Research Projects

Teaser

t.b.a.

The project deals with the fundamental changes in industrial labour and in the wake of the rise of digital technologies. It analyses the influence of digital change for corporate strategies and work processes in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry since the 1970s.

The increasing significance of flight and asylum in both the public and political spheres of the GDR, the ›old‹ Federal Republic and the unified Germany led to an increased social production and differentiation of flight-related figures, who are at the center of this associated PhD project.

Fotografien der langen Wende focusses on images of the East German transformation process. The research and exhibition project examines the upheaval of 1989/90 in the context of the late GDR and the early 1990s.

Fotografien der langen Wende focusses on images of the East German transformation process. The research and exhibition project examines the upheaval of 1989/90 in the context of the late GDR and the early 1990s.

This project explores the development of communal identity and ties in (West) Germany’s transgender population in the period between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eve of German Reunification.

This associated research project investigates the agency of modern mercenaries since the 1960s. It is focusing particularly on British mercenaries who not only pioneered the prospering private military industry but also published numerous accounts recounting their individual exploits.

Das Projekt untersucht Verschränkungen von Prostitution und transnationaler Mobilität anhand staatlicher und internationaler Regulierungsbestrebungen, medialer Bilder und vielschichtiger Erfahrungen der involvierten Frauen.

Associated research project
The project examines the entanglements of the pharmaceutical industry with the colonial and postcolonial world. 

The project explores the introduction of computers and databases in government agencies in West Germany and Western Europe from the late 1960s to the early 21st century.

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.

The associated PhD project examines the convergence of East and West German radio journalism in the transformation phase of the 1990s based on the example of Deutschlandradio.

Part of the Leibniz-Collaborative Excellence project "Crafting Entanglements. Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War" (CRAFTE)
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch, Secondary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Isabella Löhr
The aim of the PhD project is to trace the lived realities of Afro-Asian students and trainees during the Cold War.

This research project responds to an urgent contemporary challenge: If we are inhabiting a rapidly warming planet, then we are also experiencing constant redefinitions of cooling.

This research project explores how West Germans leveraged their own recent postwar experiences to build relationships with the decolonizing world from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Although commonly understood as opponents of the rule of law, constitutionalism and constitutional rights, in recent years, the German populist and far-right has sought to claim the mantle of the popular struggle for democracy the Basic Law, both historically and in the present.

This project aims at grasping the history of the BND after 1968, based on sources that have gone hitherto unnoticed or become only recently available. 

This project explores the role of Germany in the rise of global arms and narcotics trafficking and the efforts to contain these illicit trades from the Kaiserreich to the Nazi Era.

The associated research project examines photographs and visual discourses on significant themes of economic, political and socio-cultural development: work, migration, social ideals and happiness.

of the ERC projekt “Perestroika from Below”
This project will examine Tengrism, a Nomadic Turko-Mongolic religion in Kazakhstan during Perestroika. 
 

The project examines as a part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“ the influence of digital change on gender-related inequalities in East and West Germany since the 1970s.

This thesis posits the intersection of different study fields: Internet studies, Literary studies, Media studies, and cultural research. The main question of the research is, following Foucault, what is an author?

This project investigates the migration-related transformations of Western European democracies in historical perspective. It aims at critically interrogating present – in part racializing – narratives on European democracies and their ‘migrant other’.

Through analysis of comic routines and performances of the most influential Soviet and post-Soviet Russian comedians, the PhD project aims to trace the continuity and breaks in the evolution of Russian language verbal comedy over the past 80 years.

The Ukrainian SSR is considered as one of the main centres of fashion development in the Soviet Union. The project is devoted to a thorough exploration of the history of Ukrainian Soviet fashion in the context of ideology and everyday life during the Cold War.

of the ERC project "Perestroika from Below"
The research project will take a look at the transformation of the Soviet museum system through the lens of different former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan and Russia.
 

of the ERC project "Perestroika from Below"
The project examines the grassroots social composition of the perestoika-era crime boom in Ukraine, paying particular attention to its effects on society, identity and politics.

