Dr. Daniel Logemann
Daniel Logemann studied East European history, Polish literature, and Southeast Europe studies in Jena, Lublin, and Cracow from 2000 to 2007. For his dissertation on day-to-day contacts between Germans and Poles in Leipzig between 1972 and 1989 he received the 2010 Academic Promotional Prize of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland. From 2010 to 2015 he worked as a research assistant and curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, Poland. From February 2015 to March 2018 he was managing director at the Kolleg.
Research interests
Historical cultures in East-Central Europe
German-Polish relations
History of everyday life and cultural history of state socialism in East-Central Europe
Violence and occupation policy in twentieth-century Poland
Select publications
Monographs
Das polnische Fenster. Deutsch-polnische Kontakte im staatssozialistischen Alltag Leipzigs 1972 - 1989 [German-Polish Contacts in Everyday Life under State Socialism: Leipzig, 1972–1989], Munich 2012.
Essays
1945 - Defeat. Liberation. New Beginning. Twelve European Countries after the Second World War, in: Cultures of History Forum
Leipziger Urlauber in Volkspolen — zwischen Traumziel und Konterrevolution, in: Przegl?d Historyczny 105 (2014), vol. 1, pp. 69- 85.
Nach dem Streit ist vor dem Streit? Zur Debatte über den ZDF-Dreiteiler „Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter“/ After the conflict is before the conflict? On the debate over the three-part miniseries Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter shown on ZDF German television, in: Cultures of History Forum
Die entstehende Dauerausstellung des Museums des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Danzig, in: INTER FINITIMOS. Jahrbuch zur deutsch-polnischen Beziehungsgeschichte Jahrbuch 10 (2012), pp. 126 -133.
„Schleichwege“ als Ausgleich von Mangel und als Angebot des „Polnischen“. Private Kontakte zwischen Deutschen und Polen in Leipzig in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren, in: Joachim von Puttkamer/W?odzimierz Borodziej/Jerzy Kochanowski (eds.): „Schleichwege“. Inoffizielle Begegnungen sozialistischer Staatsbürger zwischen 1956 und 1989, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2010, pp. 91 -111.
Eine polnische Insel in Leipzig? Das Polnische Informations- und Kulturzentrum in Leipzig (1969 1989), in: Journal of Modern European History 8 (2010), 2, pp. 243 -265.
„Brüderbund und Freundschaft mit den sozialistischen Ländern darf nicht spekulativ genutzt werden.“ Deutsch-polnischer Schleichhandel in Leipzig als Konsumkultur „von unten“, in: Comparativ 19 (2009), 6, pp. 50 -68.
Kommunismus zum Anfassen? Museen zur Geschichte der kommunistischen Diktaturen in Ostmitteleuropa, in: Der Kommunismus im Museum. Formen der Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland und Ostmitteleuropa, hrsg. von Volkhard Knigge und Ulrich Mählert im Auftrag der Stiftung Ettersberg und der Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Cologne et al. 2005, pp. 193 -223.
Susanne Hagemann
Susanne Hagemann studied German philology / modern German literature, sociology, and media and communication studies in Göttingen and Berlin. From 2002 to 2015 she worked as a freelance scholar, advisor, and project coordinator for various museums and exhibitions, associations and foundations. In 2005 she was a lecturer at the University of Constance and taught on “the museum as a place of memory culture.” From 2015 to 2016 she has been a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research project
Memory Gaps: The Current Portrayal of the 1930s and 1940s in German Local History Museums (working title)
The project attempts to outline the varied forms of expression and narrative used by present-day local-history museums to present the historical period of National Socialism and the Second World War to the general public. Using the tools of literary studies, the effectiveness of museum narratives will be examined while asking to what extent museum exhibits contribute to the development of historical consciousness.
Research interests
Exhibition theory and practice
Memory research
Apocalypticism in film, literature, and historical narratives
Violence and peace as “anthropological constants”
Select publications
Essays
„Leere Gesten“? Darstellungsmuster in Ausstellungen zur NS-Zeit, in: Museumsverband des Landes Brandenburg (ed.): Entnazifizierte Zone? Zum Umgang mit der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus in ostdeutschen Stadt- und Regionalmuseen, Bielefeld 2015, pp. 77-92.
The Bomb and the City: Presentations of War in German City Museums, in: Muchitsch, Wolfgang (ed.): Does War belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions, Bielefeld 2013, pp. 131-141.
