Completed research projects

Forschung

Projekte

The Warsaw Uprising Monument got unveiled in 1989. Foto: Dhirad, Warsaw wwII, CC BY-SA 3.0

Divided Memory?
The Second World in the Historical Culture of the People’s Republic of Poland

Florian Peters
Completed PhD project

The largest anti-Communist opposition movement in Eastern Europe, the Polish ‘Solidarność’ of the years 1980/81, constitutes an important, if not central, element of the pan-European transformation processes in the final third of the twentieth century.

Chemical engineer in the development laboratory of the VEB Berlin-Chemie. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0806-0001-001 / Brüggmann, Eva / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B0806-0001-001, VEB Berlin-Chemie, Senkung der Selbstkosten, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Gender and Power Relations in Everyday Life in Enterprises in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s

Henrike Voigtländer

Completed associated PhD project

The project examined how gender and sexuality shaped everyday workplace interactions in workplaces in a state that promoted gender equality.

Natural sciences in the transformation process of the East German universities. Potsdam in a comparative perspective

Dorothea Horas

Completed asociated PhD project

The dissertation project examined the reorganization of the natural sciences in the 1980s/90s at the colleges of education in Potsdam and Halle.

Book cover.

People’s Police and Legitimisation of Power in Socialist Romania, 1960–1989

Ciprian Cirniala
Completed associated PhD project

Numerous allegories of a James Bond in the service of his people, a figure of Herculean strength or a person in blue appeared in the mass media discourse of socialist Romania from 1960 to 1989. Representations of power collided with social counter-representations (the Fuzz, truncheon-carriers) of law enforcement officers.

Bookcover:

Building Bridges and Crossing Borders
Historians during the Cold War

Jan C. Behrends, Jürgen Danyel

Completed Research project

The project aims to historicize the role historians played in the 20th century.

The SED in the Province
Party Presence and Regional Practices of Domination (1961–1989)

Andrea Bahr
Completed PhD project

The PhD project focuses on the SED-Kreisleitungen – the local party leaders and the local party apparatuses of the former socialist state party (SED). These local power structures were located between the population on the one hand and the central and regional party apparatuses on the other hand.

Bookcover: Alfred Meusel. Soziologe und Historiker zwischen Bürgertum und Marxismus (1896–1960)

Alfred Meusel. Soziologe und Historiker zwischen Bürgertum und Marxismus (1896–1960)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

The sociologist and historian Alfred Meusel (1896-1960) belonged to the generation of young intellectuals who had to experience the First World War at the front. In the Weimar Republic he became a well-known sociologist of the second generation after the founding fathers of the discipline, such as Max Weber, Georg Simmel or Ferdinand Tönnies. At the age of 30 he became Professor in Aachen. In 1933 he was forced to emigrate.

Psychiatry and Society in the GDR in the Sixties

Fanny Le Bonhomme
Completed associated PhD project

The focus of this research study is on the relationship between psychiatry and society in the GDR in the 1960s. It should be demonstrated to what extent the institution of psychiatry – and the sources produced by it – can reflect the mechanisms, tensions and contradictions in East German society. In the framework of this research project, psychiatry will not be regarded as an ‘outdoor space’ of society but more as a component part of that which constitutes a society.

Cover of the publication.

East German Historians since Reunification
A Discipline Transformed

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

With German reunification and the demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1990, East German historians and their traditions of historiography were removed from mainstream discourse in Germany and relegated to the periphery. By the mid-1990s, few historians trained in the GDR remained in academia. These developments led to a greater degree of intellectual pluralism, yet marginalised many accomplished scholars.