Starting from the question of whether imposture and conmanship was connected to the political, social, and cultural transformations of the long twentieth century, the research project therefore aims to trace the changes in the phenomenon.

Associated research project
The project on the history of aeronautical research during the Second World War, focusing on the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) Göttingen, intends to open up new perspectives. 

The aim of the joint project is to research the theory and practice of citizen participation in the co-production and communication of the past in the digital age. Juliane Fürst is the project leader at the ZZF.

The aim of the joint project is to research the theory and practice of citizen participation in the co-production and communication of the past in the digital age. Juliane Fürst is the project manager at the ZZF.

The aim of the associated project is to investigate the extent to which the political, economic and social conditions of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era influenced the representation of the self in photography.

Book project
The project analyzes the reform of the abortion law (§218) during the German unification period as result of a decade-long public debate on reforming the outdated abortion law in West Germany. 

Juliane Scholz can be contacted via the University of Lübeck, e-mail: Juliane.Scholz@uni-luebeck.de

The project studies the journalists and entrepreneurs setting up these and similar agencies in order to ask what strategies they used in order to make their new kinds of news convincing to new audiences.

Laughter is the best medicine, so it goes. The science behind the saying, however, is not clear at all. The project aims to investigate how a scientifically disputed finding has become popular.
Since 2022, the project has been continued outside the ZZF.

With the online platform #covidmemory, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) at the University of Luxembourg wants to offer all people living or working in Luxembourg the opportunity to share their experiences and preserve them for future generations.
Since 2022, the project has been continued outside the ZZF.

The project investigates the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine by examining individual violent actors during their deployment and the environments that produced them.

The project examines how a GDR-specific beauty culture developed and how distinction was possible in a society whose goal was to overcome class differences.

Associated research project
The project explores the question of how influential the debates on the knowledge society were for the reconfiguration of labour in the late 20th and early 21st century. 

PhD project
The project examines the history of the semantics of ‘progress’ (‘Fortschritt’) in twentieth century german political language. The project is part of an investigation of political-social concepts of time and process and is funded within the framework of the collaborative project "The 20th Century in Basic Concepts. A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany".

The project examines how the PDS transformed itself both at the federal and state level with regard to personnel, organization and program since the fall of 1989 and how it developed in the 1990s.

The production of knowledge on migration is a growing field of both institutional practice and academic research. This Special Issue advances the ‘reflexive turn’ in migration research by adding a new dimension to it: its contributions explore the production of knowledge on migration from a moral economies perspective.

Research project
Concentrating on monetary and capital market policy in Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s, this research project examines the tensions between increasing market orientation and persisting regulatory claims.

Funded by the DFG 2022 to 2024 (own position)
This project asks how and why a project that not only required huge resources but implicated serious financial and technological risks as well was realized in times of grave economic crisis and socio-political challenges.   

The PhD project is dedicated to the study of illegitimate military violence by Cossack units in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the end of the Second World War

Associated PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
This project examines the transformation of work and temporal regimes in temporary employment since the 1970s. 

With zdbooks (https://zdbooks.de), the ZZF has put online a new publication platform on which eBooks appear in open access gold (together with Frederike Heinitz and Caroline Boisten).

Associated PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Das assoziiertes Dissertationsprojekt untersucht die sozialen Folgen der arbeitsweltlichen Veränderungen im ostdeutschen Einzelhandel im ersten Jahrzehnt nach der deutschen Einheit.

Associated PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Das Promotionsprojekt beschäftigt sichmit der Frage welche sozialen Folgen Wiedervereinigung und Privatisierung der deutsch-deutschen Eisenbahnen, für die Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse von Eisenbahner*innen

Research project
Postgraduate Research Group of the Hans Böckler Foundation
Project management: Frank Bösch/ZZF, Winfried Süß/ZZF (spokesman), Stefan Berger/ISB Bochum, und Andreas Wirsching/IfZ München-Berlin
Duration: November 2021 - October 2024 (second funding phase of the Kolleg).
During the second half of the twentieth century, technological and economic changes have induced fundamental changes in the world of labour. The four dissertation projects of Lukas Doil, Till Goßmann, Jessica Hall, and Christina Häberle are located at the ZZF Potsdam in Dept. IV "Regimes of the Social."

