Profile

Professional career

• since 10/2022
  Research assistant at the Department of History, Chair for the History of the 19th to 21st Centuries (Prof. Dr. Dirk van Laak)
• 10/2018 - 03/2022
  Lecturer at the Chair for the History of the 19th to 21st Centuries (Prof. Dr. Dirk van Laak), Leipzig University

Education

• 02/2018 - 06/2024
  PhD on "Weimar Left Communists between Party and Movement. A cultural-historical collective biography" at Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder); Supervision: Prof. Dr. W. Benecke, Prof. Dr. S. Berger; funded by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (doctoral funding, 11/2019-09/2022), grade: Summa cum laude
• 10/2013 - 09/2017
  Master's Programme (M.A.) of European Cultural History at Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder); Focus: History of the German labor movement; History of Poland and Russia; Jewish history in the 20th century; Grade: 1,1
• 04/2011 - 10/2013
  Undergraduate Studies (B.A) of Cultural Science at Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Focus: Cultural History, Social Science; Grade: 1,3
• 10/2008 - 03/2011
  Undergraduate Studies (B.A.) of History, Political Science and Jewish Studies at Freie Universität Berlin

Panel Memberships

• since 12/2024
  Member of the Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands (VHD)
• since 03/2024
  Member of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's "Gesprächskreis Geschichte"
• since 01/2024
  Deputy member of the research assistants in the examination board (history), Leipzig University
• since 12/2023
  Board member of the "Forschungsstelle Transformationsgeschichte"
• since 09/2019
  Member of the editorial board of the historical journal "Sozial.Geschichte online"

Interests & research focus:

• European cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries
• cultural history and history of ideas of the labor movement and the political left
• history of knowledge in the 20th century
• theories and methods of historical science

Postdoc-project (Habilitation, since 2024): A cultural history of experts in the 20th century

PhD thesis (2018-2024): Weimar left communists between party and movement. A cultural-historical collective biography

In my dissertation, I examined the lives of four people whose thoughts and actions were associated with the left-wing communist movement and the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD), and who stood for a radical democratic critique of the German Empire, the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic, the Soviet communist model and National Socialist Germany. Using the collective biographical method, I approached the ideas and practices of Karl Schröder (1884-1950), Alexander Schwab (1887-1943), Bernhard Reichenbach (1888-1975) and Adam Scharrer (1889-1948). In addition to the political activities, the work also considers the professional and private lives of the actors and provides a contribution to the history of German democracy and the transformation of the labor movement in the 20th century.

Grade: Summa cum laude (primary supervisor report: Magna cum laude; secondary supervisor report: Summacum laude, disputation: Summa cum laude)

• Life reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries (seminar, summer term 2024)

  In this seminar, we will look at various european life reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Emerging as a reflection of the processes of modernity, these movements aimed to reform individual lifestyles and society - with different (proto-)political thrusts and in various areas of social and cultural life.

• Introduction to the methodology of academic work in history (exercise, summer term 2024)

  The exercise teaches basic methods of academic work in the subject of history. In addition to specific working techniques, this includes insights into the disciplinary self-image, the different fields of work and sub-epochs as well as the history and debates of the subject. We practise techniques of knowledge acquisition and processing (literature research, citation, excerpting, academic writing) as well as working with sources.

• Deindustrialization in West and East, 1970-2000 (seminar, winter term 2023/2024)

  How exactly did the structural change that has affected Western European countries since the 1970s take place - and what economic and social processes were taking place in the eastern bloc countries at the same time? We look at the characteristics of these changes in east and west, ask about parallels and entanglements, and examine how the transformation took shape after 1989/90.

• Weimar. The Emergence of a Republic, 1918-1923 (seminar, winter term 2023/2024)

  Emerging in the aftermath of the First World War and the November Revolution, the period up to 1923 was characterized by conflictual and often violent disputes, uprisings and attempted coups over the political character and future of the new German state. We will gain an overview of the most important stages and events between 1918 and 1923 and analyze primary sources, in order to gain an in-depth insight into the various areas of conflict.

• Leipzig in the 19th century (seminar, summer term 2023)

  The 19th century was a century of social modernization and socio-structural change. Social differentiation (Simmel) in the face of new forms of economic activity and the globalizing economy, nation-building and changing ideas of society shaped this period, and emancipation efforts gave rise to new forms of political organization. We want to examine the local history of such processes in Leipzig.

• History and biography (seminar, summer term 2023)

  Biographies of historical figures have enjoyed great popularity since ancient historiography. How can history be researched and told on the basis of individual actors? How does this genre of text deal with the tension between social structures and individual agency? What characterizes historiographical individual and collective biographies?

• Entangled History. The Marxist Left in Germany and Russia, 1848-1933 (seminar, winter term 2022/2023)

  How were the political writings of Marxist thinkers received in the respective countries? How did the transfer of practice between the actors take place? How did the different horizons of experience influence cooperation? Therefore, we will look at the history of reception, international networks and the mutual perception of political events. Finally, we turn our attention to relations after 1917 under changed contextual conditions.

• Economic Planning in Historical Perspective, 1914-1933 (seminar, winter term 2022/2023)

  In this seminar, we will look at selected concepts of plan-oriented economic systems in the period between 1914 and 1933, examining forms of capitalist economic planning as well as social democratic and socialist planning models. The role of the state and that of self-governing structures will be addressed, as well as different ideas of ownership.

• Left-wing analyses of fascism in Weimar and the early post-war period (seminar, winter term 2021/2022)

  What distinguished the analyses from the left-wing labor movement from those from other political spectrums? What did they see as the motives of the voter base for their voting behavior? What class-theoretical assumptions underpinned their interpretation of the connection between capitalism and fascism or National Socialism? How did they explain the rise of fascist movements in other countries in relation to German specifics? What were the limits of their explanations?

• The Social Democratic Party in Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 (seminar, winter term 2020/2021)

  After an insight into the social structure of the German Empire, we look at the Social Democratic Party under the conditions of illegality during the Socialist Laws as well as its strategiees for politicization and mobilization through educational and youth work. We then turn our attention to debates within the party, such as revisionism, colonialism and anti-Semitism, and look at the structures and organizations of social democracy, especially in Saxony.

• Issues and lines of division in the communist movement in Germany, 1918-1939. A source-reading course (seminar, winter term 2019/2020)

  The communist movement in Germany in the interwar period is usually identified with its largest organization: the KPD. Within and outside the party, however, there were numerous other individuals, camps and parties that also saw themselves as communist/Marxist, such as the KAPD, the Leninbund and the group around Karl Korsch. The divisions between the various organizations were based on a variety of theoretical and practical-strategic conflicts.

• The KPD in the Weimar Republic: Changes, Debates, Structures (seminar, winter term 2018/2019)

  The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) emerged in 1918/19 as a new party from the split in the German workers' movement. Between its foundation and its ban in 1933, the party underwent a profound process of ideological and structural change that turned it into a centrally organized, bureaucratic party that was dependent on the Soviet Union. How did this transformation process come about and what were its consequences?