Research projects

A B C D E F G H K L M N O P R S T V W

Alms Collectors between Charity, Commerce and Denominationalisation

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
06/2019 - 05/2020 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
30 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The immigration of Eastern Orthodox alms collectors from the Ottoman Empire into the Old Empire is the focus of the project. It pursues interwoven questions of migration, knowledge and denominational history. In order to clarify these questions, archives from different territories of the empire will be compared and insights into the history of other types of migrants (traders and students), but also of other charitable groups active in the same field, will be drawn upon.

Annexations and Secessions in the Age of the Global Cold War

Project management
Dr. Christian Methfessel Duration
10/2018 - 09/2021 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
236 000 €

Christian Methfessel: International borders were surprisingly stable during the Cold War. The project seeks to analyze the reasons for that stability by examining selected territorial conflicts in Africa and South Asia.

BBNE-Hubs

Project management
Several Duration
05/2024 - 04/2026 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 111 000 €

In the BBNE Hubs project, existing and tried-and-tested educational interventions from successful pilot projects are transferred and further consolidated.

Between Experience and Memory: Educational Paths of Christian Citizens of the GDR from Socialist Society to the Present Day

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The research project is based on the observation that the disadvantages of young Christians in the GDR are mostly remembered in close connection with socialist educational institutions. Therefore, the historical study focuses on narratives, practices and structures of inequalities in the education system and explores the educational paths of Christian citizens of the GDR.

Cinema in the GDR – Reception History 'from Below'

Project management
Several Duration
06/2019 - 05/2022 Funding
Several donors
456 000 €

Christiane Kuller: Until now, the history of GDR cinema has been written primarily as a history of state film policy and production, with research largely ignoring the perspective of moviegoers. This is the point of departure for the citizen science research project "Cinema in the GDR", whose goal is to develop an everyday history of GDR cinema together with contemporary witnesses.

Dictatorship Experience and Transformation

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025 Funding
Several donors
1 500 000 €

The starting point of the project is the assumption that not only individual and collective experiences during the GDR (German Democratic Republic - DDR) itself, but also the deep biographical upheavals of the post-reunification period shape the memory of the GDR. In the following decade, the political debates of 1989/90 gave rise to a conflict of memory that continues to have an impact today. This determines the time frame of the project, which takes a look at the last two decades of the GDR…

Documentation and Description of the Kanakanavu Language, an Endangered Language of Formosa (Taiwan R.O.C. - Republic of China)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christian Lehmann Duration
06/2012 - 07/2015 Funding
Several donors
50 000 €

The project is dedicated to the language documentation of Kanakanavu, an endangered indigenous language in Taiwan. Recorded texts will be written down and the language system will be analyzed linguistically. In addition, the situation of the language will be examined.

Eastern Christians and the Republic of Letters between the 16th and 18th centuries

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2019 - 12/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
45 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The Republic of Letters, a wide network of intellectuals, also has an Eastern side with numerous actors communicating in Greek, Latin, Arabic or Slavic languages (especially on religious issues). Despite the existence of extensive sources, this topic has rarely been studied interdisciplinary and from an "entangled history" perspective. In order to enable a more complete cartography of this East-West exchange (16th-18th century), this project will bring together scholars of…

Establishment of a cross-university "Scientific Coordination Unit for Dealing with the Colonial Heritage in Thuringia".

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
09/2021 - 08/2024 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The coordination unit builds on the existing expertise on the topic of "colonial heritage" at the Universities of Erfurt and Jena and aims to network and strengthen activities in the future with regard to research, teaching and social dialogue.

Establishment of an oral history research centre

Duration
09/2021 - 09/2025

The research centre focuses on the "East German experience". The research centre takes up the specifics of the GDR and transformation period and discusses the methodology of oral history in this context. As a central institution of this kind in the East German Länder, the research centre is to be expanded into a supra-regional centre and, in terms of its design, be a building block of the nationwide network of oral history institutions that is currently being established.

European Interuniversity Graduate School on Theology in Processes of religious and societal Transformation

Project management
Several Duration
10/2021 - 09/2024 Funding
Stifterverband:
1 200 000 €

The European Interuniversity Graduate School on Theology in Processes of religious and societal Transformation thematically and structurally brings together theological research and the promotion of early-stage researchers from three European universities.