Postdoc-Project
Part of the project "The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000" 
In the Bonn Republic, the normalization of nationalist programmatics, rhetorics and practices has also been referred to as ‘renazification,’ ‘restoration,’ ‘trend reversal’ (Tendenzwende) or ‘rightward shift’ (Rechtsruck). With regard to the occupation zones and Eastern Germany, the phenomenon was rather coinded as ‘new nationalism’. The project examine these processes of formation and appropriation. 

The associated project asks about the substitute function in the various types of avatars that appear as posthuman bodies.

Associated PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
This project follows the footsteps of the German shoe industry abroad, tells the story of the companies and their employees.

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. 

Research study
(Jutta Braun, together with Michael Wildt, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media sent out a signal with a survey on coming to terms with National Socialism at around 100 BKM-funded cultural institutions in order to identify research deficits in the fields of visual arts, music, literature and film.

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".

Asociated PhD project
This project is situated in between the history of science, technology and media. The focus of the research will be the relationship between thinking and (manual) labour and how it was measured, stabilised, scrutinised or formed in the first place by psychological performance tests in Germany (and partly Austria and Switzerland) during the 20th century.

Asociated PhD project
Das Dissertationsprojekt geht der Frage nach, wie das Phänomen der Fahnenflucht, die politische Wahrnehmung dieses Problems und die staatlichen Verfolgungspraktiken sich wechselseitig formiert haben. 

Website project
with students of the Master's program Public History (FU Berlin/ZZF Potsdam)
Together with the "Initiativgruppe Internierungslager Ketschendorf", interviews and a virtual tour are planned for this Website-Project at the site of the former Special Camp No. 5.

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.

Research 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 by: Laura Haßler, Dr. Marie Müller-Zetzsche, Darius Muschiol (completed phd project, June 2024), Dr. Dominiik Rigoll, Jakob Saß and Luisa Seydel (until 31.1.2023).

The associated project project puts the (soldier’s) photo album at the center of its investigation and examines the narrativity of this type of source.

Joint project
The project "Urban Authenticity" examines how in public debates, media presentations and during the planning process parts of the existing buildings in a city gain value because they get branded as authentic.

Forschungsprojekt
Das Projekt betreut: Prof. Dr. Thomas Schaarschmidt
Das Forschungsprojekt soll die Lücke schließen, die sich aus der Fixierung der Forschung auf die industriellen Großbetriebe der DDR und ihre Privatisierung bzw. Abwicklung durch die Treuhand in den 90er Jahren ergeben hat.

Forschungsprojekt
Das Projekt betreut: Prof. Dr. Thomas Schaarschmidt
Das Forschungsprojekt soll die Lücke schließen, die sich aus der Fixierung der Forschung auf die industriellen Großbetriebe der DDR und ihre Privatisierung bzw. Abwicklung durch die Treuhand in den 90er Jahren ergeben hat.

Associated 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. 

Das Projekt historisiert den Streit um das „wahre“ Potsdam, die „Rückgewinnung der historischen Mitte“ und den Erhalt der „Ostmoderne“. Das Projekt ist Teil des Verbundprojektes: „Urban Authenticity: Creating, Contesting, and Visualising the Built Heritage in European Cities since the 1970s (UrbAuth)” Leibniz Research Alliance "Value of the Past".

Research project (Postdoc)
Supported by Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Feodor-Lynen-Rückkehrstipendium
Way before the era of online-dating- apps, marriage bureaux and dating institutes in the US and Europe began to use computers to conquer the rapidly growing markets of the ‘lonely hearts’. The project explores the long and chequered history of electronic matchmaking since the 1950s.

of the ERC project „Perestroika from Below“
The project will examine a history of the independent peace movement in the USSR in the late 1970s – 1980s and the global backgrounds of its activity. 