Volunteering in Local Communities between Late Socialism and Liberal Capitalism: The History of Volunteer Fire Departments in Germany and East Central Europe, 1980-2000

The project was completed in 2017 at the ZZF and has been continued since then at the Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung e.V. an der Technischen Universität Dresden (HAIT)
Organised voluntary engagement for the common good of the local community was and remains a constant feature in modern societies since the nineteenth century, and across very diverse political regimes. Using the venerable institution of Voluntary Fire Departments (VFD), this comparative project in contemporary history aims at exploring the practice and relevance of volunteer work during late state socialism and the transformation to democracy and market economies in small- and medium-sized cities and their surrounding rural areas (district towns) in Germany and East Central Europe.

The hotel »Neptun« in Warnemünde, 1988. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1988-0704-010, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Tourism through the Iron Curtain
Traveling from West to East Germany

Stefanie Eisenhuth

Completed Research Project

Based on tourist travel from West to East Germany, the project explored the reasons for and consequences of the GDR's (re)opening to the West.

Children playing in Berlin during the 1948 blockade. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Quelle: Flickr, Lizenz: public domain

Americans in West Berlin, 1945-1994
The History of an Imagined Community

Stefanie Eisenhuth

Completed associated PhD project

My study aims to question the popular myth of an alleged ‘special relationship’ between the United States and West Berlin after the Second World War by taking a closer look at local troop-community relations. Who supported contacts between military personnel and the local population? What was their motivation? Where did Germans and Americans meet by chance?

Study on Politically-motivated Forced Adoptions in the GDR

Agnès Arp
Completed proposal development for a project

This is a study of politically-motivated forced adoptions in the GDR on behalf of the Commissioner of the Federal Government for the New Federal States and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

The building of the Central Committee of the SED on the Marx-Engels-Square, 1967. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-FO427-202-001 / Koard, Peter / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-FO427-202-001, Berlin, Gebäude des ZK der SED, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Revolutionary Headquarters and Seat of Government: The Apparatus of the Central Committee of the SED as the Governmental Centre of East Germany, 1946 to 1989

Completed Research Project

The subject of the project are the departments of the Central Committee of the SED and the institutes subordinated to these in their role as intermediate organisations of rule and control. Points of focus are the question of cultural and social-psychological parameters of party rule as well as a prosopographic analysis of the Central Committee staff.

Bookcover: Albert Schreiner. Kommunist mit Lebensumbrüchen

Albert Schreiner. Kommunist mit Lebensbrüchen (1892-1979)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

Albert Schreiner (1892-1979) was a journalist and functionary in the KPD and at times in the KPD Opposition. He was a military writer who revealed in brilliant books Hitler’s rearmament. In the United States, he was one of the leading figures of the KPD exile. As a historian in the GDR, he was less successful. This completed book project is part of the author’s project on German communist refugees in the United States (‘Westemigranten’).

The West German Left and its Association of Left-Wing Bookshops, 1970–1981

Completed associated PhD project

Since the end of the 1960s leftist bookshops and political publishing houses have been popping up like mushrooms all across the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin. The soil for this sudden appearance had been prepared by the student revolts that took place from 1967 to 1969. 

Book cover.

The Citizen and his Rights
The Transformation of Legal Culture from Late Socialist to Post-socialist Society in East Germany from 1980 to 2000

Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project focuses on changes in legal culture in East Germany against the backdrop of the collapse of state socialism, revolution and transformation since accession to the Federal Republic of Germany during the period from 1980 until 2000.

"What's the Meaning of 1917? Glances from a 100-Year Distance"

Completed Project
Publications and Events on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution.

Cosmopolitan Elites and the Making of Globality: M. N. Roy in the Role of a Lifetime (c. 1910s - 1960s)

Leonie Wolters
Completed PhD project

This project centred on the Indian intellectual M. N. Roy (1887 - 1954) - an individual who was exceptionally capable of invoking the world to various audiences during the first half of the twentieth century, as he worked for organisations that promoted anticolonial nationalism, communism and humanism.

Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler at the preparatory meeting of the Academy of Arts of the GDR on 21.03.1950. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-19204-2132 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-19204-2132, Berlin, Bertolt Brecht und Hanns Eisler, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

West-Emigranten
German Communists between US Exile and GDR

Mario Keßler
Completed Book project

This book examines the traces of German communist refugees in the USA who returned to the GDR after the end of the Nazi regime. It describes both their experiences of exile in the capitalist society of the USA and their living conditions in East Germany after 1945.

Reflections on 1989/90 in Literary Texts of Younger German and Czech Authors

Rainette Lange
Completed associated PhD project

This project focused on a comparative analysis of literary texts of young German and Czech authors dealing with the final years of the GDR and the ČSSR, as well as with the events of 1989/90 and its social consequences.

October 1961. Children keep their friendship across the barbed wire border between East and West Berlin. From the booklet "A City Torn Apart: Building of the Berlin Wall." Photo: The Central Intelligence Agency, Children in East and West Berlin - Flickr - The Central Intelligence Agency, public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons

The Construction of the Berlin Wall and its Impact on East German Society: A Psycho-geographical Analysis (1960s)

Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project questions the repercussions of the construction of the Wall on GDR society. The study focuses on the Wall's effect on East Berliners' everyday lives and how they had to interact with and circulate within these new thoroughfares.

Bookcover: Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus

Bookcover: Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus. Für Theodor Bergmann. Eine Würdigung

Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

Over decades there were in the East and in the West different personalities in the communist parties and their governing bodies who sought to democratize communism as ideology, political movement and state order. This book portrays a great number of the reforms and reformers in communism and examines the reasons why they failed. Twenty-two authors from Germany, France, the United States, Canada, Russia and China participated in this multi-national project

Imprisonment statement for the german journalist Karl Wilhelm Fricke, 1955, with a signature of Stasi-Chief Erich Milke. Photo: DDR Staatssicherheit, BStU, Karl Wilhelm Fricke - Haftbeschluss 1955, marked as public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons

Die historische Aufarbeitung der Zwangsarbeit politischer Häftlinge im DDR-Strafvollzug

Jan Philip Wölbern
Completed Research Project

Studie im Auftrag der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für die Neuen Bundesländer (gefördert bis 2015)

Bookcover

Communist Intellectuals in Western Europe

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

In 2015 and 2017, Mario Kessler (ZZF), Axel Schildt, and Knud Andresen (both Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg) organized  two conferences on communist intellectuals in post-Second World War Western Europe. Papers of both conferences were published in a book (sep. 2018, Metropol Verlag):
Knud Andresen, Mario Keßler, Axel Schildt (Hg.)
Dissidente Kommunisten. Das sowjetische Modell und seine Kritiker

 

Removal of the emblem of the SED on a building of the Central Committee on Werderscher Markt, 1990. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-0123-027 / Oberst, Klaus / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-0123-027, Berlin, SED-Symbol an ehem. ZK-Gebäude, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

The SED between the Construction and the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Social History of a Communist State Party

Jens Gieseke

Completed Project

Collaborative project with the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. Funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship

Foto: Elena Toporova

Hippies in the Soviet Union

Juliane Fürst

Completed research project

This project was devoted to a thorough exploration of the history of the hippie movement in the Soviet Union from the late sixties onwards. It payed particular attention to the place of hippies as an outsider community in the larger context of late socialism and argues that the relationship between non-conformist youth and Soviet system was hostile, yet also symbiotic.

Photo: David Bebnowski

Struggles with Marx. Politics and Theory in the new left-journals Das Argument and PROKLA (1959-1976)

David Bebnowski
Completed associated PhD project

How can we explain the attraction of certain political ideas for left-wing activists and intellectuals? Why does one particular theory tend to be ‘in fashion’ for a time rather than another? Which concrete historical circumstances can explain the theoretical orientation of left-wing protagonists over time? Finding answers to these questions constituted the essence of this PhD project.

