Projects

The final withdrawal of the former Soviet armed forces from East Germany on August 31, 1994 symbolically marked the end of the Cold War and was an exceptional event in the history of armed conflicts. After almost half a century of occupation, half a million military personnel and their equipment left East Germany without violence in just under four years. What remains are empty barracks, administrative buildings, military training areas, airports, various legacies and a gap in the German culture of remembrance. The social relevance and the political, economic and ecological consequences of this peaceful withdrawal and the conversion of the former military sites will be examined in this project using interviews with contemporary witnesses from politics, administration, business and society, and the results will be presented online. more

In cooperation with the Federal Statistical Office, the IRS is testing a new approach to historical research on public authorities: in the "GeStat" project, ideas and concepts relating to the politics of the past as well as methodological, personnel and organisational developments at the Federal Statistical Office since the late 1980s are being investigated, taking the incision of the census boycott as a starting point. more

The project “Geodata as Social Data for Historical Longitudinal Analyses?” explores the use of drones and deep mapping in contemporary historical research. It examines processes of socio-spatial change by looking at transformations of cultural landscapes in Berlin’s hinterland. Historical maps and plans from the Scientific Collections of the IRS and other regional archives provide points of reference by showing the state of the landscape in the past. The project uses drone overflights to record the current state of the spaces. Issues of land use, property rights and restrictions on access lie at the centre of interest. In turn, the project investigates social relations and their changes that manifest themselves in space. Its aim is to explore to what extent historical social changes can be understood via spatial data. more

The project explores entanglements of Afro-Asian actors during the Cold War, focusing on persons, practices and their everyday sites of interaction. Recent research has taken note of voices from Africa and Asia, yet little is known about their interconnections. Overlooking these has given us a one-sided picture of the Cold War in which the global South only appears as a theatre of bloc politics. CRAFTE proposes to fill this gap by critically engaging with the lived world(s) of Afro-Asian connections, to show how these were embedded in, but also, how they shaped the global Cold War. more

The joint German-Flemish-Ivorian project CTRAAF examines the genealogies, materialisations and legacies of various forms of transport architecture in West Africa from the 1950s to the 1980s. At this time, a large wave of infrastructure projects was being promoted throughout West Africa. Transport infrastructures were nation building projects. CTRAAF examines ideas and realisations of transport architecture in this context, as well as the agency and power of political actors shaping it.<br/><br/>Le projet commun germano-flamand-ivoirien CTRAAF examine les généalogies, les matérialisations et les héritages de diverses formes d'architecture des transports en Afrique de l'Ouest entre les années 1950 et 1980. À cette époque, une grande vague de projets d'infrastructure a été promue dans toute l'Afrique de l'Ouest. Les infrastructures de transport étaient des projets de construction nationale. Le CTRAAF examine les idées et les réalisations de l'architecture des transports dans ce contexte, ainsi que l'agence et le pouvoir des acteurs politiques qui la façonnent. more

Das Forschungsprojekt untersucht die Folgen der Tätigkeiten der Treuhand-Liegenschaftsgesellschaft (TLG), einer Tochtergesellschaft der 1990 eingesetzten Treuhand-Anstalt, die für die Liquidierung und Veräußerung der zu DDR-Zeit zum „Volkseigentum“ zugehörigen Grundstücke und Immobilien zuständig war. Der Fokus liegt auf der Untersuchung der Bautypen, die in der neuen vereinten Bundesrepublik keine Verwendung mehr fanden wie Großgaststätten, Polikliniken, CENTRM-Warenhäuser und Interhotels. Diese wurden im Verlauf der 1990er umgebaut, umgenutzt, abgerissen oder stehen bis heute leer – und prägen so das Bild der Städte in Ostdeutschland. more

Cities affected by the Second World War had to redefine their urban self-image and undertake a revision of their building stock in the face of the impending or real bombing catastrophe. Maps and mapping played a special role in this. The research network "Mapping and Transforming. Interdisciplinary Access to City Maps as a Visual Medium of Urban Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939-1949" explores functions of city maps in transformation processes for selected cities in Central and Eastern Europe in interdisciplinary cooperation, from the perspective of the humanities and engineering sciences, social geography as well as computer science. more

Global construction companies impact our futures. Yet, the role of these global players and their persistent presence in different regions has barely been reflected upon. This project uses German construction companies as a prism to address a wide spectrum of economic, political, environmental or cultural impacts in specific local contexts throughout the long 20th century and aims to critically analyse success stories and moments of failure. This choice is triggered by the label ‘Made in Germany’, which was established in the late colonial period and remains an unquestioned marker of quality. Focusing on production cycles, the research team scrutinises global flows of capital, labour, know-how and construction materials, primarily in West and Southern Africa as well as Latin America.<br/><br/> more

Im Rahmen des Leitprojekts „Sozialräumliche Transformationen in Berlin-Brandenburg 1980-2000“ des Forschungsschwerpunkts III führt Liselore Durousset ein Promotionsvorhaben zum Arbeitspaket Wirtschaft durch. In ihrer Dissertation untersucht sie, inwiefern der Systemwechsel sich auf die Planung und Praxis der wirtschaftsräumlichen Entwicklung auswirkte. Zu diesem Zweck wählte sie Ludwigsfelde als Fallbeispiel. more

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This dissertation project explores the planning and construction history of GDR building projects in Cuba within the context of transnational networks and the exchange of technology, materials, and ideas. The study spans from the first trade and credit agreement between the GDR and Cuba in 1960 to the collapse of the state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe in 1990, which resulted in Cuba losing its most important foreign trading partners. Despite the close relations between Cuba and the GDR within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), many of these building projects remain largely unexplored. more