Research projects

A B C D E F G H K L M N P R S T U 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.

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.

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.

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.

Church Binding and Liturgical Celebration

Project management
Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann Duration
01/2019 - 12/2022 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
177 000 €

Benedikt Kranemann: In the 19th century, a series of small popular liturgies appeared, which were intended to serve the liturgical education of the faithful. The books are simply structured and written in a way that is easy to understand. They were written in the context of social and ecclesiastical upheavals. Liturgy with its texts and rites is understood as the "face" of the faith of the Catholic Church. The project will bibliographically record these liturgies for the period from the middle…

CoMOR: "Configurations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects, Routes (1350-1600)"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rau Duration
04/2020 - 10/2023 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
600 000 €

Susanne Rau: "CoMOR" (Configurations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects, Routes) will examine the history of European fairs from the perspective of increasing market integration in the period from around 1320 (end of the Champagne fairs) to 1630 (decline of the Besançon fairs).

Cooperation Project "Local Politicization of Global Norms"

Project management
Several Duration
01/2014 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
490 000 €

André Brodocz: The project examines the conditions under which egalitarian norms with a global claim to validity (such as human rights, sustainability, rule of law) actually find acceptance.

Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Dünne Duration
01/2015 - 12/2017 Funding
Several donors
299 000 €

Subject of the project "Cultural Techniques. Operationality and Spatialization" (Kulturtechniken. Operationalität und Verräumlichung) deals with the reciprocal constitutional processes of knowledge and action from the perspective of a theory and history of cultural techniques. The specific focus in relation to previous approaches in cultural technology research is on the question of spatialization.

Damigeron, De Lapidibus

Project management
Prof. Dr. Kai Brodersen Duration
01/2015 - 06/2015 Funding
Margaret Braine Fellowship der University of Western Australia:
25 000 €

More than 70 healing stones with their healing (or damaging) effects are presented by the ancient author Damigeron (2nd century A.D.) in this almost 2000 year old book, which was highly famous for centuries. For the first time, the work is critically edited, translated and indexed.

Denomination - Education - Politics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Michael Gabel Duration
09/2012 - 09/2017 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
500 000 €

Michael Gabel: The BMBF-funded project is a fundamental investigation in the field of cultural education for about 40 locations of student communities (KSG and ESG) in Eastern Germany. On the basis of the research results to be published, this will open up a wide range of scientific projects for universities, colleges, social science institutions and institutions of political education: in the fields of politics, (contemporary) history, education, sociology, philosophy, theology, law, ethics and…

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.

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…

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,…

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…

German Media Language Abroad

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Csaba Földes Duration
04/2019 - 03/2022 Funding
Kulturstaatsministerin für Kultur und Medien (BKM):
122 000 €

The main objective of the proposed project is the scientific research and documentation of the current German media language abroad using the example of the German minority press in Central and Eastern Europe.

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".

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.

Kolleg-Research Group "Religion and Urbanity"

Project management
Several Duration
10/2018 - 09/2026 Funding
Several donors
10 500 000 €

Susanne Rau & Jörg Rüpke: Cities and religion(s) have had a deep impact on each other. Up to now, research has focused on religion in cities - on the reciprocal changes in religious practices and urban space, at best in "global cities" and in the present. We want to fill the research gap that has arisen in this way by investigating the historical depth of the reciprocal formation within the framework of a collegiate research group.

Kolleg-Research Group "Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective" (FOR 1013)

Project management
Several Duration
01/2013 - 09/2018 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
8 470 000 €

Jörg Rüpke: The research group investigates cases of individualization within the medium of religion and their consequences for religious change, that is, in terms of their religious historical dynamics.

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.

Lived Ancient Religion – Questioning "Cults" and "Polis Religion"

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke Duration
06/2013 - 05/2017 Funding
European Research Council (ERC):
2 300 000 €

Jörg Rüpke: This project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), takes a completely new perspective on the religious history of Mediterranean antiquity, starting from the individual and "lived" religion instead of cities or peoples. "Lived ancient religion" suggests a set of experiences, of practices addressed to, and conceptions of the divine, which are appropriated, expressed, and shared by individuals in diverse social spaces.