The project examines the debates on the possible restitution of cultural objects to their countries of origin as part of decolonization and North-South relations between the late 1960s and 1980s.

PhD project
The project is part of the collaborative Leibniz-project "The Historicity of Democracy in the Arab and Muslim Worlds". 
First supervisor/project manager at ZZF: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch.
This project examines the transformation of Turkish society from the 1960s to the 1980s from a transnational and gender-historical perspective. 

Collaborative research project / Verbundprojekt
Part project (PhD project) Elisabeth Kimmerle: Women in Movement. Migrant Self-Organization and Transnational Mobilization of Migrant Women from Turkey in West Germany (1961-1990)
The project explores democracy and debates about democracy in the Arab and Muslim worlds from a historical perspective. It is a research network of: ZMO Berlin, IEG Mainz, ZZF Potsdam, IFO Amman, Manouba University. Project leader at ZZF is Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch.

Associated PhD project
The project examines how individual foreign trade transactions of the GDR took place and what role the state-monopolized foreign trade enterprises played in the preparation and execution of those transactions.

Anhand von Fotografien und schriftlichen Quellen zur staatlichen Bildagentur Zentralbild der DDR untersucht das Projekt, unter welchen Bedingungen die DDR staatliche Bildpolitik betrieb und wie sich unter diesen Bedinungen visueller Konformismus, aber auch fotografischer Eigensinn entfalteten.

The project is aiming to capture German-Jewish experiences of the Weimar Republic and National Socialist regime through the lens of private photography.

Associated 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?

Associated PhD project
The project analyses why there had not been a comprehensive prosecution despite the abolition of the sterilization law and why most of these few investigations and criminal procedures remained without conviction. 

Part of the cooperation project of the ZZF and the University of Potsdam "The Transformation of the East German Universities in the 1980s / 90s
Project leader at ZZF: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch 
The project examines the transformation of the humanities after the peaceful revolution of 1989/90 in East Germany, focusing on Potsdam as a university city.

Violence after Stalinism is the theme of this research project. Using the dichotomy of violence and civility, it seeks to develop a better understanding of the transformation of Russian society from the late Brezhnev era into the present.

Research project
The project analyzes how job requirements in three high-tech industries – automobiles, pharmaceutics, and information and communication technology – shifted in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1970s. 

of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism?
This project focuses on the legacies of the communist system in the field of football and gives access to the bottom-up perspective of the political-economic transformation in post-communist Ukraine. 

Cooperation project
of the ZZF and the University of Potsdam
under the direction of Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch and Prof. Dr. Dominik Geppert (University Potsdam)
The project will comprehensively investigate the transformations on the basis of three individual studies. The central question is the extent to which the founding history of Potsdam University differs from the transformation processes of other East German universities. There are two PhD projects at the ZZF.

of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism? 
The project is based on the hypothesis of existing continuities from the Soviet to today’s Russian society. This seems to be especially true for the continuing existence of elites and networks. This assumption will be examined using the Russian museum system and museum professionals as a field of research. The project is part of the Interdisciplinary Research Network Legacies of Communism? 

Associated PhD project
Part of the project “Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000”. The project examines the regulation of the energy consumption of private households from the 1970s to 1990s. 

of the Interdisciplinary Research Network "Legacies of Communism?
To this day, the “Colleges of Advanced Studies” are considered the playground of the young elite in Hungary. The project explores the role of the colleges in the transition from late socialism to democracy.
 

Joint project "Drifting Apart"
Subproject at the ZZF Potsdam under the direction of Frank Bösch.

The subproject examines how international engagement with Iran has changed since the 1979 revolution. It analyzes the negotiation and enforcement of sanctions as well as the emergence of new forms of cooperation.

