Completed research projects

German Solidarity Movements in Nicaragua - Muslime world - Exhibition project on the GDR border regime in Potsdam - Poverty policy -Cconsumer behavior - Human Rights - German Labour Front - Local Nazi Functionaries in Berlin - Football in East Germany - - Potsdam in the 1980s and Early 1990s - Tuberculosis Patients under National Socialism - Soviet Military Tribunals, 1945-47 – Artificial Beauty - The West German Welfare State - Computerisation and Welfare State - Shipyards in the 1970s

Forschung

Projekte

Human Rights as a political and ideological Argument during the Cold War, 1961-1975

Completed associated PhD project

The thesis of my doctoral dissertation runs that the success of human rights semantics in the 1970s cannot be explained without considering the political and ideological disputes of the Cold War in the 1960s. The confrontational discourses during the Cold War can be understood as a catalyst for the dissemination of human rights semantics in the 1960s.

Computerisation and Welfare State. The Introduction of Electronic Data Processing in the Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme

Thomas Kasper
Completed PhD project

Since the 1950s, the Federal German welfare state, especially the statutory pension, were at the forefront of computerisation in Germany and used computers to cope with the increasingly complex pension legislation.

The ‘Old Guard’ in Berlin. Social Profiles, Career Paths and Networks of Local Nazi Functionaries in Berlin, 1926–1949

Anja Stanciu
Completed PhD project

The comprehensive enforcement of the Nazi dictatorship in the Reich capital city would scarcely have been possible without the local party functionaries at the point of intersection between rule and society. From 1933, their key tasks included the integration of the heterogenous metropolitan society of Berlin into the structures of a racially defined ‘ethnic community’, its control and its mobilisation for the aims of the regime.

Ayatollah Khomeini, Sadegh Tabatabai and Peter Scholl-Latour are sitting together on the flight from Paris to Tehran on 1.2.1979. Screenshot from: ZDF heute, 1.2.1979.

The Creating of Islamic Fundamentalists. The Muslim world in federal German politics and perception in the 1970s and 1980s

Alexander Konrad

Completed associated PhD project

The PhD thesis concerned the perception of the Muslim world prevalent in West Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s. Beginning with an analysis of the oriental narratives about the Muslim world in the 1970s, the central part dealed with the perception of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and its aftermath.

Death Sentences handed down by Soviet Military Tribunals, 1945–1947

Andreas Weigelt

Completed Collaborative project between the Documentation Centre for the History of Resistance and Repression during the Nazi Era and the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR of the Foundation of Saxon Memorial Sites (Dr Klaus-Dieter Müller), the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden (Dr Mike Schmeitzner), and the Centre for Contemporary History (Professor Thomas Schaarschmidt).

Murder and Nursing Neglect of Tuberculosis Patients in the Clinics of the Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme under National Socialism

Patrick Bernhard
Completed research project

The project, funded for two years from 1 May 2015 by the ‘Research Network Old-age Provision’ of the German Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme, investigates the treatment of tuberculosis patients in facilities of the Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme, which was structurally involved to a significant extent in the health politics of the ‘Third Reich’.

Corrected Bodies. A History of Artificial Beauty in the Modern Era

Annelie Ramsbrock

Completed PhD project

Beauty is more than just a question of taste. Since the Enlightenment, it has been ascertained in accordance with scientific insights and models of social order. In which way, however, have these insights change over the course of the modern era?

The berlin-brandenburg wall north of the Glienicker bridge. View of the Meierei, Source: Potsdam Museum.

Attention! Border area. The restricted zone in the GDR, Potsdam 1961-89

Frank Bösch, Florentine Schmidtmann

Completed Collaborative project between the ZZF and the association Memorial Sites at the Potsdam Border

The course of the former border to the north of Glienicker Bridge counts today among the most visited sections of the Berlin-Brandenburg Wall, the former ‘outer ring’ of Berlin. Since the demolition of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s, however, there is not a single reference at this section, which stretches for miles and is today idyllic, to the period of the GDR and the former death strip, with the exception of short passages of text on a sign about Glienicker Bridge and two memorial posts for victims of the Berlin Wall in its immediate vicinity on Schwanenallee.

