Christoph Sauer

Porträt von Christoph Sauer © Sven Ellger
Name

Christoph Sauer M.A.

Doctoral scholarship holder

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Contact Information
Organization Name

Research Project and Research Training Group: Technical College of Dresden under National Socialism

Research Project and Research Training Group: Technical College of Dresden under National Socialism

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Visiting address:

Falkenbrunnen (FAL), Raum 275 Chemnitzer Str. 48b

01187 Dresden

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Address postal

Postal address:

TUD Dresden University of Technology Institut für Geschichte, Graduiertenkolleg und Forschungsprojekt „Die TH Dresden im Nationalsozialismus“

01062 Dresden

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Curriculum Vitae

  • Since 2023, doctoral fellow in the Research Training Group “The Dresden University of Technology under National Socialism”
  • Since 2022: Research Assistant at the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (ISGV)
  • 2021–2023: Master’s degree in history at TU Dresden
  • 2021 Research Assistant in the Daphne Project at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections)
  • 2017–2021: Bachelor’s degree in History, Art History, and Musicology at TU Dresden
  • 2015–2017: Studied musicology and history at TU Dresden

Doctoral Research Project

A Repository of Technical Literature. Knowledge and Scientific Oversight: The Case of the Library(ies) of the Dresden University of Technology from 1928 to 1961

“At technical universities […] there is therefore an urgent need for well-stocked and well-managed libraries,” remarked librarian Paul Trommsdorff in 1928 regarding the importance of knowledge provision at German technical universities. After Martin Bollert, director of the Saxon State Library, had noted the deplorable condition of the Dresden University of Technology library that same year, the University Executive Board sought to make infrastructural improvements to ensure the availability of knowledge for scientific research and, not least, for industry. The 1930s and 1940s were largely shaped by exclusion and directives from the National Socialists, as well as by the inclusion of Nazi literature and personnel. The reconstruction of the university library, which had been destroyed during the war, involved the recovery and denazification of the relocated collections, as well as the restoration and acquisition of catalogs and urgently needed literature for what was initially the only technical university library in the GDR. With Helene Benndorf’s transfer to the library of the Technical University of Dresden, where she served as director until 1958, the university once again had a well-functioning institution at its disposal, even though the university’s leadership accused Benndorf of lacking loyalty to the socialist state.

Against this backdrop, this research project—drawing on the fields of intellectual, institutional, and contemporary history—examines the institutional-academic and political-ideological role of the Dresden University of Technology Library in its function as a repository of knowledge during the late Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and the early GDR. In doing so, the study takes into account the exclusion and inclusion of knowledge, political upheavals, events, collection strategies, uses, and the scope of action available to the directors and staff as influencing factors, analyzing them with regard to continuities and discontinuities. From an actor-centered perspective and with the help of alternative accounts, the study also aims to counteract the disastrous state of the source material.

Publications

Research areas

  • Saxon regional history as well as modern and contemporary history
  • History of Science under National Socialism
  • Visual History

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Hagen Schönrich
Last modified: Oct 13, 2026