Further information on research at the department can be found on the respective faculty pages.

Doctorates
title short description
Photo: Giorgi Astamadze German-Georgian Cooperation in 1918. Georgia's Independence and the German-Georgian Alliance in the South Caucasus.

After the October Revolution in Russia, Georgia took the path to independence. The German Empire became an ally of the new state in May 1918. In the Georgian republic, which had grown up on the ruins of the October Revolution, Germany was seen as the representative of European civilization. Georgian nationalists had been working with Germany's military authorities since 1914 to stage an insurrection against Russia in the Caucasus. After the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, the Georgian political elite supported secession from Moscow and German military intervention in Georgia to hold back the Young Turks as well as the Bolsheviks. For Berlin, rapprochement with Tbilisi represented a prerequisite for its Orientalist aspirations. The work (2022) examines German-Georgian relations during World War I, focusing on 1918, and is published by Brill I Schöningh (link to publisher's page).

Abstract (download)
Master Theses
title short description
Schwarzweiß-Fotografie: Großmutter der Autorin als kleines Mädchen Generational Memory: Coming to Terms with a Family History under National Socialism

This master thesis (December 2022) deals with the author's own family history, based on eyewitness interviews with her grandmother, who was born in 1932, during the National Socialist era. The focus is on the family's everyday life on the Old Mark farm and the grandmother's school years. The memories of the witness are embedded in political, social and economic processes of the years 1930 - 1945. In the course of this, a look at the research field of oral history is taken. Furthermore, this master thesis explores the question of the role of generational memory, especially in connection with the experience of the Second World War, in family history. In doing so, the question is discussed to what extent family history represents a resource of contemporary history that should be preserved. (Abstract)
Collection album with advertising, collection and glossy pictures, probably after 1914 Nationalization of childhood through children's media in the German Empire - Object story(s) from the collection "Children's Media Worlds" of the Institute for Applied Children's Media Research (IfaK) of the Stuttgart Media University (HdM)

This master's thesis (August 2022) uses selected objects from the collection "Kindermedienwelten" (Children's Media Worlds) of the IfaK at the Stuttgart Media University to explore the nationalization process of childhood through children's media at the time of the German Empire. With its foundation in 1871, the empire represented the apparent endpoint of a long and unsteady process of unification of German states. In the following decades, a multitude of different measures intended to serve the internal formation of the empire can be observed. Alongside approaches such as the unification of infrastructures stand attempts to construct a nation with a long history through retrospectives and visions of the future. Children appeared in this system as an integral part of the "people's power." Subsequently, this work is dedicated to the question of how the nation integrated itself into the children's room and everyday life. For this purpose, four objects from the period of the German Empire in the collection "Kindermedienwelten" were examined more closely: Issues of the magazine supplement "Im Reiche der Kinder," a Laterna magica picture series, a scrapbook, and a German Red Cross postcard. Download (2 pages)