Research projects

B C D E G I J K M N P R S T V

Black and Deaf Western Missionaries and Deaf Education in Ghana and Nigeria: The Story of Berta and Andrew Foster - A Case Study in Global History

Project management
PD Dr. Anja Werner Duration
07/2022 - 06/2025 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
356 650 €

Anja Werner: I examine deaf missionaries Andrew and Berta Foster, who starting in 1957 founded more than 30 schools and churches for the deaf in thirteen African countries.

Cartographic sources and territorial transformations of Ethiopia since the late 18th century - ETHIOMAP

Project management
Prof. Dr. Iris Schröder Duration
01/2016 - 01/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
106 000 €

The research project consists of two partner projects which are being carried out in parallel in France (funded by the ANR) and in Germany (funded by the DFG). The aim of the research project is the systematic collection, classification and analysis of historical maps from and about Ethiopia, which are often unknown in Ethiopian research.

Catholic Women Writers as Products and Producers of "Catholic Femininity"?

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
09/2016 - 09/2023 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

Jörg Seiler: The anti-modernist phase of Catholicism was characterized by normative Catholic ascriptions of femininity, which mostly obscured the pluralization dynamics of these decades. Persistence, change and (un)simultaneous emancipative ideas about a Catholic gender order should therefore be reconstructed in church history on the basis of biographical sources and literary works of Catholic women writers. As representatives of a liberal profession, they represented an unbound heterogeneous…

Charts - Oceans

Project management
Several Duration
07/2018 - 04/2022 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 100 000 €

Iris Schröder & Felix Schürmann: Maps have hitherto led a marginal existence in the history of globalization. Sea and ocean charts receive even less attention, despite their unique visualization of maritime spaces and their inherent global connections. The aim of the joint project is to use sea and ocean charts to tell a little-known story in the period of transformation dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.

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…

Educational Landscape and Knowledge Culture

Project management
Several Duration
07/2014 - 05/2017 Funding
Several donors
290 000 €

Gotha was one of the most important centres of innovation in early modern European educational history. In the project, collections-based research will be carried out using the educational history sources collected in the 17th and early 18th centuries with the aim of making the hitherto almost unknown holdings accessible to science and the public and demonstrating their potential for international research in educational history.

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.

Expansion of the Gotha Research Library into a Research and Study Centre for the Cultural History of Protestantism in the Early Modern Period

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
03/2015 - 02/2018 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
534 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves an outstanding collection of sources on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period. This is the basis of the six-year infrastructure project funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation), in which the library combines coordinated activities for the cataloguing and preservation of this important and hitherto largely unexplored material with the further development of its digital services and transfers the results of its work to science…

Globalisation and Local Knowledge

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
09/2012 - 02/2016 Funding
Several donors
300 000 €

The research project is to be understood as a pilot project, which is intended to comprehensively demonstrate the research potential of the cartographic-geographical "The Gotha Perthes Collection" acquired by the Free State of Thuringia in 2003 for the first time. In addition, it is intended to contribute to the further development of the collection and to establish a virtual map laboratory, the "GlobMapLaboratory".

Gotha Numismatica digital

Project management
PD Dr. Monika E. Müller Duration
04/2024 - 12/2024 Funding
Staatskanzlei des Freistaats Thüringen:
80 342 €

The research library preserves an important numismatic collection of historical prints and manuscripts. It is an expression of the collecting interests of the dukes of Gotha and learned numismatists, who were responsible for expanding the numismatic collections at the Gotha court from the end of the 17th century. Among their 225 numismatic manuscripts are famous works such as the Magnum Ac Novum Opus, which Jacopo Strada produced in the mid-16th century, first for Johann Jakob Fugger of Augsburg…

Illuminati Essays in the Context of the Late Enlightenment

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
05/2013 - 11/2016 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
503 000 €

Previous research on the Illuminati has concentrated mainly on their organisational structure and on the so-called 'higher knowledge'. Consequently, the documents of the order have so far been mainly printed documents, degree drafts and the correspondence of the leading members among each other. In contrast to this, the project pursued at the Gotha Research Centre focuses on a completely new corpus of sources, which has so far hardly been considered by research.

Jacopo Stradas Magnum ac Novum Opus

Project management
Prof. Dr. Martin Mulsow Duration
11/2015 - 05/2022 Funding
Several donors
1 263 000 €

Jacopo Strada (ca. 1515-1588), antiquarian, architect and antique dealer, created a corpus of 30 volumes, the Magnum ac Novum Opus, for his patron Johann Jakob Fugger in the mid-16th century. The project is intended to bring together the entire corpus for the first time, analyse it in its historical and artistic context, research its sources and work out its significance for the history of numismatics and antiquarian research in the 16th century.