BMBF joint project
ZZF, LMU München and FU Berlin 
Project leader at ZZF: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch, Dr. Jürgen Danyel, Christoph Classen 
The project investigates the emergence, transformation and use of GDR-related media. Mass media and private media as well as their usage environments are analysed. In addition to the research projects, the network is developing a handbook on GDR film, a new website with oral history interviews and a portal on GDR narrow film.
In the 2nd project phase 2023-25, the ZZF is working on projects by Isabel Enzenbach/Anja Tack, Tom Koltermann, Nikolai Okunew and Lea Freese-Renner.

Based on a program and user analysis for the period from 1989 to the mid-2000s, the project examines how the so-called "Third Programs" ORB and MDR as well as selected local television stations accompanied the profound social change. This Project is a part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

Associated reseach project
Based on the history of the international, European and national legal regulation of nuclear power, the project deals with central questions of historical research: the role of international organisations and their experts; politics, law and regulation; environmental protection and energy use; and the handling of technologies and their risks.

Associated PhD project
Part of the Project "Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000". The project examines the growing importance of economic regulation in West German environmental policy in the last third of the 20th century. In particular, it focuses on the proliferation of economic expertise in advisory boards such as the Council of Experts on Environmental Issues.

Paul Merker, Politburo member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was the highest-ranking East German Communist politician to fell victim of the Stalinist repression in the 1950s in the GDR. The planned book attempts to present the first full-scale political biography of Paul Merker.

The main goal of the research project is the connection of visual and linguistic modes of interpretation to conceptualize landscape as a multi-media aesthetic-political object.
 

Private photo albums form an important part of the biographical memory of people from the former GDR. As ego documents and a kind of "retreat into the private sphere", they are contextualized with contemporary events and analyzed for their political content. The associated PhD project is part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

The project investigates the domestic security functions, methods and practices of the KGB in the last decades of its existence. It will explore the routine of the KGB’s work, as well as the mechanisms and instruments of social control that directly or indirectly affected “average” Soviet citizens in the course of everyday life.

This project is particularly interested in the interrelations between the development of advertising and political and economic changes in the GDR. By investigating professional and governmental discourses, the study also aims to investigate how the focus of advertising has changed over the course of time.

On the basis of so far partially unpublished documents, film and sound material, photographs and interviews with main actors as well as own research, the dramatic events during the construction and fall of the Wall up to the political unification of Germany are reconstructed and presented on a bilingual website (German/English) for the public.

This project addresses leadership systems underpinned with computers in the Bundeswehr and the National People’s Army (NVA) in the context of the formation and establishment of both armies within the alliance system of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact. 

Associated Edition project
The projected edition is dedicated to the citizens’ movement Alliance 90, which merged with the West German Greens in 1993 to form Alliance 90/The Greens. It documents the strategy debates between the citizens’ movements at the Round Table and in the People’s Chamber group, in the run-up to the 1990 state elections as to the 1990 general election to the German Bundestag.

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.

The Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste), Berlin, opened the exhibition ‘Fading Memories’ (Verblassende Erinnerung) in 2006, which displays works from one of the most renowned East German photographers, Sybille Bergmann. The title of the exhibition aims to present the radical changes of cities and landscapes since the time of the former GDR.

This biographical project focuses on two areas of research: the importance of biographies in East German power relations and the role Honecker played in the GDR’s long-term political stability and the government’s sudden downfall.

The German Democratic Republic's Ministry of State Security (MfS) operated in over 25 countries of what was then often described as the ‘Third World’. This study will present three case studies, hereby comparing Stasi activities in different countries and at different times. Zanzibar (1960s), Mozambique (1970s) and Nicaragua (1980s). The analysis will pinpoint which goals were pursued by the state security apparatus.

Associated PhD project
The project looks at probation as a special form of social engineering. In doing so the rules of normative behaviour and their transformation since the 1950s are considered and the political strategies of governmental and non-governmental actors are examined, along with their policies of assistance and control, and it will be established to what extent providers relied on self-regulation. 

