New Video in our Media Library: Lecture on Wolfgang Heise

On September 28, 2025, Lukas Zittlau commemorated Wolfgang Heise on the occasion of his 100th birthday in the Bärwalde Hall in Schloss Wiepersdorf.

Wiepersdorf fellow Lukas Zittlau gave a lecture introducing the life and thinking of the philosopher. You can now view the video recording of the lecture in our media library – in German.

“For me, Wolfgang Heise was part of a network of friendships that will never be mentioned in any future history book, but that stretched across the entire country and helped us to live.” This is how the writer Christa Wolf remembered Wolfgang Heise. The philosopher - today almost forgotten - led a fascinating life in the GDR, finding his intellectual productivity in the tension between communist hope and socialist disillusionment.

Direct link to the video

Since 2023, Lukas Zittlau has been pursuing his doctorate at the Faculty of Literary Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, focusing on the intellectual biography of the philosopher Wolfgang Heise. In his dissertation, he seeks to trace the movement of Heise’s thought within the tension between communist conviction and practical disillusionment.