Research projects

C D E F G H I J K L M R T V

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.

Courtly Cultural Areas in Central Germany

Project management
Dr. Kathrin Paasch Duration
02/2014 - 09/2017 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
147 000 €

Kathrin Paasch: Occasional writings belong to a literary genre that is considered to be one of the most productive sources of information on personalities in the early modern period. The aim of the project is to research a source inventory of 7,455 personal occasional writings of the court from the first appearance of humanism until the end of the 18th century.

Disinformation Context and the Emergence of Fact-Checking Organisations in Europe and Latin America

Project management
Several Duration
08/2022 - 07/2025

In her research project, Dr Regina Cazzamatta examines different environments in which disinformation arises and how so-called fact-checking organisations in Europe and Latin America deal with it.

Divine Property. Solutions from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Project management
Several Duration
01/2021 - 12/2024

Subproject in SFB TRR294 "Structural Change of Property". The project explores various historical and conceptual foundations underlying the structural change of and through property with a view to religious practices and theories.

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…

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 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.

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,…

Fighting the monstrous ‘many-headed multitude’

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

Cesare Cuttica: A historiographical consensus simply accepts that in the early modern period democracy was reputed to be the worst form of government. However, this scholarly trend leaves a few major questions unanswered: why was this so? How was criticism of democracy articulated? In what ways did different authors and genres depict popular government? Which political concerns and social prejudices informed this anti-democratic paradigm? What is the legacy of such a mindset? In order to address…

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…

Gothaische Zeitung digital (1850-1918). Digitalisierung und Online-Präsentation

Project management
Dr. Dietrich Hakelberg Duration
08/2020 - 04/2022 Funding
Staatskanzlei des Freistaats Thüringen:
55 042 €

As the historical state library of the territories of Saxony-Gotha-Altenburg and Saxony-Coburg and Gotha, the Gotha Research Library collects the regional print production in possible completeness and makes it publicly accessible. The "Gothaische Zeitung. Gothaer neueste Nachrichten" is as a long-lasting regional periodical a valuable source of political, social and economic historical information.

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.

How collective contexts influence creative action on different cultural fields

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

Bjorn Schiermer-Andersen: My project focusses on how collective contexts influence creative action on different cultural fields: 1) It investigates the guidance provided by the 'object' in creative action; 2) It investigates the effect of the collective context upon this relation (to the object); 3) It investigates and compares this interplay on three different cultural fields: music, religion and academia.

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.

Institutionalising the law of nature and nations: The universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock 1648–1806

Project management
Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen Duration
07/2022 - 06/2026 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
350 000 €

The project is about the history of the teaching of natural law at the three north German universities in Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock during the period 1648–1806. It is concerned with why, how and to what extent this academic discipline developed in three different political settings along the Baltic coast. The project is based on the general presumption that natural law was of great significance for the period’s intellectual development and state building endeavours. The general aim of the…

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.

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.

Lehren und Predigen mit Patristischen auctoritates. Meister Eckhart, Brückenbildner zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

Project management
Prof. Dr. Markus Vinzent Duration
04/2018 - 03/2021 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
378 000 €

French and German experts explore the patristic foundations of Meister Eckhart.

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.

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).

Reducing Negative Effects of Communicating Vaccine Safety Events - Knowledge Transfer Project SAFECOMM

Project management
Several Duration
02/2017 - 01/2020 Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG):
215 000 €

This knowledge transfer project builds on the results of our two DFG-projects, which have shown that narrative reports of vaccine-adverse events have a strong distorting effect on the perception of vaccination risks and the vaccination intention.

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).

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 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…

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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