M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies "Metamorphoses of the Political" (ICAS-MP)

Project management
Several Duration
08/2015 - 06/2027 Funding
Several donors
380 519 €

Martin Fuchs: ICAS-MP combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. The centre focuses on key political processes that have emerged in parallel in many parts of the world during the twentieth century through to the present day, processes that are entangled yet heterogeneous.

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…

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.

Nutrition, Health and Modern Society: Germany and the United States

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2015 - 10/2018 Funding
VolkswagenStiftung:
1 000 000 €

The research project aims to work out the significance of nutrition and health for the order of modern societies from the 19th century to the present. The empirical focus is on the USA and Germany, so that regional differences as well as the dynamics of interdependence in globalizing constellations become apparent.

Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict

Project management
Several Duration
04/2022 - 03/2026 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
4 000 000 €

The Network investigates how historically formed postcolonial hierarchies manifest themselves in contemporary conflict dynamics and what implications this has for sustainable conflict transformation in the future. To do so, the Network brings together historical perspectives on the contexts of conflict formation (in particular those shaped by colonialism) with postcolonial research perspectives as well as with methodologies and theories of peace and conflict research.These perspectives are…

Protecting Academia At Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of higher education in Europe

Project management
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg Duration
03/2024 - 02/2026 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
183 000 €

The current situation of academia at risk in the European landscape raises three distinct research questions. First, what is the current institutional framework that responds to academic displacement in Europe? Second, what are the normative contours of protecting academic freedom in future democratic societies? Third, how does an improved system of integrating displaced academics connect to broader values such as the protection of a thriving academic culture? This project builds on our seed…

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.

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).

Religious Diversity and Peace Ethics

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jamal Malik Duration
01/2016 - 12/2017 Funding
Auswärtiges Amt (Berlin):
387 000 €

Jamal Malik: As part of the research and dialogue project funded by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), the Professorship for Islamic Studies sought cooperation with Pakistani theological schools, thus building a bridge between traditional Islamic teaching there and local Islamic Studies that is unique in this country.

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).

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 Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law

Project management
Prof. Dr. Knud Haakonssen Duration
07/2016 Funding
:
8 000 €

Knud Haakonssen: The research centre was created in 2016 and is from 2019 a joint facility of the Max Weber Centre and the Gotha Research Centre. Its purpose is to foster new work and coordinate current scholarship on natural law in the early-modern period, which we take to stretch from the Reformation to the early nineteenth century. Within this framework the focus is on the flowering of natural law in the period after Hugo Grotius and especially the shaping of the subject as an academic…

Research Centre „Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present“

Project management
Prof. Dr. Benedikt Kranemann Duration
01/2015 Funding
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF):
1 000 000 €

Benedikt Kranemann: The Research Centre is intended to provide a place for research into Jewish religious practices and related discourses, which arose in Germany in the 19th century but was largely interrupted by the National Socialist expulsion and extermination of Jews, and which embeds central questions of recent research in an interdisciplinary research context. The aim is to provide new impulses for a comparative as well as intertwined historical approach by consistently asking about…

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…

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 Eating Self

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
10/2012 - 04/2017 Funding
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung:
24 000 €

Obesity is currently described as a problem that is assuming epidemic proportions in modern societies, particularly in the USA. Based on this observation, the present project aims to write a history of eating, being obese, health and its regulation in the USA since the middle of the 19th century.

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 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…

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…

Urban property regimes and citizenship in transition. Changing ownership patterns and systems of relatedness in India

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in the SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The study seeks to harness the explicatory power of property for understanding the shifting societal systems and their underlying normative frameworks in post-liberalised India.

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…

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…

What is Western about the West?

Project management
Prof. Dr. Holt Meyer Duration
02/2018 - 01/2021 Funding
Several donors
420 000 €

The project focuses on spatio-temporal practices regarding the production and representation of westernness. With the question of what is Western about the West, it takes up a highly political and socially relevant question.

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