Family memories of everyday life and the reality of rule under the SED dictatorship

Project management
Dr. Agnès Arp Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The research project focuses on the generational stratification of family memories and narratives about experiences in the SED dictatorship and transformation phase after 1989/90. The starting point is the results of the Thuringia Monitor, according to which a predominantly positive judgement of everyday life in the GDR, which is essentially based on the traditions in the close circle of family and friends,…

From GDR Homeland Studies to Social Studies. Primary school before and after 1989

Project management
Prof. Dr. Sandra Tänzer Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The average age of teachers at Thuringian schools is around 50. A large number of the primary school teachers working in Thuringia today were educated in the GDR and personally experienced the social upheaval of 1989/1990. They witnessed the change in educational policy and the transformation of the subject of local history from an ethos to a subject, which is now called local history in Thuringian primary schools.…

G. W. Leibniz and Eastern Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Gábor Gángó Duration
09/2019 - 08/2017

Despite its high relevance for the formation of the early modern consciousness of Europe, the research topic "Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Eastern Europe" proves to be terra incognita in the otherwise already widely explored life and work of the German polymath and calls for fundamental critical discussion. In order to contribute to the revival of an early work that has so far only been marginally treated, I will, during my stay at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, prepare a manuscript for a monograph on…

History of the State Ministries in Baden and Württemberg During the NS Era

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2014 - 12/2018 Funding
Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg:
207 800 €

The project deals with one of the last major gaps in research on the NS regime: the supreme state authorities and their involvement in NS crimes. After decades of research oriented towards political history had marginalized the importance of the "assimilated" state authorities, attention has recently been drawn to this research desideratum in connection with studies of administrative history.

KNOWPRO: Knowledge Production in German Peace and Security Policy

Duration
04/2022 - 03/2026

Using Afghanistan and Somalia as case studies, the project examines the peace and security policy knowledge production in Germany and East Africa on participation in interventions in internal wars with military or financial means.

LINKED - Music Learning in Postdigital Communities

Project management
Several Duration
12/2017 - 03/2021 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
359 000 €

The collaborative project MuBiTec addresses the special educational potential that results from the mediamorphosis of artistic-musical practice in the context of digital mobile technologies.

Martyrdom and Voluntariness. Discourse and Practice in the European High and Late Middle Ages

Project management
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmolinsky Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". The subproject analyzes martyrdom as a discourse and as a practice of men and women in high and late medieval centuries.

Meeting places of the MfS and places of dissidence in Erfurt

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2019 - 09/2025

Subproject in the research network "Dictatorship Experience and Transformation". The project focuses on two concrete spaces of experience and action in the urban landscape of the GDR and the perceptions and memories associated with them.

Neopaganism in Contemporary Greece: Beliefs, Practices, and the Symbolic Struggle over Hellenicity/Greekness

Project management
Several Duration
09/2024 - 08/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
342 000 €

The research project examines Neopaganism in contemporary Greece, focussing on beliefs, ritual practices and the symbolic struggle for the Greek heritage. It analyses the many facets of this movement and its critical engagement with the Greek Orthodox Church and state and academic institutions.

Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2019 - 12/2022 Funding
Henry T. Luce Foundation / Leadership 100:
5 000 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: This project brings together scholars of Orthodox Christianity to provide comprehensive analyses of the contemporary relationship between Orthodox Christianity and human rights in all of its variation and complexity. Participants will investigate Orthodox Christian approaches to human rights in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Protestantism and the Debates about the German Welfare State

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2013 - 12/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
428 700 €

Social Protestantism in the Federal Republic of Germany has developed a new profile since the 1960s. At the same time, and in interaction with it, German society has undergone fundamental changes in its living environment, values and culture. In dealing with the economic and social challenges and in view of the increasing scientific character of the relevant debates, Protestantism adopted central dispositions of thought, some of which went back to the Weimar period, and realigned itself in terms…

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s Reception among Key Thinkers of the 20th Century Orthodox World (Vl. Lossky, Fr. Sophrony, Chr. Yannaras, J. Zizioulas)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
02/2022 - 01/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
301 000 €

The research project will examine the multifaceted reception of the 6th century scriptural corpus attributed to Dionysius Areopagita by four pioneering Orthodox theologians in the 20th century: on the Russian side (but active in Western Europe), Vladimir Lossky and Old Father Sofronij (Sakharov); and on the Greek side, Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas.

Religious Communities (RC) and Civil Society (CS) in Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2015 - 12/2018

Vasilios N. Makrides: Religious Communities in European Civil Society is a large-scale exploratory research project aimed at assessing the position of religious communities as potential or active civil society actors in Europe, and at looking into differences in their positioning on legal, historical, cultural, and behavioural grounds. The seemingly vitalizing impact of religion and religiosity on civil society is a research topic that has been extensively looked into, not only in the USA, but…

Research Centre Johann Gottfried Herder

Project management
Dr. Dominik Fugger Duration
01/2015 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
195 000 €

The Johann-Gottfried-Herder Research Centre at the Max-Weber-Kolleg was launched in 2015. It sees itself as an interdisciplinary platform for the research and scientific exchange of Herder's work. A special concern for the centre is the grouping together of the different facets of Herder's thinking.