KarAfAs – Cartographies of Africa and Asia

Project management
Several Duration
02/2021 - 01/2023 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
370 000 €

The subject of this indexing are the maps of Africa and Asia published until 1945 - a total of 35,349 map sheets - as a central core holdings of the Perthes Collection preserved by the Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt. The online presentation and permanent storage of the digital copies will take place in the Digital Historical Library Erfurt/Gotha, which is maintained and hosted by the Thuringian University and State Library Jena (ThULB). In this way, the maps will be made…

Kulturtechniken des Sammelns (Cooperation project Cultural Techniques of Collecting)

Project management
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Struck Duration
01/2023 - 12/2025 Funding
Several donors
335 000 €

The project serves to establish a sustainable research infrastructure that connects the research group "Kulturtechniken des Sammelns" (Cultural Techniques of Collecting) at the University of Erfurt and other researchers at the Universities of Weimar and Jena with the various collection institutions in Gotha.

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.

NFDI4memory

Project management
Several Duration
03/2023 - 02/2028

The research institutions located on the Gotha Research Campus of the University of Erfurt - Gotha Research Library and Gotha Research Centre as well as the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection - are participating together with other partners in the so-called NFDI-4Memory consortium led by the Leibniz Institute for European History (IEG) in Mainz. 4Memory is one of several consortia in Germany that are working together to build a long-term and sustainable National Research Data…

Paths and Works of Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844). A forgotten key figure in the trans-Ottoman corridor and context

Project management
Dr. Dirk Sangmeister Duration
03/2021 - 02/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
300 000 €

The versatile writer, polyglot translator and virtuoso Jew's harp player Kosmeli, who travelled restlessly for decades in the space between Germany and Eastern Europe on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire together with Persia on the other, was acquainted with prominent contemporaries such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Jean Paul and the Orientalist Joseph (von) Hammer(-Purgstall), also told Goethe "much about Constantinople and the Orient" in Jena in 1809, but is today a completely forgotten figure.…

Politics of Plunder

Duration
09/2016 - 08/2017 :
1 415 998 €

Kornelia Kończal: Around the end of the Second World War two processes dramatically changed the socio-economic landscape of East Central Europe: the expulsion of up to twelve million Germans and the establishment of a new social order inspired by the Soviet model. This project is an inquiry into the interconnectedness between these apparently distinct histories.

Reaching for Atlantis

Project management
Dr. Bernhard Schirg Duration
03/2018 - 02/2023 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

In his project, the historian wants to investigate the history of objects that were the subject of a fundamental reinterpretation of material culture at the time of the Swedish Empire (1650-1720).

Religion and Politics in Protestant Sermons of the 16th and 17th Century in the Thuringian-Saxon Region

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
10/2008 - 03/2015 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
101 000 €

Due to its denominational anchoring, the Gotha Research Library has a reference collection for the history of Central German Protestantism in the 16th and 17th centuries. An extremely extensive collection of sermons is part of this outstanding tradition. The aim of the project is to make the collection of political sermons accessible to the interested public online.

Religious individualisation and nationalism in modern Europe through the lens of alternative spirituality and Western esotericism (1823–1939)

Duration
09/2016 - 08/2017 :
1 416 000 €

Marco Pasi: My project at the MWK focuses on the complex interplay between religious individualisation, nationalism, and alternative spirituality in modern Europe. I intend to carry out my research by focusing on four case studies, based on four exemplary figures of European history: the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), the Italian political activist Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), and the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935).

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.

Spaces and Objects

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
07/2013 - 12/2016 Funding
Stiftung Mercator:
145 000 €

The research project serves as a preparation for teaching and research in the field of collections-based history of knowledge and culture. The funding will benefit the initiation and further development of the new M.A. programme in "Collections-Based History of Knowledge and Culture", which the university has been offering since the winter semester 2014/15.

Stategies of Collecting an Displaying China in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Gotha's Chinese Cabinet

Project management
Dr. Emily Teo Duration
05/2021 - 04/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
300 000 €

My research project brings renewed attention to a significant Chinese collection in early-nineteenth-century Germany, the Chinese Cabinet in Gotha, established by Duke Emil August (1772–1822) of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg from 1804 to 1810. Consisting of over 2000 objects, the Cabinet was a great sensation during the first decades of the nineteenth-century and was described as the most important Chinese collection in continental Europe. However, following the establishment of national museums across…

The Historical Sources of the Reformation and Historiography of the Early 18th Century at Friedenstein Castle Gotha

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
05/2014 - 04/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
270 000 €

The Gotha Research Library preserves a top-class collection on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period, which was compiled by the Dukes of Saxony-Gotha. An essential component of this unique handwritten tradition, which reaches far beyond the Central German cultural area, is the estate of the theologian and church historian Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673-1745), which is to be catalogued in the project.

The Mission of the English Philadelphians in Germany, Building Networks and the Spoken Transmission of their Ideology

Project management
Dr. Lucinda Martin Duration
07/2014 - 07/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
261 998 €

In the Gotha Research Library, there is a geographically arranged 'Catalogus amicorum in Germania', which served the Philadelphians as a starting point for their German mission, together with a volume of letters from this group. In addition, there are important holdings in other archives which have also received little attention from scientists. Based on these sources, the project will reconstruct the early network of the Philadelphians between England and Germany as well as the social and…

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 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…

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