Museale Narrationen lokaler NS-Geschichte – „Auch in Paderborn kam es zu antisemitischen Ausschreitungen“ und „Männer starben als Soldaten bei der Wehrmacht“, in: schnittpunkt, Charlotte Martinz-Turek / Monika Sommer-Sieghart (eds.): Storyline. Narrationen im Museum, Vienna 2009, pp. 93-110.
Volksempfänger, Bombe, Salatsieb – Geschichtsnarrative in deutschen Museen, in: Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie 12 (2004), vol. 3/4, pp. 391-411.
Anne-Kathrin Hinz
From 2009 to 2015, Anne-Kathrin Hinz studied Communication Studies and Art History, focusing on image studies and 20th century art. She worked as a student and graduate assistant at the Chair of Art History and at the History of Art Department at the University of Jena. In her master’s thesis titled “Am Bildgrund. Reflexionen über die Konventionen des Bildes in der amerikanischen Kunst nach 1945“ [At the Bottom of the Image. Reflexions on the Conventions of the image in American Art after 1945], Hinz analysed various artistic and theoretical approaches to the perception of an object as an image. From 2016 to 2019 she has been a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research project
Representing History via Abstract Art (working title)
Can abstract art represent history? A systematic investigation of this question has yet to be done. Given the multitude of abstract pieces of art with historical references, it is an even more pressing gap.
The project seeks to fill this perceived necessity. Based on the assumption that abstract art is a specific means of representing history, the study will ask questions about the ways art can represent history. So far, research is shaped by various specific and interdisciplinary discourses, focussing mainly on the question of whether abstract art can represent history or not. However, it has been neglected that processing history via abstract art is a complex process of interaction of aesthetic means with contextual factors such as titling, commenting and its reception.
The dissertation project will investigate works of abstract painting, created in Germany from the 1940s to the 1980s. The analysis will combine aspects of aesthetic visual forms and its historical context, thus enabling the comparison of various abstract strategies of painting, and presenting a new approach to the question how abstract art represents history.
Research interests
Visual theory focusing on post-1945 art
Theory and history of photography
Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts
Visualising and processing historical events via art
Select publications
Markenzeichen. Die erste Fotografie der „Minerva mit Helm“, in: Babett Forster (Hrsg.): Wertvoll. Objekte der Kunstvermittlung: Gipsabgüsse, Fotografien, Postkarten, Diapositive, Weimar 2015, pp. 56-62.
Co-author of the article: Zwischen Sein und Schein des Bildes. Die „Jena Bilder“ von Imi Knoebel, in: Babett Forster/Claudia Tittel (Hrsg.): Serielle Materialität. Imi Knoebel und Peter Roehr, Ausst.-Kat, Gera 2013, pp. 30-39.
Nataša Jagdhuhn
Nataša Jagdhuhn studied art and art education in Belgrade, Vienna, and Ljubljana from 2003 to 2008. After earning her degree she worked as a freelance journalist with a focus on post-conceptual art, theater, and performance. In 2013 she completed a Master’s degree in “Art in Context” at Berlin University of the Arts. As an artist, curator, art and history communicator she has conceptualized and (co-)organized numerous exhibits. She developed the concept of the educational center at the “AVNOJ” museum in Bosnia and Herzogovina. From 2015 to March 2018 she has been a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research project
On the Path to a Performative Museology in Post-Yugoslavian Spaces:
A Comparative Cultural-Historical Analysis of Representations of the Second World War in Commemorative Museums (working title)
This dissertation investigates the representations of the Second World War at memorial sites in the successor states of Yugoslavia. By means of comparative analysis, the phenomenon of museum transformation after the dissolution of Yugoslavia will be discussed using the following state museums as case studies: the “21 October Museum” and the “Kadinja?a” memorial site in Serbia; the “Museum of the Second AVNOJ Session” and the “Kozara” / “Sutjeska” / “Neretva” memorial sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the “Jasenovac” and “Lipa” memorial sites in Croatia.In their manner of presenting the past, museums in the successor states of Yugoslavia show a tendency to view the history of the Second World War through the lens of the more recent wars of the 1990s. In this context, the aim of this comparative study is to document and analyze the process of nationalization of the historical perception of the Second World War in museums in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, their points of divergence and convergence with current trends in memory politics in the rest of Europe, as well as the continuities and discontinuities of museum standards in former Yugoslavia.How has the perception of the Second World War in museums changed since the dissolution of Yugoslavia? Museum transformation will be viewed from a museological (“how”) and historical (“what”) perspective by analyzing two museum practices: exhibits and commemorative ceremonies. The theory of “performative museology” will serve as a methodological tool.The theoretical framework is provided by specialist literature from the areas of museum studies, historiography, performance studies, and cultural studies.
