COURAGE

connecting collections

Leipzig ist nicht nur die Stadt der Montagsdemonstrationen, die sich im Herbst 1989 schnell auf die gesamte DDR ausweiteten und das Regime kollabieren liessen. In der Stadt waren auch die Jahre zuvor zahlreiche Jugend-, Friedens-, Umwelt- und Menschenrechtsgruppen aktiv. Mit seiner Dokumentensammlung besitzt das Leipziger Archiv Bürgerbewegung die größte Sammlung zu ihrer und der Geschichte der Montagsdemonstrationen.

The Alenka Bizjak Environmental Collection is based on Alenka Bizjak's professional work as a lawyer and activism in the period from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 2000s. Bizjak was an active member of the environmental movement in Slovenia since the 1970s. The movement sought to warn the Slovenian and Yugoslav public of the harmfulness of large industrial facilities and hydroelectric plants on the Rivers Soča, Idrija, Mura and Sava and Lake Cerknica and prevent their construction. The collection is interesting because it attests to the culture of dissent in Yugoslavia in the form of a civil society campaign and its struggle for the affirmation of environmental issues that directly obstructed governmental plans for the construction of power facilities.

The video periodical Black Box was the first independent film production studio during the last years of communist rule in Hungary. It reported on demonstrations and civilian initiatives that the official media passed over in silence or reported on with disinformation. With its film reports, and portraits distributed in samizdat channels, at the beginning Black Box managed to create the largest film collection documenting the events of the transitional period and the change of political system both in Hungary and in other communist countries.