After almost complete destruction during the Second World War, the city of Pforzheim became, as a result of the subsequent economic upsurge, a focal point for many newcomers. In a local study, it will be considered how the integration process was implemented by administration and society over the years, using the example of refugees from East Germany. 

Moving history is the first film festival in Germany to specialize in history in film. It sees itself as a forum where audiences, filmmakers and academics can exchange views on cinematic representations of the past.

The project aims, with the help of serial report sources, to reconstruct the informal formation of and shift in opinions and attitudes among the East German population.

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.

(until 2023)
The aim of the project is to investigate the experiences of the young men serving in the Soviet armed forces in the late socialist period. A special emphasis is placed on the barrack violence that expanded increasingly throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Associated PhD project
This research project, the socio–economic situations of East German employee households from 1980 until 2000—thus embedding the epochal break of 1989/90—will be researched.

The online repository visual-history.de, hosted by the ZZF, serves as a platform for historical research on visual sources and phenomena. It provides up-to-date insights into the growing community of visual historians and their activities, and supports the formation of professional networks.

The online repository visual-history.de, hosted by the ZZF, serves as a platform for historical research on visual sources and phenomena. It provides up-to-date insights into the growing community of visual historians and their activities, and supports the formation of professional networks.

The objective of this project is a compact portrayal of the social history of the SED dictatorship that combines the findings of the political history of the regime with analyses of the social structures and ranges of experience in East German society. 

Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte provides basic knowledge in the field of contemporary history for a wider public. The open-access online reference work enables readers to remain informed about research trends, subjects, controversies, theories and methods in contemporary history.

Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte provides basic knowledge in the field of contemporary history for a wider public. The open-access online reference work enables readers to remain informed about research trends, subjects, controversies, theories and methods in contemporary history.

Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte provides basic knowledge in the field of contemporary history for a wider public. The open-access online reference work enables readers to remain informed about research trends, subjects, controversies, theories and methods in contemporary history.

„Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History” (ZF/SCH) is a peer-review journal on questions of contemporary history with a German, European and global outlook.

„Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History” (ZF/SCH) is a peer-review journal on questions of contemporary history with a German, European and global outlook.

The exhibition explores the uprisings, assassinations and attempted coups in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Eight perspectives illustrate how extremists and separatists brought Germany to the brink of civil war.

The platform ‘Zeitgeschichte-online’ exists since January 2004. It aims to address historians, students of the humanities and similar courses and a wider public interested in contemporary history.

Between 1951 and 1990 was on Keibelstraße in Berlin-Mitte a detention center (UHA) and also a police and deportation custody from 1992 to 1996. As part of the project, a permanent exhibition was set up at the site and educational materials were developed.

With a diachronic study, the pictorial representation of "guest workers" and "(late) resettlers" in the German print media between 1955 and 1998 is to be analyzed in this project. 

The project analyzes historical roots of present day anti-liberal and illiberal ideas in the (East) German society. Observing the drift by former GDR citizen rights activists to the populist right, it will collectively trace the intellectual and political evolution of prominent dissident figures.

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.

Post-Doc Project
The project examines crisis perceptions and crisis policies in two German and British trade unions in a long-term comparison. In particular, the post-war crisis 1919-1926 and the structural change at the end of the 1970s are examined. 

The bilingual website (German/English) and the “Berlin Wall”-apps are constantly revised, updated and extended. On the basis of so far partially unpublished documents, film and sound material, photographs and interviews with main actors as well as own research, the dramatic events during the construction and fall of the Wall up to the political unification of Germany are reconstructed and illustrated as well as the most important stations of German division shown.

The project aims at analysis of the Russian-language historical channels on Telegram and its comparison with historical channels on other Russian-language media platforms (primarily Vkontakte and Instagram). 

Book project
The aim of the book is an integrated history of knowledge about social inequality, social conflicts and politics regulating social inequality, which can be helpful for historicising and contextualising current debates about wealth, poverty and social inequality. 

