National Socialism and its Aftermath

Bildinfo

Members of the Reich Labor Service on the way to a rally of the NSDAP, 1933. Photo: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P021658 / Frankl, A. / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P021658, Reichsarbeitsdienst, Marsch zu einer Kundgebung, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Department IV’s researchers investigate concepts, instruments and practices of societal control and mobilisation, the interrelation between mobilisation and society’s self-interests as well as processes of ‘self-mobilisation’. Addressing questions of urban change (social stratification and mobility, integration, segregation, exclusion, networks of old and new elites), relations between towns and suburbia (demarcation and exchange, suburbanisation, migration) as well as the interrelations between central, regional and municipal in the field of social regulations and mobilisation across the national capital region of Berlin/Brandenburg. Department IV’s research projects do not focus exclusively on the Nazi dictatorship. Rather, they seek to understand the long-term trends that defined societal historical developments across German society, the strategies of social regulation, and the causes of uncontrolled societal mobilisation during the final phase of Communist dictatorships.

Projektverbünde

The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000

Joint project
Project Management: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch (ZZF Potsdam), Prof. Dr. Gideon Botsch (MMZ Potsdam)
The project is dedicated to the history of the radical right in both parts of Germany in the second half of the 20th century. The aim is to analyse their development comprehensively and with the support of archives, also on the basis of previously untapped sources, in the context of contemporary history. The ZZF Potsdam is working on six sub-projects.

Projekte

Vincent Kleinbub

Youth Hostels and the German Youth Hostel Association (DJH) in National Socialism and divided Germany

PhD project

The project aims to review the history of german youth hostels and their umbrella organization as well as to make visible the breaks and continuities in youth tourism in the 1930s to the 1950s.

Dominik Rigoll

Organizing and realizing: Right-wing parties and right-wing politics from Weimar Germany to the Bonn Republic

Postdoc-Project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The small right-wing parties that formed in the western occupation zones after 1945 and shortly after the founding of the Federal Republic are generally regarded as politically failed and historically rather irrelevant. This study shows that, despite their relative weakness, these parties, whose acronyms are largely forgotten today, shaped the democratic reconstruction in the Länder from 1946 onwards and later also the emerging democracy in Bonn in many respects.

Marie Müller-Zetzsche

Media Intellectuals from the Right? The Development of Right-Wing Ideology after 1945 in Germany and France

Associated Postdoc project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The project investigates how radical right-wing ideologies have changed since 1945 in the Federal Republic and in France.

Luisa Seydel

Work, Family, Fatherland - Everyday Life and Realities of the Radical Right (ca. 1960 to 1990)

PhD project (until 31.1.2023)
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
The dissertation analyzes the lifestyle and realities of the radical right in the second half of the 20th century. It is a subproject of the VW Foundation-funded project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000".

Jakob Saß

The Radical Right and the German military after 1945

PhD project

Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
Based on internal files, this dissertation project is the first to examine previously unknown practices of the radical right both in the Bundeswehr and comparatively in the NVA in a cross-cutting and actor-oriented manner. It is part of the project “The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Laura Haßler

Rightwing Training Ground: The „ Young National Democrats“ („Junge Nationaldemokraten“), ca. 1967–1994

PhD project

Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000"
How the „Young National Democrats“ attained and exercised this key position in the right-wing milieu has not yet been researched historically. The project pursues this question by analyzing their structures, alliances, and activities from the perspective of social history.

Juliane Röleke

“Don’t you know there is a war going on?” Northern Ireland and the Federal Republic of Germany: A transnational history of conflict 1968-1998

PhD project

The PhD project asks: What transnational networks did civil society groups from both Northern Ireland and the FRG establish and how did these change during the Northern Ireland conflict? And what interpretations of violence or nonviolence shaped their engagement?

Jutta Braun

The Federal Office of Information between the Nazi Legacy and Democratic Self-Marketing

Research project
The project focuses on continuities in the staff and in practices of public communication. The core question is whether the Federal Office practised a kind of information policy similar to that of Nazi propaganda or whether it acted as a democratic institution in a post-war media society, which was liberalised under the influence of its the Western Allies.

René Schlott

Toward a Biography of Raul Hilberg (1926-2007)

Associated research project
This research project aims to present a biography of the Jewish expatriate Hilberg, who was born in 1926 in Vienna and fled to the United States in 1939. Furthermore, it will investigate the historical influence of his magnum opus.

Thomas Schaarschmidt

Mobilising Society and Economy in the Metropolitan Area of Berlin during the Second World War

Research project
This project explores processes of political mobilisation in the conurbation of the German capital in Nazi Germany. This economic region with 5.3 million inhabitants in 1939 covered an area from Potsdam in the west to Oranienburg in the north and comprised several outstanding military installations. The capital Berlin and the Prussian province of Brandenburg had close administrative ties.