Physical Violence and State Legitimacy in Late Socialism – An International Research Network

Jan C. Behrends

Completed SAW-Project

The network investigates the relationship between physical violence and state legitimacy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, addressing the following questions: How did the state control violence after Stalin? How did political legitimation change after 1956? How were these changes related to the repression and the use of violent force? To what extent did physical violence disappear from politics? How was physical violence in the private sphere dealt with? Did these changes contribute to the decline of communism?

Bookcover

Leo Trotzki oder: Sozialismus gegen Antisemitismus

Mario Keßler (Senior Fellow)
Completed
Edition project

The aim of the project „Leo Trotzki oder: Sozialismus gegen Antisemitismus“ (Leon Trotsky or: Socialism versus Anti-Semitism)  was an edition of Trotsky’s writings on anti-Semitism in Russia and Germany, which he wrote between 1909 and his assassination in 1940.

Havarie: East German Society Facing Industrial Disasters

Thomas Lindenberger
Completed Research project

Severe industrial accidents leading both to major disruptions in production and a relevant number of casualties are examined in order to reconstruct consensus, collusion and conflict between the different social actors constituting the social world of communist regimes: workers, engineers, managers, party organisers, functionaries of trade union and state apparatus, the secret police and party leaders.

A member of the SED recieves his party book, Leipzig 1951. Photo: Deutsche Fotothek‎, Fotothek df roe-neg 0006041 018 SED-Mitglied erhält sein SED-Mitgliedsbuch, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

‘Where there is a comrade, there is the party!’?
Stability and Erosion of the SED Party Base from 1979 to 1989

Sabine Pannen
Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project focuses on the rank-and-file members of the former socialist state party (SED) separately to its party leaders and apparatus. In the 1980s, almost every fifth adult in the GDR held a party document. For this reason, party members constituted both a large part of society as well as a group of their own within society.

Bookcover

Arkadij Maslow: Dissident Against His Will (1891-1941)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

This book is a political biography of Arkadij Maksimovich Maslow (1891-1941), a German Communist politician and later a dissident and opponent to Stalin.

Completed research projects

Forschung

Projekte

The Warsaw Uprising Monument got unveiled in 1989. Foto: Dhirad, Warsaw wwII, CC BY-SA 3.0

Divided Memory?
The Second World in the Historical Culture of the People’s Republic of Poland

Florian Peters
Completed PhD project

The largest anti-Communist opposition movement in Eastern Europe, the Polish ‘Solidarność’ of the years 1980/81, constitutes an important, if not central, element of the pan-European transformation processes in the final third of the twentieth century.

Chemical engineer in the development laboratory of the VEB Berlin-Chemie. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0806-0001-001 / Brüggmann, Eva / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B0806-0001-001, VEB Berlin-Chemie, Senkung der Selbstkosten, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Gender and Power Relations in Everyday Life in Enterprises in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s

Henrike Voigtländer

Completed associated PhD project

The project examined how gender and sexuality shaped everyday workplace interactions in workplaces in a state that promoted gender equality.

Natural sciences in the transformation process of the East German universities. Potsdam in a comparative perspective

Dorothea Horas

Completed asociated PhD project

The dissertation project examined the reorganization of the natural sciences in the 1980s/90s at the colleges of education in Potsdam and Halle.

Book cover.

People’s Police and Legitimisation of Power in Socialist Romania, 1960–1989

Ciprian Cirniala
Completed associated PhD project

Numerous allegories of a James Bond in the service of his people, a figure of Herculean strength or a person in blue appeared in the mass media discourse of socialist Romania from 1960 to 1989. Representations of power collided with social counter-representations (the Fuzz, truncheon-carriers) of law enforcement officers.

Bookcover:

Building Bridges and Crossing Borders
Historians during the Cold War

Jan C. Behrends, Jürgen Danyel

Completed Research project

The project aims to historicize the role historians played in the 20th century.

The SED in the Province
Party Presence and Regional Practices of Domination (1961–1989)

Andrea Bahr
Completed PhD project

The PhD project focuses on the SED-Kreisleitungen – the local party leaders and the local party apparatuses of the former socialist state party (SED). These local power structures were located between the population on the one hand and the central and regional party apparatuses on the other hand.