Research project
The project deals with the internationalisation of the economy from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, analyzing it from the perspective of German companies.

The project analyses the history of mass media relations and interdependencies in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR until the end of the Cold War. Which reflexes, competitions and cooperations characterised their relationship, and how did it evolve? Was it primarily a propaganda war or did the mass media – especially public broadcasting – create a “bridge over troubled water” in the conflict between the two Germanys? How did the collapse of Communism affect this relationship?

Book project
The promotion of art played not only an artistic but also a socio-political role in the Federal Republic of Germany. This monograph examines the commitment of individual personalities in the transformation of the art and museum scene after 1945/49 and 1989/90. 

Book project
The target of this project is a monograph entitled ‘The Fordist Century’. The study will focus on Germany, including perspectives on global and international developments (besides the USA, particularly Japan, the USSR, Italy and Sweden [post-Fordist Volvo system]).

The Netzwerk Zeitgeschichte connects museums, research and civil society. It wants to open spaces of non-profit, private, and federally funded mueseums and research facilities for project presentations and aims at connecting different players in the contemporary history space.

(until 2023)
The research aims at analyzing official and unofficial discourses of heritage in contemporary Russia. The Project analyzes how the concepts of cultural heritage are interpreted and used by official state institutions and public memorial and conservation projects.

The metropolitan Cities of Moscow and Chicago stood in many ways for their nations’ path to modernity. They were places of hope and despair, of reform and revolution, of violence and civility. The study will explore how urban modernity was dealt with in two different cultural contexts that were confronted with often similar problems.

Research project
The project analyzes the transdisciplinary emergence of a specific body of behavioral knowledge in the second half of the twentieth century, asking how regulatory approaches to human beings changed in the paradigm of behavior.

Associated PhD project
Project of the Postgraduate Research Group "Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work"
Why the DGB insisted on its demands and only hesitantly adapted to the changed circumstances and living conditions is determined in the project on the basis of four fields of investigation.

The project deals with the non-Zionist agricultural training centre Groß-Breesen in the former Lower Silesia.

The handbook brings together approaches in the disciplines of international law history, the history of international relations, and the fields of East and Southeast European history. It demonstrates points of commonality found in certain current research approaches such as the New International History (a cultural history of all things political) and in Critical Legal Studies.

The project "Keibelstraße" examines the former East Berlin headquarters of the Volkspolizei (PdVP) near the Alexanderplatz. The study focuses on individual units of the DVP, which conducted investigations of so-called "Republikfluchten". In particular, the research spotlights the cooperation between the criminal police and the Stasi.

In addition to governmental, military and economic interests, there have been sub- and countercultures dealing with the new medium since the beginnings of computer usage. In particular the hackers, but also players, pursued their own practices with regard to computers and formed networks. Thus, they shaped the discourse and practices related to computers. These cultural practices and their impact on the daily-life application of computers since the 1970s in Germany will be developed in this PhD project.

The Inventar der Migrationsbegriffe, a constantly growing online platform that is regularly updated with new terms, presents key concepts from the current debates on migration and discusses how they have developed, how they are used in different social fields and how their meaning changes over time. 

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.

The exhibition explores the uprisings, assassinations and attempted coups in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Eight perspectives illustrate how extremists and separatists brought Germany to the brink of civil war.

The platform ‘Zeitgeschichte-online’ exists since January 2004. It aims to address historians, students of the humanities and similar courses and a wider public interested in contemporary history.

The PhD project investigates the interactions and interdependencies of the transition to the WWW in the aftermath of 1989/90. It focuses on the question of how this new online medium and in particular social media determined the development of different forms and narratives of GDR memories.

In the project (until 04/2024), based on artefacts from the Documentation Centre for Everyday Culture in the DDR, Eisenhüttenstadt, these family worlds of objects were reconstructed and analysed. The questions are posed as to how things were involved in different ‘Lebensstile’ (lifestyles) and ‘Lebensweisen’ (ways of life) and how their validity can be used for socio-historical issues.