Research interests
Memory constructs in the successor states of Yugoslavia
Museum transformation in the post-socialist countries of Europe
Museum studies and the “performative turn”
Select publications
Monographs
(In collaboration with Vedrana Madžar and Zorka Obreni) „Jüdische Identität im sozialistischen Jugoslawien, 1945-1952“ [Jewish Identity in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1945–1952], Online publication of the Geschichtswerkstatt Europa 2012.
Clara Mansfeld
Clara Mansfeld studied Modern and Contemporary History, Economic and Social History and Cultural Anthropology in Freiburg and Basel (CH) from 2006 to 2013. During her studies, she worked as an intern and did freelance work in numerous museums and memorials across Germany and abroad. Furthermore, she was a long time research assistant at the history department of Freiburg University and at FRIAS (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies). From 2013 to 2016, Clara Mansfeld worked at the Buchenwald memorial, first as an academic trainee, then as a research associate, where she was part of a team preparing the new permanent exhibition about the history of the concentration camp Buchenwald (Buchenwald. Ostracism and Violence 1937 to 1945). From 2017 to 2020 she has been a research associate and a doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research project
The Imaginary Visitor. German Museums and their Public (working title)
Starting point for this project was the observation that the significance museums ascribe to their visitors has changed considerably in the last decades.
The project looks from a historic perspective at the relationship between museum staff/curators and the visitors. This relationship was not problematic as long as there were no extensive differences in the milieu between the two. In a way, the museum staff addressed their exhibitions ›to themselves‹.
Using History Museums as a case study, this project aims to reconstruct the conceptual and institutional conditions that lead to a fundamental change in the practice of increasing attentiveness towards the visitor in West Germany between the 1950s up to the 1990s. To whom did the curators address their exhibitions? What implications did that have for the conveyance of content and knowledge? Who pushed towards more visitor-orientation?
This project does not focus on the visitors but rather on the perception of the visitors that influenced the curators’ work and therefore concepts and designs of the exhibitions. Focusing on a changing audience through the lens of the curator may also help get a historic perspective on the status quo of exhibition and museum projects today and may also reveal possible courses of action for Historic Museum in a changing society.
Research interests
Museum and Exhibition History
Historical Education
National socialism and the Holocaust
History of West Germany
Select publications
(with Kornelia Konczal) Tagungsbericht „Regions of Memory. A Comparative Perspective on Eastern Europe“, 26.11.2012–28.11.2012 Warschau.
Katharina Meyer
Katharina Meyer studied social sciences and sociology in Hanover and Frankfurt am Main from 2008 to 2015 with a specialization on (psychoanalytical) social psychology, microsociology, and forms of discrimination. She wrote her Master’s thesis on “The Effects of National Socialism on the National Identification of Youth in Germany.” From 2015 to March 2018 she has been a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena. She also chairs the Society for Psychoanalytical Socialpsychology (GfpS) and is active as a member of Humanity in Action.
Research project
On the Historicization of National Socialism from the Perspective of Youth in Germany (working title)
The perception and reappraisal of Nazism by later generations has been marked by a variety of changes since the transition to the so-called “fourth generation.” This transition entails an unbridgeable gap between the new generation and the events themselves while at the same time having a formative influence on the social conditions in which the debate takes place, as well as bringing new demands and needs with regard to the history of Nazism. The dying-off of the generation that lived through or played an active role in National Socialism makes it necessary to consider the consequences of an increasing personal distance to the actual events and to address the relevance of family members in the historical perception of today’s young people. It is also important to take into account that the family backgrounds of German youth are not homogeneous. Their ancestors were not just perpetrators, bystanders, or victims of Nazism, but may have been on the side of the Allies or occupied nations, or perhaps have no biographical connection to National Socialism at all. Linked to this is the question of the present-day educational environment for history. Many school students have preconceived notions or images – from relatives, friends, or the media – before the topic is even discussed in school. A further factor is the medialization of the Holocaust, especially by way of feature films and the representations of National Socialism in the media.Hence, changes in the way Nazism is being dealt with can be attributed to diverse influences not limited to its historicization, its becoming a part of cultural memory, and the death of contemporary witnesses. In this context, the project investigates the significance of Nazism to young people as well as their approaches to it. The investigation is qualitative in nature, taking the form of group discussions, interviews, and observations.