Bookcover: Alfred Meusel. Soziologe und Historiker zwischen Bürgertum und Marxismus (1896–1960)

Alfred Meusel. Soziologe und Historiker zwischen Bürgertum und Marxismus (1896–1960)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

The sociologist and historian Alfred Meusel (1896-1960) belonged to the generation of young intellectuals who had to experience the First World War at the front. In the Weimar Republic he became a well-known sociologist of the second generation after the founding fathers of the discipline, such as Max Weber, Georg Simmel or Ferdinand Tönnies. At the age of 30 he became Professor in Aachen. In 1933 he was forced to emigrate.

Psychiatry and Society in the GDR in the Sixties

Fanny Le Bonhomme
Completed associated PhD project

The focus of this research study is on the relationship between psychiatry and society in the GDR in the 1960s. It should be demonstrated to what extent the institution of psychiatry – and the sources produced by it – can reflect the mechanisms, tensions and contradictions in East German society. In the framework of this research project, psychiatry will not be regarded as an ‘outdoor space’ of society but more as a component part of that which constitutes a society.

Cover of the publication.

East German Historians since Reunification
A Discipline Transformed

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

With German reunification and the demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1990, East German historians and their traditions of historiography were removed from mainstream discourse in Germany and relegated to the periphery. By the mid-1990s, few historians trained in the GDR remained in academia. These developments led to a greater degree of intellectual pluralism, yet marginalised many accomplished scholars.

Volunteering in Local Communities between Late Socialism and Liberal Capitalism: The History of Volunteer Fire Departments in Germany and East Central Europe, 1980-2000

The project was completed in 2017 at the ZZF and has been continued since then at the Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung e.V. an der Technischen Universität Dresden (HAIT)
Organised voluntary engagement for the common good of the local community was and remains a constant feature in modern societies since the nineteenth century, and across very diverse political regimes. Using the venerable institution of Voluntary Fire Departments (VFD), this comparative project in contemporary history aims at exploring the practice and relevance of volunteer work during late state socialism and the transformation to democracy and market economies in small- and medium-sized cities and their surrounding rural areas (district towns) in Germany and East Central Europe.

The hotel »Neptun« in Warnemünde, 1988. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1988-0704-010, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Tourism through the Iron Curtain
Traveling from West to East Germany

Stefanie Eisenhuth

Completed Research Project

Based on tourist travel from West to East Germany, the project explored the reasons for and consequences of the GDR's (re)opening to the West.

Children playing in Berlin during the 1948 blockade. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Quelle: Flickr, Lizenz: public domain

Americans in West Berlin, 1945-1994
The History of an Imagined Community

Stefanie Eisenhuth

Completed associated PhD project

My study aims to question the popular myth of an alleged ‘special relationship’ between the United States and West Berlin after the Second World War by taking a closer look at local troop-community relations. Who supported contacts between military personnel and the local population? What was their motivation? Where did Germans and Americans meet by chance?

Study on Politically-motivated Forced Adoptions in the GDR

Agnès Arp
Completed proposal development for a project

This is a study of politically-motivated forced adoptions in the GDR on behalf of the Commissioner of the Federal Government for the New Federal States and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

The building of the Central Committee of the SED on the Marx-Engels-Square, 1967. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-FO427-202-001 / Koard, Peter / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-FO427-202-001, Berlin, Gebäude des ZK der SED, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Revolutionary Headquarters and Seat of Government: The Apparatus of the Central Committee of the SED as the Governmental Centre of East Germany, 1946 to 1989

Completed Research Project

The subject of the project are the departments of the Central Committee of the SED and the institutes subordinated to these in their role as intermediate organisations of rule and control. Points of focus are the question of cultural and social-psychological parameters of party rule as well as a prosopographic analysis of the Central Committee staff.

