Research

Research interests:

• History of universities, knowledge and science

• Historical transformation research
• History of unified Germany since 1990
• Contemporary history after 1945

PhD project: "Special status in the transformation? The TU Dresden in the 'University Reorganization East' after 1989/90"

The reorganization of the GDR university system in the 1990s is considered a particularly conflict-laden area of East German transformation history. For a long time, the focus was on the extensive staff restructuring at the universities, which still gives rise to controversial interpretations today. In this context, it is not uncommon to hear talk of a "colonization" of the East by the West, which led to the marginalization of East German perspectives in the arenas of social sovereignty of interpretation. However, such narratives tend to be simplistic and present contemporary historical research with the task of developing differentiating approaches and gaining empirically sound insights through source-saturated studies. Such an approach seems particularly necessary in the field of higher education, as the so-called "Hochschulumbau Ost" (Jürgen John and Jens Blecher) took very different forms depending on the federal state and institution.

The doctoral project aims to make a contribution to this and focuses on an institution that had a special status in the transformation process in two respects: the TUD (Dresden University of Technology). On the one hand, technical universities differed from the classic full-spectrum technical universities due to their strong anchoring in the natural sciences and engineering, which brought with it specific conditions for university restructuring. Secondly, as the state capital of the "self-proclaimed model pupil" (Dierk Hoffmann) of Saxony, Dresden received special political attention under Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf and Science Minister Hans Joachim Meyer, which also had an impact on the local university. The project examines the extent to which this double special status shaped the epistemic, administrative and communicative transformations at TU Dresden.

In addition, the Dresden university restructuring will be placed in the context of recent research on the history of knowledge and science, which increasingly views universities as stakeholders in a competitive environment. TU Dresden's current status as a University of Excellence offers a suitable starting point for this and at the same time raises the research question of the extent to which the East German transformation has been intertwined with the dynamics of inter-university competition since the late 1980s.

Methodologically, the study is based on written sources from the Dresden University Archives as well as on materials from the state archives of Saxony and the federal government, some of which have only recently become accessible due to the 30-year embargo period. In addition, printed sources and contemporary literature from the university's environment were consulted and guided interviews with experts were conducted.