Research Group "Voluntariness"

Project management
Several Duration
10/2020 - 03/2027 Funding
Several donors
4 120 551 €

Jürgen Martschukat, Christiane Kuller, Sabine Schmolinsky, Iris Schröder: In this project, the researchers will examine voluntariness as a driving force of human practices in the past and present. The central question is how Western pre-modern and modern, but also non-European societies and subjects are governed through the principle of voluntariness. This includes, for example, religiously motivated voluntariness in medieval martyrdom as well as voluntary "participation" in dictatorships. The…

Science and Orthodox Christianity around the World (SOW)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
01/2016 - 12/2019

Vasilios N. Makrides: The Project SOW - Science & Orthodoxy around the World focuses on the dialogue between science and religion in the Orthodox Christian world. More than 50 specialists from 15 countries participate from various academic fields such as Science, Philosophy, History, Theology and Education.

Social Justice under the Condition of Scarcity- social-ethical research on the future of social security in Germany on the condition of controlled and uncontrolled migration

Project management
Prof. Dr. Elke Mack Duration
01/2016 - 12/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
344 000 €

Elke Mack: With reference to the newer philosophical and Christian-ethical debate on immigration, a set of ethical criteria will be developed, which spell out when, to what extent and in which form the admission of immigrants in western welfare states like Germany is a universal obligation, normatively just and ethical, while at the same time considering the limited capacities of national social institutions.

The Challenge of Worldliness to Contemporary Christianity: Orthodox Christian Perspectives in Dialogue with Western Christianity

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
03/2021 - 02/2023

The main aim of the project is to examine the relationships with the world that have been articulated in the major Christian traditions (Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism), both historically and in the present, through selected case studies.

The King as Part of the Network

Project management
Dr. Christian Oertel Duration
05/2018 - 04/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
275 000 €

The ruling practice of the German and Bohemian king Wenceslaus IV, who was nicknamed "der Faule" (the Idle) by older research, will be reconsidered in this project on the basis of documentary tradition. On the one hand, the 'classical' aspects of the practice of rule will be examined (political action in the empire, alliance systems, economic aspects). On the other hand, the investigation will be opened up in the direction of cultural history. Fields such as courtly representation or patronage…

Theft of Cultural Property

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
01/2015 - 12/2016 Funding
Landeshauptstadt München:
98 600 €

The confiscation of Munich, which initiated one of the largest state art thefts in the area of the Old Empire during the NS era, was carried out by the Secret State Police. However, art experts, art dealers and directors of museums (Bavarian State Painting Collections - Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Bavarian National Museum - Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, the urban gallery - Städtische Galerie, the historical city museum - Historisches Stadtmuseum) as well as state, municipal and NSDAP…

Voluntariness and Decolonization. The Regulation of Labor in (Post-)Colonial Ghana

Project management
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject focuses on voluntariness during an era of decolonization and thus on a political principle of (post-)colonial governance. Drawing on the case of the British Gold Coast/Ghana, we explore how voluntary action shaped the political and social order during the transition from late colonial “indirect rule” to independence, while examining how voluntariness became a political and social norm and resource. Our key focus is on the…

Voluntariness and Dictatorship. Voluntary participation in the ‘Neuererwesen’ of the GDR

Project management
Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuller Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". Taking a subject-focused analytical approach, our study foregrounds voluntary participation among “Neuerer” – members of the GDR’s workplace inventor and suggestion scheme known as the “Neuerer- und Rationalisatorenbewegung” (Innovator and Rationalizer Movement). Our analysis focuses on individuals’ interpretations of their own actions, while also exploring the relationship between self-regulation and external guidance with respect to involvement…

Voluntariness and Repatriation. Transnational Processes of Remigration and Repatriation (1960–2000)

Project management
Dr. Florian Wagner Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject of the research group "Voluntariness". This subproject investigates the interactions between principles and practices of voluntariness in transnational migration processes between the 1960s and 2000. These interactions are analyzed in light of the remigration and repatriation of labor migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, chiefly from the Global North to the Global South. I argue that from the 1960s on, a repatriation regime emerged that sought to legitimize its practices by…

Voluntariness as Political Practice. The Emerging United States and American Citizenship

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2020 - 09/2023

Subproject in the research group "Voluntariness". The emerging United States is widely regarded as the cradle of liberalism. This “new form of political life,” to quote philosopher Anthony Appiah, took off in the American republic and spawned the “American citizen” as the ideal of the liberal subject. This subproject examines the significance of voluntariness in this process and shows how liberty took on concrete form in the new republic, pointing up the voluntary forms of thinking and acting…

Western Traditionalism/Perennialism and its Influence on Orthodox Christianity

Project management
Prof. Dr. Vasilios N. Makrides Duration
05/2017 - 04/2020 Funding
Several donors
211 400 €

Vasilios N. Makrides: The research project aims to undertake a comparative analysis of the reflection on the position of Orthodox Christianity in modernity and with regard to religious pluralism, which is called "Orthodox Perennialism". The latter represents an orthodox reception of certain Western esoteric approaches to an "eternal philosophy" ("philosophia perennis") in various religions and is an attempt to rethink and articulate the spiritual and religious contours of the Orthodox presence…

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