Departments

The five departments of the ZZF conduct research on various topics of contemporary history and their connections to the present day.

Our research centres on German and European social history after 1945. We also analyse contemporary history in its international context; Department V, which deals with globalisation in a divided world, places a particular focus on this. Founded in 2023, it is the youngest department at the ZZF. Many research projects are also conducted across departments, thus promoting internal exchange and networking within the institute.

What are the thematic priorities of research at the ZZF’s five departments? 

Department I: Communism and Society 

Department I’s projects are dedicated to the upheaval of 1989/91 and its pre- and post-history from an overarching perspective. Research focuses on the GDR/East Germany, the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet space and East Central Europe. Several large collaborative projects with international co-operation partners are based here. The department’s research centres on the challenge of better understanding contemporary democracy and authoritarianism.

Department II: Knowledge – Economy – Politics 

Department II analyses the interrelationship between economic and political processes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A central research interest is focussed on the conceptual and knowledge systems with which the fields of the economic and the political were structured and related to each other. The projects analyse the transformation of economic processes and practices and their political regulation, mostly from an inter- and transnational perspective.

Department III: Media and Information Society

Modern societies are media societies. The conditions under which media disseminate information, control discourse, enable networking and provide entertainment must be constantly renegotiated within them. Research therefore centres on the question of the interactions between media and social change. The thematic focus is on visual history, digital change and pop culture, as well as radio and television history.

Department IV: Regimes of the Social Sphere

Based on the history of divided Germany, but also in transnational contexts, Department IV conducts research on strategies and practices of regulating social processes in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Current projects examine the transformation of labour, social inequalities and their containment by the welfare state, the contemporary history of the art world, National Socialism and its aftermath, as well as the history of the extreme right. In doing so, they pursue a cross-epochal approach that examines the long-term genesis of contemporary problems.

Department V: Globalisations in a Divided World

The Department deals with topics including migration and mobility, the regulation of international problems, and the unequal distribution of knowledge and technology. Based on these topics, the projects examine the motives and dynamics as well as the ‘making’, ‘reorganising’ and ‘breaking’ of global connections. The project results are intended to contribute to a better understanding of the complexity and contradictions of our present-day globality.
 

Further research projects are being carried out by the Directorate and the Public History department, as well as in the Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past,” which is coordinated at the ZZF.