Research interests
Anti-Semitism and racism
Gender und queer Studies
National Socialism and its mechanisms of transmission
Daniel Schuch
Daniel Schuch studied history, political science, and sociology at Dresden University of Technology from 2008-2012. He completed his master’s degree in History and Politics of the 20th Century at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in summer 2015. Since 2014, he has been a student assistant at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, and the Chair for History in Media and the Public. In his master’s thesis, he analyzed the conflicting historical and political interpretations of the Kosovo war in the journal “konkret”. Since January 2016, he has been a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research projekt
Transformations of testimony. From the production of knowledge in David P. Boders research interviews to the moral meaning of the Holocaust(working title)
The collection and interpretation of accounts of the victims of National Socialism and the Holocaust have been subject to extensive societal changes since the end of the Second World War. What is the difference between the earliest audio recordings to video-interviews conducted later with people who are today classified as Holocaust Survivors or Contemporary Witnesses? And which influence did the specific goals and methods of the interviewers and the involved institutions have on the recordings?
The dissertation project answers these questions within the context of a historicisation of Holocaust testimony by means of a comparative interview-analysis. The starting point of the thesis is the 1946 interview collection of about 130 audio interviews with the so called Displaced Persons (DP) in Europe by American psychologist David P. Boder. A selection of interviews with five Jewish survivors is analysed. These audio records constitute a collection of early testimonies on the mass murder of European Jews. Boder’s psychological research on the traumatic impacts of the “man-made catastrophe” provides the context of the interviews: he was a social scientific pioneer of early Holocaust research avant la lettre.
Boder’s interviews from 1946 are exemplarily and episodically compared with the video recordings of the same persons from the collections of the USC Shoah Foundation and an Oral History Interview-Project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which were conducted as many as 60 years later. How the interpretations of the experiences, as well as the societal significance of the accounts in the context of the methods and goals of the various institutions evolved is examined with the findings from Oral History, social history and historical source criticism. The retelling of the Holocaust experiences is analysed through the concept of “recounting”, which was developed by American psychologist Henry Greenspan in contrast to the passively concept of “bearing witness”. As significant transitions can be seen that evolved concepts of interpretation of the experiences and the historical events, as well as an established claim of the institutions to convey moral “lessons” of the Holocaust have emerged.
Research interests
Holocaust and NS research
Memory cultures in the USA, Australia, Germany and Israel
audiovisual history presentation
Displaced Persons
Testimonies and Knowledge Production
Select publications
Konflikthafte Zeugenschaft. David P. Boders Audio-Interviews im Nachkriegseuropa, in: Mimeo. Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow Institut, 22.07.20.
(with Dorothea Warneck/ Tobias Haberkorn/ Saskia Pörtig/ Paul Schütrumpf) (Post-) jugoslawische Geschichtskultur: Ein Blick durch das Schlüsselloch, in: Lehrstuhl für Geschichte in Medien und Öffentlichkeit
Anja Thiele
Anja Thiele studied modern German literature, art history, philosophy, and communications in Erfurt and Jena from 2007 to 2014. She worked as a freelance journalist throughout her studies. In Jena she also worked as a research assistant at the Theater Studies program under Prof. Nina Birkner. Her Master’s thesis on Elfriede Jelinek was awarded a prize for outstanding academic achievement by the Philosophical Faculty of Jena University. From 2015 to March 2018 she has been a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena.
Research project
Representations of the Shoah in East German Literature (working title)
This dissertation plans to investigate how the persecution and extermination of the Jews under Nazism was dealt with in literary fiction under the restrictive historical and cultural policies of the GDR. Starting from the theoretical assumption that literature, as part of historical culture, always interacts with society and contributes to the construction of a historical consciousness, the aim is to answer two different questions. The first question is to what extent political and social constraints influenced the literary discourse on the Holocaust in the GDR. The second question is to what extent the works in question themselves, by their genuine literary reflectiveness and powers of articulation, affirmed and co-created or subverted the official historical policy of the GDR with its institutionalized narrative of legitimation (antifascism, communist resistance).
