The Aral Sea
Die Vermessung des Imperiums. Der Aralsee, seine Erforschung und das Russländische Reich im 19. Jahrhundert (Surveying the empire: The Aral Sea, its exploration, and the Russian Empire in the 19th century)
Starting with the first sailboat trip on the Aral Sea in 1848/49, this research project examines Russian history from a transnational perspective. It explores scientific relations – first and foremost between Germany and Russia. It also focusses on the technical exploitation of the Central Asian periphery and Russia’s position in a newly interpreted European colonial history, with particular emphasis on interactions between colonisers and colonised. Numerous drawings by an expedition painter provide a particularly valuable insight. So far, they have not been examined in terms of how significant they are to a Russian-European colonial and technological history. The drawings provide an innovative approach to the history of surveying the Russian Empire.
With this research project, Jörn Happel was admitted to the Heisenberg Programme of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).
Paul Scheffer
Das goldene Zeitalter der Auslandskorrespondenten – Paul Scheffer in der Sowjetunion, in Deutschland und den USA (The golden era of the foreign correspondent: Paul Scheffer in the Soviet Union, Germany, and the United States)
Paul Scheffer (1883–1963) was one of the most renowned foreign correspondents of his time. Always in search of the truth, this inquisitive and sophisticated journalist came to Moscow in the winter of 1921. From there, he worked for seven years for the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper. His work as a journalist then took him via Germany to the United States. Scheffer’s fascinating biography is used as a basis for examining three main issues: (1) Eastern policies between the two world wars, in Nazi Germany, and in West Germany after 1949, and the perspective of an intellectual journalist elite on German eastern policy, expressed in letters, (2) the functions and tasks, the influence and constraints of foreign correspondents, (3) the culture of foreign correspondents, on the basis of the fascinating correspondence that Scheffer conducted with Germans, Soviet Russians and Americans for over 50 years. An analysis of Scheffer’s network will examine a journalistic world in the golden era of foreign correspondents – a correspondents’ world that was like an extended family.
Asian horsemen – Bolshevik monsters: Europe’s primal fear of the East
The destruction caused by unpredictable horsemen is a symbol of Europe’s primal fear of the “East”. Evidence of this can be found in European art and literature since the Early Middle Ages. Horsemen repeatedly spread fear and terror in Europe. They were seen as the downfall of Christianity. The horsemen were regarded as descendants of the Gog and Magog, Old Testament peoples who worshipped the Antichrist in the New Testament. With the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century, this primal fear was linked to a specific people. To this day, the term Mongol invasion still carries with it the fear of downfall caused by assailing barbarians. This project attempts to test a new approach to the long-standing narrative of Eastern Europe as the dangerous Asian rival space of the West. Transcending boundaries and centuries, it will reveal visual discourses that address the historical dispute between settled and unsettled cultures.
Letzte Änderung: 10. November 2021