Bookcover: Albert Schreiner. Kommunist mit Lebensumbrüchen

Albert Schreiner. Kommunist mit Lebensbrüchen (1892-1979)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

Albert Schreiner (1892-1979) was a journalist and functionary in the KPD and at times in the KPD Opposition. He was a military writer who revealed in brilliant books Hitler’s rearmament. In the United States, he was one of the leading figures of the KPD exile. As a historian in the GDR, he was less successful. This completed book project is part of the author’s project on German communist refugees in the United States (‘Westemigranten’).

The West German Left and its Association of Left-Wing Bookshops, 1970–1981

Completed associated PhD project

Since the end of the 1960s leftist bookshops and political publishing houses have been popping up like mushrooms all across the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin. The soil for this sudden appearance had been prepared by the student revolts that took place from 1967 to 1969. 

Book cover.

The Citizen and his Rights
The Transformation of Legal Culture from Late Socialist to Post-socialist Society in East Germany from 1980 to 2000

Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project focuses on changes in legal culture in East Germany against the backdrop of the collapse of state socialism, revolution and transformation since accession to the Federal Republic of Germany during the period from 1980 until 2000.

"What's the Meaning of 1917? Glances from a 100-Year Distance"

Completed Project
Publications and Events on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution.

Cosmopolitan Elites and the Making of Globality: M. N. Roy in the Role of a Lifetime (c. 1910s - 1960s)

Leonie Wolters
Completed PhD project

This project centred on the Indian intellectual M. N. Roy (1887 - 1954) - an individual who was exceptionally capable of invoking the world to various audiences during the first half of the twentieth century, as he worked for organisations that promoted anticolonial nationalism, communism and humanism.

Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler at the preparatory meeting of the Academy of Arts of the GDR on 21.03.1950. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-19204-2132 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-19204-2132, Berlin, Bertolt Brecht und Hanns Eisler, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

West-Emigranten
German Communists between US Exile and GDR

Mario Keßler
Completed Book project

This book examines the traces of German communist refugees in the USA who returned to the GDR after the end of the Nazi regime. It describes both their experiences of exile in the capitalist society of the USA and their living conditions in East Germany after 1945.

Reflections on 1989/90 in Literary Texts of Younger German and Czech Authors

Rainette Lange
Completed associated PhD project

This project focused on a comparative analysis of literary texts of young German and Czech authors dealing with the final years of the GDR and the ČSSR, as well as with the events of 1989/90 and its social consequences.

October 1961. Children keep their friendship across the barbed wire border between East and West Berlin. From the booklet "A City Torn Apart: Building of the Berlin Wall." Photo: The Central Intelligence Agency, Children in East and West Berlin - Flickr - The Central Intelligence Agency, public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons

The Construction of the Berlin Wall and its Impact on East German Society: A Psycho-geographical Analysis (1960s)

Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project questions the repercussions of the construction of the Wall on GDR society. The study focuses on the Wall's effect on East Berliners' everyday lives and how they had to interact with and circulate within these new thoroughfares.

Bookcover: Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus

Bookcover: Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus. Für Theodor Bergmann. Eine Würdigung

Reformen und Reformer im Kommunismus

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

Over decades there were in the East and in the West different personalities in the communist parties and their governing bodies who sought to democratize communism as ideology, political movement and state order. This book portrays a great number of the reforms and reformers in communism and examines the reasons why they failed. Twenty-two authors from Germany, France, the United States, Canada, Russia and China participated in this multi-national project

Imprisonment statement for the german journalist Karl Wilhelm Fricke, 1955, with a signature of Stasi-Chief Erich Milke. Photo: DDR Staatssicherheit, BStU, Karl Wilhelm Fricke - Haftbeschluss 1955, marked as public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons

Die historische Aufarbeitung der Zwangsarbeit politischer Häftlinge im DDR-Strafvollzug

