Core research areas

The chair team conducts research into Saxon and comparative regional history from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The current epochal focus is on the history of the early modern period and the 19th century. In addition to Saxony, regional points of reference currently include Württemberg, Savoy-Piedmont, Rhineland-Westphalia and Franconia as well as Poland-Lithuania. In the work of the chair holder, Prof. Dr. Andreas Rutz, the pre-modern period, rule, space and cartography, women's and gender history, education and schools, confessionalization and monastic culture as well as the European and global dimensions of Saxon history play a special role. For the 19th and 20th centuries, his focus is on questions of the culture of remembrance and the development of historical images. Prof. Dr. Josef Matzerath is currently primarily concerned with questions of consumer history and, in particular, food history. Previously, his research focused on the nobility, Saxon parliamentarianism and the history of the Saxon state parliament. As part of the DFG project "Weibliche Herrschaftspartizipation in der Frühen Neuzeit. Regentschaften im Heiligen Römischen Reich in westeuropäischer Perspektive", the chair conducts important basic research in territorial regency (Stefanie Wenzel M.A.). As part of dissertation projects, research is also focused on urbanity in the culture of memory and processes of appropriation of social space in modern residential cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries(Lennart Kranz M.A.) and on the reception of the non-European world in 18th century Saxony(Sophie Döring M.A.).