The body of texts under consideration includes works of fiction by Jewish survivors as well as by non-Jewish writers from the entire forty years of the GDR’s existence. Key texts, e.g., by Jurek Becker, Rolf Schneider, Peter Edel and Christoph Hein, will be categorized and contrasted with Bruno Apitz’s Nackt unter Wölfen [Naked Among Wolves], the discourse-setting standard work of East German Holocaust literature. The research project is a desideratum, as no extensive monograph has been published on the topic to date.
Research interests
Literature, art, and social theory
Gender-based literary criticism
The transmission of literature through museums
Drama and theater of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Select publications
„Welch Wort in die Kälte gerufen“ – eine Lyrikanthologie über die Shoah im Kontext der DDR-Erinnerungskultur, in: Medaon – Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung, 10 (2016), 19, S. 1–15.
Die Aura in der (Literatur-)Vermittlung. Die Inszenierung einer Faust-Ausgabe in der Ausstellung Lebensfluten – Tatensturm im Goethe-Nationalmuseum, in: Britta Hochkirchen/Elke Kollar (eds.): Zwischen Materialität und Ereignis. Literaturvermittlung in Ausstellungen, Museen und Archiven, Bielefeld 2015, pp. 137-154.
Die eigene Stimme. Eine Reportage über die Autorin Claudia Grehn, in: Theaterhaus Jena – ‚My heart will go on‘. Dokumentation eines Flüchtlingsprojekts. Insert zu Theater der Zeit (2012), vol. 5, pp. 24-25.
Markus Wegewitz
From 2009 to 2016, Markus Wegewitz studied History and Political Science in Halle, Jena and Amsterdam. He wrote his M.A. thesis „Die »Nacht und Nebel«-Gefangenen als geschichtspolitische Akteure in den Niederlanden, 1945–1995“ („»Nacht und Nebel« prisoners and the Politics of History in the Netherlands, 1945–1995”) during a research term in the Netherlands at the Duitsland Institute and the Institute voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies (NIOD). He worked as a research assistant at the Chair for Media and Public History of the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena and as a freelancer in the ERC-Project “Securing Europe, Fighting its Enemies, 1815–1914”. Apart from that, he is speaker of the working group for German-Dutch history. From 2017 to 2020 he has been working as a scientific assistant and a doctoral student at the Europäisches Kolleg in Jena.
Research project
In search of the “Other Germany”. Nicolaas Rost and the historical experiences of antifascism, survival and literature (working title)
This dissertation project explores the political life of the writer and survivor of the Dachau concentration camp Nicolaas Rost (1896–1967). Apart from Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and both German states, Rost worked both before and after 1945 as an intellectual intermediary and promoted the ideas of German literature. The question of how Rost’s work was linked to the debates about the European dimensions of National Socialism should be answered especially against the background of his involvement with the associations of the victims of National Socialism and the broad spectrum of his activities in educational work.
However, the project is not to be understood as a typical biography, but as a problem-oriented contextualisation. The various forms of national politics of history, the network of German exile literature, and the development of the forms and narratives of remembering Nazi crimes are to be taken into consideration in equal measure.
As a project with strong links to literary studies and exile research, this dissertation can call on a broad spectrum of sources. Rost’s work as a journalist, his translations, independent publications and correspondence have all left their mark in many European archives.
Reasearch interests
European contemporary history
Politics of history
Organisations of the survivors of National Socialism
Concentration camps
Occupied societies in the Second World War
Select publications
Verschleppt bei Nacht und Nebel. Widerstand und Öffentlichkeit in der politischen Justiz des Nationalsozialismus [Taken at Night in Fog. Resistance. The Resistance and the Public in the Politicised Justice of National Socialism] , in: Erinnern! Aufgabe, Chance, Herausforderung 1 (2014), pp. 48–60.
Der kulturlose Kontinent. Von der Persistenz eines deutschen Ressentiments[The Continent without Culture. About the Persistence of a German Ressentiment] , in: Studentische Fachzeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft Jena 1.1 (2015), pp. 11–18.
Tagungsbericht: Probing the Limits of Categorization. The ‚Bystander‘ in Holocaust History, Amsterdam, 24.09.2015 – 26.09.2015“, in: H-Soz-Kult (12.11.2015)