Jan Philip Wölbern
Completed Research Project

Studie im Auftrag der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für die Neuen Bundesländer (gefördert bis 2015)

Bookcover

Communist Intellectuals in Western Europe

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

In 2015 and 2017, Mario Kessler (ZZF), Axel Schildt, and Knud Andresen (both Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg) organized  two conferences on communist intellectuals in post-Second World War Western Europe. Papers of both conferences were published in a book (sep. 2018, Metropol Verlag):
Knud Andresen, Mario Keßler, Axel Schildt (Hg.)
Dissidente Kommunisten. Das sowjetische Modell und seine Kritiker

 

Removal of the emblem of the SED on a building of the Central Committee on Werderscher Markt, 1990. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-0123-027 / Oberst, Klaus / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-0123-027, Berlin, SED-Symbol an ehem. ZK-Gebäude, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

The SED between the Construction and the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Social History of a Communist State Party

Jens Gieseke

Completed Project

Collaborative project with the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. Funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship

Foto: Elena Toporova

Hippies in the Soviet Union

Juliane Fürst

Completed research project

This project was devoted to a thorough exploration of the history of the hippie movement in the Soviet Union from the late sixties onwards. It payed particular attention to the place of hippies as an outsider community in the larger context of late socialism and argues that the relationship between non-conformist youth and Soviet system was hostile, yet also symbiotic.

Photo: David Bebnowski

Struggles with Marx. Politics and Theory in the new left-journals Das Argument and PROKLA (1959-1976)

David Bebnowski
Completed associated PhD project

How can we explain the attraction of certain political ideas for left-wing activists and intellectuals? Why does one particular theory tend to be ‘in fashion’ for a time rather than another? Which concrete historical circumstances can explain the theoretical orientation of left-wing protagonists over time? Finding answers to these questions constituted the essence of this PhD project.

Physical Violence and State Legitimacy in Late Socialism – An International Research Network

Jan C. Behrends

Completed SAW-Project

The network investigates the relationship between physical violence and state legitimacy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, addressing the following questions: How did the state control violence after Stalin? How did political legitimation change after 1956? How were these changes related to the repression and the use of violent force? To what extent did physical violence disappear from politics? How was physical violence in the private sphere dealt with? Did these changes contribute to the decline of communism?

Bookcover

Leo Trotzki oder: Sozialismus gegen Antisemitismus

Mario Keßler (Senior Fellow)
Completed
Edition project

The aim of the project „Leo Trotzki oder: Sozialismus gegen Antisemitismus“ (Leon Trotsky or: Socialism versus Anti-Semitism)  was an edition of Trotsky’s writings on anti-Semitism in Russia and Germany, which he wrote between 1909 and his assassination in 1940.

Havarie: East German Society Facing Industrial Disasters

Thomas Lindenberger
Completed Research project

Severe industrial accidents leading both to major disruptions in production and a relevant number of casualties are examined in order to reconstruct consensus, collusion and conflict between the different social actors constituting the social world of communist regimes: workers, engineers, managers, party organisers, functionaries of trade union and state apparatus, the secret police and party leaders.

A member of the SED recieves his party book, Leipzig 1951. Photo: Deutsche Fotothek‎, Fotothek df roe-neg 0006041 018 SED-Mitglied erhält sein SED-Mitgliedsbuch, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

‘Where there is a comrade, there is the party!’?
Stability and Erosion of the SED Party Base from 1979 to 1989

Sabine Pannen
Completed associated PhD project

This PhD project focuses on the rank-and-file members of the former socialist state party (SED) separately to its party leaders and apparatus. In the 1980s, almost every fifth adult in the GDR held a party document. For this reason, party members constituted both a large part of society as well as a group of their own within society.

Bookcover

Arkadij Maslow: Dissident Against His Will (1891-1941)

Mario Keßler
Completed book project

This book is a political biography of Arkadij Maksimovich Maslow (1891-1941), a German Communist politician and later a dissident and opponent to Stalin.