First project results:
Since November 9, 2018, the Internet portal www.grenze-potsdam.de has been activated. It offers users in-depth information as well as image, audio and video material about the former border area...

From Reform to Crisis. The West German Welfare State during the Great Coalition and the Social-liberal Era

Winfried Süß

Completed research project

For a long time now, social policy has intervened not only in emergency situations and precarious fringe areas of society, but instead influences in varied ways the living conditions of the entire population.

Bookcover: Soziale Ungleichheit im Sozialstaat. Großbritannien und die Bundesrepublik im Vergleich, München 2010 (hg. zus. mit Hans Günter Hockerts).

Rugged Affluence. Poverty, Economic Crisis and Welfare State in West Germany and the United Kingdom

Winfried Süß

Completed research project

With policies on poverty, this project looks at a fundamental function of the welfare state that became increasingly important from the crisis of the Keynesian full-employment welfare state in the 1970s onwards. This challenge confronted all European welfare states in a similar way.

In the return match of the semi-finals for the FDGB Cup the 1. FC Lok Leipzig defeated BFC Dynamo 3-1 and entered the final because of the away goals rule, May 6, 1986. Foto: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1986-0506-047 / Kluge, Wolfgang / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1986-0506-047, FDGB-Pokal, 1. FC Lok Leipzig - BFC Dynamo, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

The Organisational and Club History of Football in East Germany

Jutta Braun

Michael Barsuhn
Completed Collaborative project between the Centre for German Sporting History (ZdS) and the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, funded by the German Football Association (DFB)

For the first time, the German Football Association allows the history of East German football to be systematically researched in two component projects. Dr Jutta Braun and Michael Barsuhn from the Centre for German Sporting History (ZdS) in Berlin examine – in cooperation with the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (ZZF) – in one of the two component projects the organisational and club history of football during state socialism.

In the Breach between Two Eras. Politics and Society in Potsdam in the 1980s and Early 1990s

Jutta Braun, Peter Ulrich Weiß

Completed associated research project

Potsdam was regarded as one of the ‘red’ district capitals in East Germany. Its function as a regional centre of SED power, border city to West Berlin and important scientific and educational site allowed Potsdam to become a conurbation for elites loyal to the system.

Bookcover: Arbeit – Produktion – Protest. Die Leninwerft in Gdansk und die AG »Weser« in Bremen im Vergleich (1968–1983), published in the ZZF publication series "Zeithistoriche Studien" (2020).

‘In the same boat’? Labour Relations and Structural Change in German and Polish Shipyards in the 1970s

Sarah Graber Majchrzak
Completed associated PhD project

The structural change that has been taking place in the working environments and the daily lives of workers in European industrial societies since the 1970s has for some time been a research focus within the field of contemporary history. However, historical studies have almost exclusively addressed Western Europe, although Eastern European countries were similarly exposed to the intensified competition on the world market and the challenges of the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’.

Boom during the Crisis. Consumerism, Tourism, Motoring in West Germany and the United Kingdom (1970–1990)

Sina Fabian
Completed associated PhD project

The 1970s are regarded as a decade of crisis. During this time, however, consumer opportunities for the general public increased significantly. By reference to the behaviour of consumers in West Germany and the United Kingdom, the project queried the central attributions of the 1970s as a decade of crisis and the 1980s as a decade of individualisation.

The Economic Empire of the German Labour Front, 1933–1945

Rüdiger Hachtmann
Completed research project

The German Labour Front (DAF), the organisation with the biggest membership in the ‘Third Reich’, possessed an enormous number of enterprises, which – with ultimately around 200,000 employees and a turnover of roughly two billion Reichsmarks – counted among the largest German business concerns.

Sandinista Nicaragua and the Solidarity Movements in the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic. Transnational Transfers, Ideas and Practices

Stefanie Senger

Completed associated PhD project

This project researched the political practices that transferred political ideas from both parts of Germany to Sandinista Nicaragua. It also focuses on the intercultural exchange between Sandinistas and the solidarity groups, as well as on the genesis of new political ideas and practices that emerged from the Nicaraguan experience.

Completed research projects