The Institute

Bukovina is a historical region in Eastern Europe. Its northern part, with the capital Chernivtsi, is now part of Ukraine, whilst its southern part, with the capital Suceava, belongs to Romania. From 1774 until the First World War, Bukovina was one of the most multi-ethnic crown lands of the Habsburg Empire. In Chernivtsi, then known as Czernowitz, newspapers were published in six languages and three scripts before the First World War. This earned the region the nickname ‘Europe in miniature’ among contemporaries. Forced resettlement and the Holocaust brought this to an end in the 20th century. Following the Second World War, Bukovina was divided into a Soviet and a Romanian territory, each of which underwent a distinct historical development after 1945 and, as a border region, now links Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

Although Augsburg lies over 1,500 kilometres away from the two main cities of Bukovina, Chernivtsi and Suceava, the three cities – and above all the regions of Swabia and Bukovina – are closely linked by a shared history, and the regions themselves are bound together by a vibrant partnership. As early as 1955, the district of Swabia took on the patronage of the Germans from Bukovina who had come to Germany, including Swabia, as part of the resettlements following the Second World War.

In 1988, on the initiative of the then District Council President, Dr. Georg Simnacher, the Bukovina Institute was founded to research, document and preserve the culture and history of Bukovina – a region characterised by a unique ethnic and cultural diversity. Since 2003, the Bukovina Institute has been an affiliated institute of the University of Augsburg. It is maintained by a supporting association and receives financial support from the Bavarian State Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Family and Integration, as well as from the District of Swabia. Led by a five-member board, chaired by a professor from the university (since 2012 Prof. Marita Krauss, Chair of European Regional History and Bavarian and Swabian Regional History), the Institute’s aim is to conduct research and teach about Bukovina in its regional and transnational contexts. From 2015, Prof. Maren Röger, junior professor of “Transnational Interrelationships: Germany and Eastern Europe”, served as the academic coordinator of the Bukowina-Institut. From April 2017, she headed the Institute as its academic and organisational director. In 2020, the junior professorship was converted into a W2 professorship for “The History of Germany’s Interconnections with Eastern Europe”, which was taken over by Prof. Jana Osterkamp in April 2023.

From the very beginning, the Bukowina-Institut has been committed to making knowledge about multi-ethnic coexistence in Bukovina accessible to the community here in Swabia. Not least due to the immigration of repatriates and late repatriates from Eastern, Central Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and the ongoing migration resulting from EU freedom of movement, the Bukowina Institute has since developed into an important institution within the multi-ethnic society. Since its foundation, the Institute has been committed to imparting knowledge about the countries of Eastern Europe, which disappeared from the awareness of most citizens as a result of the Cold War, and thus to contributing to pan-European cooperation. Alongside the European Office of the District of Swabia and the Swabia-Bukovina Aid Organisation, the Bukowina-Institut is one of the three pillars on which the District of Swabia’s partnership work with Romanian and Ukrainian Bukovina is based.