Completed research projects

The Ministry of Health of the GDR - Change of the Political in National Socialist ‘Mecklenburg’ - Commercial Sex in West Germany - German Solidarity Movements in Nicaragua - Muslime world - Exhibition project on the GDR border regime in Potsdam - Poverty policy -Cconsumer behavior - West German Prisons - 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

JVA Berlin-Tegel, foto: aufBruch - www.gefaengnistheater.de

Closed Society. Resocialisation in West German Prisons, 1950–1990

Completed research project

The question of how criminal offenders can be made into socially-conforming members of society while serving their prison sentences took on a completely different meaning in the Federal Republic of Germany after the experiences of the Nazi dictatorship.

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

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

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: 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’.

Display zum "Medikamentenschmuggel in Weihnachtssendungen" in einer Ausstellung des Amtes für Zoll und Kontrolle des Warenverkehrs im Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen in Berlin. Foto: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-89187-0005 / Hochneder, Christa / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-89187-0005, Medikamentenschmuggel in Weihnachtssendungen, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Continuities and New Beginnings after National Socialism: The Ministry of Health of the GDR

Jutta Braun

Completed Research project
Funded by Bundesministerium für Gesundheit

The project contributed to the history of the ministerial authorities and their "continuity problem" after 1945 as well as to the history of the GDR's health policy between modernization, dictatorial control and East-West competition in the context of the Cold War.

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.

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.

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

Jutta Braun

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.

The Change of the Political in National Socialist ‘Mecklenburg’, 1933-1939

Aline Munkewitz

Completed associated PhD project

Based on a systematic exploration of decision-making paths but also with an eye to conceptualisations of the so-called Volksgemeinschaft, this research project focused on structural transmissions and changes in the way this core element of National Socialist ideology was shaped. Especially in questions of prospering development and limits of community-building, the research interest focused on aspects of negotiation between network-like communication structures of political functionaries and the population they rule over.

Herbertstraße, Hamburg. Juli 1967, Quelle: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 331-1 II 2680.

Commercial Sex in West Germany

Annalisa Martin
Completed associated PhD project

The project examined comparatively the cities of Cologne, Hamburg, and West Berlin in the long 1960s and 1970s. The guiding question here was how local policies and regulations, in conjunction with or contrary to federal law, determined the lives of women who sold sex during this period.

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.

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’.

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.

Geschichte des Deutschen Jugendherbergswerks und der Jugendherbergen seit der NS-Zeit

Winfried Süß

Abgeschlossene Vorstudie für ein Dissertationsprojekt, Anschubfinanzierung durch das Deutsche Jugendherbergswerk

Das Dissertationsprojekt analysiert anhand der Geschichte des DJH Brüche und Kontinuitäten des Jugendtourismus und macht dabei längerfristige Prägewirkungen ebenso sichtbar wie Phänomene des Neubeginns und Wandels.

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.

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.

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.

Bookcover: Umdeutungen des Islam, Wallstein 2022

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).

Completed research projects