"Democratic history of the 20th century as a history of caesuras – The example of the early Weimar Republic"
Collaborative project with the Institute of the German Language in Mannheim (Prof. Dr. Heidrun Kämper: overall coordination) and the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich (Prof. Dr. Thomas Raithel). Financed by the Leibniz Association out of funds from the Pact on Innovation and Research.
Leader of the project at the Herder Institute: Prof. Peter Haslinger
Employees: Agnes Laba, M.A. and Konstantin Rometsch
At the centre of this trans-disciplinary project is the period of political and social upheaval from monarchy to democracy in the early years of the Weimar Republic (1917-1925), which will be examined from the perspectives of the histories of language, mentalities and discourse. Through this, the research project is aiming to integrate the three disciplinary approaches and establish a new, trans-disciplinary model of discourse analysis, which will clarify the possibilities (and limits) of interdisciplinarity.
Through the perspective of research into discourse history, this sub-project based at the Herder Institute is dedicated to the question of the rules used for finding common ground and/or holding differences of opinion within the democratic framework of the early Weimar Republic. Being guided by individual events, thematic groupings, symbols of common ground and key terms in selected discourses and debates, the development of the democratic discourse will be examined using examples, including the debate on the Versailles peace treaty and the discussion on the eastern borders of Germany. This will not only look at the political-journalistic debate and analyse it using methods of discourse analysis, but will also link it with more recent research on academic discourses (such as that on the early phase of "folk history" and the Central European debate of the interwar years). The focus of this area of work on discourse history within the whole project is aimed at discourse subjects such as 'majorities', 'minorities', borders', and 'communities and the state', amongst others. Particular weight is being given to the analysis of image-based sources (e.g. in works of political journalism, in caricatures and on propaganda postcards) and the role of writing in map materials, where an attempt will be made to close a previous research gap in historical discourse analysis: the inclusion of text-image relationships within the framework of the whole project.