…

Jan 15

Roses for Clara Zetkin.

8 March may seem like a worn out, empty and inconclusive holiday. But its roots are revolutionary, and they can still be found here in Germany.

Mar 15, 2024

Faces of Europe: the memory of the women of Ravensbrück.

They were the faces of another Europe that Nazism did not want: free, diverse, peaceful. The Ravensbrück prisoners were different. Their photographs…

Jul 31, 2023

Ideas

Learning from Ukraine: Karl Schlögel’s Peace Prize Speech and Europe’s Moral Wake-Up Call

Historian Karl Schlögel, winner of the 2025 Peace Prize, urges Europe to learn from Ukraine's courage and reject a "peace" built on fear, trade-offs…

Oct 21

Cosmic Dreams, Earthly Ambitions: Reflections on the Space Race Narrative.

As geopolitical tensions rise again, a new space race emerges. But can today's competitors create narratives as inspiring as those that captured…

Jan 22

Hope is Not a Spectator Sport

Real hope has little to do with optimism, nor with passive waiting: the voices of Vaclav Havel and Pope Francis on what hope is and what it demands.

Dec 29, 2024

A journey through the language of freedom, from Athens and Rome to today's Ukraine.

There are many words for "freedom", but one stands out and has become even more powerful in recent years: the Ukrainian во́ля, "volia". A journey…

Dec 6, 2024

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