Research

The research project focuses on journeys from Europe to Northeast Africa before colonial land appropriation. It examines natural-scientific-geographical and political spatial knowledge based on selected texts produced during travels and explores different actors, forms, and contents of collaborative knowledge production, thereby investigating the genealogies of social and political spaces on-site. The project relies on notes, diaries, reports, letters, and cartographic works preserved in the Perthes Collection (Research Library Gotha), which originated from the region and made their way to Gotha. It combines globally informed, knowledge-historical approaches with self-testimonial research... more

^{Picture: © August Petermann, Draft of a map. East Africa between Chartúm & the Red Sea to Sauakin & Massua, 1:1,000,000, Gotha 1860/61, SPK 40.19.01 C (01), Gotha Perthes Collection of the Gotha Research Library}

The aim of the project is to develop a new perspective on the conflicts of the global Cold War and thus make a contribution to research into the international order after the Second World War. By analysing annexations and secessions, the study is dedicated to violations of a fundamental principle of the United Nations...  more

_{Picture: Baudouin I speaking with Moise Tshombe at a reception following the first session of the Belgo-Congolese Round Table.}

Owing to its symbolic as well as historical significance, Emperor Haile Selassie's state visit to West German in 1954 has been sufficiently narrated in numerous publications. However, the relations between Ethiopia and West German that continued after the visit have largely been ignored by researchers. This study will bring into analysis the dynamics that impacted the Ethio-West German relations during the period running up to the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. Those relations were undoubtedly influenced by Cold War politics. This study will therefore make its analysis within this global context as well.

_{Picture: Visit of Minister Zeleke to the FRG, in: Deutsche Kriegsopfer-Zeitung 11 (1954), p. 1, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, PA AA B 11-ABT. 3/9.}

The project is about the history of transnational mobility and commercial sexuality between Germany, France, and North Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1960s. It focuses on the idea of the so-called "traffic in women", "Mädchenhandel" or "traite des blanches", a phenomenon that has, since the end of the nineteenth century, preoccupied women's and morality associations as well as police institutions on a global scale. Since the 1920s the League of Nations was also concerned with the combat against "Traffic in Women and Children"... more

_{Picture: La Rue Bouterie à Marseille, postcard 1919, L. L., Louis Lévy, Paris © Wikimedia Commons}

"Madness is curable!" This was the credo of the still young psychiatric sciences at the beginning of the 19th century in Europe. This healing maxim was also pursued in the Kingdom of Saxony when the first state sanatorium in the German-speaking world was opened there in 1811. The project aims to analyse the concept of healing in order to make statements about the constitution of bourgeois self-perceptions and social ideals in times of economic and social upheaval... more

_{Image: View of Pirna with Sonnenstein Fortress around 1757 © Wikimedia Commons.}

Living elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and camels, baboons, and donkeys unknown in Europe – the list of animals traded globally in the 19th century was extensive. Besides the numerous animals, various individuals were involved in this enterprise, bringing animals from interior Africa to European zoos or transporting animals to other African regions for use in colonial projects. German animal trader and catcher Josef Menges (1850–1910) was engaged in this business for more than thirty years, hunting, capturing, transporting, and selling thousands of large and small, living and dead animals... more

_{Picture: "Unloading a consignment of African animals from the ship "Urano" in Trieste. Photographed from nature by H. Leutemann." In: The Garden Arbour, 1874.}

With the first assembly of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians in 1822, according to Werner von Siemens (1886), a 'scientific age' began, in which the natural sciences opened up to broader segments of the population and were no longer exclusively discussed within professional circles. The dissertation project examines how this opening of the sciences, as noted by Siemens, unfolded in the provinces… more

_{Image: Gothaische Zeitung, 2 November 1881 © Gotha Research Library.}

The subject of this doctoral project is transnational policies and debates on those forms of "sexual labour" that were described as "prostitution" and "trafficking of women" in the second half of the 20th century. It analyses the period from the foundation of the United Nations (1945) to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995)... more

_{Picture: Dolinsek, own photo © United Nations Archives}

In the 19th century, European interest in Japan increased significantly in scientific, economic, and artistic terms. On an economic level, the Unequal Treaties of 1858 and 1861 between Japan and several European nations marked a turning point in relations between these societies. In the preceding period of limited exchange (1639–1858), Japan had been only marginally accessible from a European perspective. In the decades following the signing of the treaties, research travelers, diplomats, and geologists journeyed to Japan to study its society, language, and economy. These developments triggered profound political, social, and cultural transformations within Japan that left a lasting impact on the country.

