Research projects

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

A Change of Mind. West-Eastern Church Experiences

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
05/2015 - 12/2016 Funding
Bonifatiuswerk:
6 000 €

Jörg Seiler: Ever since they moved to the East as a result of unification, people have been talking about a completely new experience of church and community and the relationship of these East German communities to the public. These experiences are to be examined exemplarily and empirically in the form of targeted interviews. The interviews will be presented in excerpts on listening stations (Katholikentag in Leipzig) and then scientifically evaluated.

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.

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.

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…

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.

Contested Democracy. Gender, race and sex in US American history

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Martschukat Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024 Funding
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
161 000 €

The project investigates struggles for hegemony and democracy along the lines of gender, race and sex in the form of a conflict history of the USA in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.

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…

Digital Indexing of the Estate of Jan Tschichold

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
10/2019 - 04/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
110 000 €

Patrick Rössler: The importance of pictoral representations in the process of political communications is undisputed, but little is known about the standards of media image reporting in the first half of the 20th century. The aim of the proposed research project is therefore identifying empirically supported findings on longer, possibly even decades-spanning developments in this area, in order to arrive at statements about continuities and discontinuities in visual political communication and to…

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 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.

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,…

Forgotten Bauhaus Women. Fates of life in the 1930s and 1940s

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
10/2021 - 01/2022

Patrick Rössler: The exhibition project "Forgotten Bauhaus Women" by the University of Erfurt and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is dedicated to researching these fates, of which more than thirty will be presented at the Bauhaus Museum Weimar from October 2021.

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".

Hidden Histories: Frauen in ländlichen Entwicklungsprogrammen in Indien, c. 1920–1966

Project management
Dr. Maria Framke Duration
08/2021 - 07/2024 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
335 000 €

The project is dedicated to contributions of Indian women to rural development programmes from about 1920 to 1966, following the call to include gender as a category of analysis in the history of development. The aim of the project is to examine the role of women in the design and implementation of governmental and non-governmental rural development projects in India in the key areas of health, education and livelihoods, and in this way to re-capture the processes of development and citizenship.…

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.

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.

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.…

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…

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 Contemporary Church History

Project management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Seiler Duration
01/1970

Jörg Seiler: The Research Centre for Contemporary Church History investigates the specific form of Catholicism in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ)/ German Democratic Republic (DDR). It deals with the "double diaspora situation" of Central and East German Catholics.

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.

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 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…

The Visualization of the Political in German Magazines 1905 to 1945

Project management
Prof. Dr. Dr. Patrick Rössler Duration
04/2016 - 10/2019 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
200 000 €

The birth of rights universalism from reformed international law. The natural law of Heinrich and Samuel Cocceji and its controversial reception in the European Enlightenment

Project management
Dr. Stefanie Ertz Duration
02/2024 - 01/2027 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
317 000 €

The aim of the project, which at the same time further strengthens the focus on natural law at the Gotha Research Centre, is to explore the natural law teachings of Heinrich Cocceji (1644–1719) and his son and editor Samuel Cocceji (1679–1755). In a monograph, Cocceji's natural law, which centres on a theocratic-voluntarist concept of inalienable liberties, will be presented in its political and ideological-historical contexts and in its controversial reception in the European…

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 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…

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