Against this backdrop, and driven by both professional and personal interest in Japan, the cartographer Bruno Hassenstein began mapping Japan in the Thuringian residence city of Gotha. Between 1879 and 1887, he primarily produced individual map sheets depicting the modern Tokyo region and Mount Fuji. He also created a topographical atlas of Japan, for which he developed his own system of transliteration. These works were produced as part of his position at one of the leading European map publishers of the 19th century: Justus Perthes in Gotha. Hassenstein relied on an extensive network of European research travelers, Japan scholars, diplomats, geographers, foreign contract workers in Japan, as well as Japanese exchange students and envoys. This network supplied him with European and Japanese cartographic materials, assisted him in translating Japanese nomenclature, and collaborated with him on refining the atlas’s transliteration system.

To date, historical scholarship has not critically examined Bruno Hassenstein’s Japan work. This is all the more surprising given that his extensive working estate has been largely preserved in the Perthes Collection. In addition to the published maps and atlas, it is above all the letters, working notes, travel reports, map sketches, and Japanese maps that offer deep insights into the working methods of the Gotha-based cartographer. Using this multi-layered body of source material, the dissertation project investigates how Hassenstein’s Japan came into being. At the center of the research are not only the maps and their production but also the actors from Europe and Japan who were involved in the process. Key questions naturally arise: How did Japanese maps circulate between Europe and Japan? And how was it negotiated within the transnational network what constituted valid geographical knowledge about Japan?

Methodologically, the project is situated at the intersection of global history, the history of knowledge, and critical cartography. These perspectives make it possible to analyze both the collaborations between actors and the political and economic conditions shaping the production of cartographic knowledge. The goal of the project is to uncover how European Japan scholars and cartographers collaborated on Hassenstein’s Japan work and how colonial, scientific, and economic knowledge became embedded in the resulting cartography.

_{Image: 秋山永年墨仙[作図] / 船橋渡 ; 船越守愚[撰], Fujimi Juusanshuu Yochi No Zenzu, Japan: Shūseidō 1843, 155 × 175cm, Gotha Research Library, Gotha Perthes Collection, SPK 30.15.b.06 C (01), sheet 8.}

After the arrival of the first missionaries in what is now Kenya in the 1840s, the East African lingua franca Swahili aroused interest in Europe. Initially, it was individual missionaries who learned the language, argued about its standardization, recorded language samples and translated the Bible. With the institutionalisation of colonial science at the turn of the 20th century, the study of Swahili became firmly established in the metropolises of the colonial powers Germany and Great Britain. Africanist linguistics is thus closely linked to missionary and colonial claims to power throughout the political upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries... more

^{Image: Manuscript of the Swahili poem "Qissati Yusufu", written by Muhamadi Kijuma, ca. 1937 © STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ZU BERLIN - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Hs. or. 9893.}

The history of the Justus Perthes Gotha publishing house was particularly shaped by various upheavals and the tensions of political system rivalries, especially in the 20th century. The location of the publishing house in the GDR ultimately led to expropriation in 1953 and subsequent nationalization, which was to have far-reaching consequences. Despite the long tradition associated with the publishing house, not only was the publishing house itself restructured as a state-owned enterprise (Volkseigener Betrieb), but also cartography was reorganized in line with the political ideology of socialism. However, how was cartography transformed under socialism? This project explores the question through the cartographic knowledge production of VEB Hermann Haack, examining how political interests influenced the modes and content of cartographic products... more

The research project analyses the mapping of statehood in West Africa using the source material of the Gotha Perthes Collection in the Gotha Research Library. The map collection, the publisher's archive and the publisher's library provide information on how maps generated, reflected, transformed and disseminated ideas of West African territoriality and state formation south of the Sahara… more

_{Image: Bruno Hassenstein, Die Flussgebiete des Binue, Alt-Calabar & Kamerun in Westafrika, Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt (1863), plate 6 © Forschungsbibliothek/Sammlung Gotha Perthes Collection.}

Despite East Germany's unilateral closure of its border with Poland in 1980, thousands of Polish commuters continued to cross over daily for work in GDR factories throughout the decade. For these mostly female workers, GDR jobs meant higher wages, privileged mobility, and access to scarce goods-which might be resold on the unofficial market in Poland... more

_{Image: Grocery shop "Granica" ("Border"), Görlitz © Andrew Tompkins}