Selected completed research projects

Willy Gehler (1876-1953): Cutting-edge research, political self-mobilization and historical reception of an important civil engineer and university lecturer in the "century of extremes"

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hänseroth, Prof. Dr. Manfred Curbach
Project management: Falk Hensel, Oliver Steinbock
Project funding: DFG
Duration: 06/2014-05/2017 (1st approval period)
Duration: 04/2019-03/2023 (2nd approval period)

The project - a cooperation with the Institute of Concrete Structures at TU Dresden - focuses on the career of an engineer and technical scientist who shaped his field for decades with the approach of targeted and reflexive personalization - the biographical approach for multi-perspective research in the history of technology. This began in the German Empire and ended in the GDR, thus encompassing four epochs of German history and more than half a century of the history of technology and science, as well as a not insignificant part of the Technocratic High Modernism (ca. 1880-1970). The historical subject in its many facets has once again become the focus of historical research in the course of the "cultural turn" that has taken hold in historical studies since the 1990s. After scientific biography had become obsolete between the 1950s and 1980s, a renaissance of this genre can now be observed. Biographical research, understood as the art of depicting historical times in the lifetime of the person being biographed, is now a permanent feature of historiographical approaches guided by cultural studies. In view of the dynamization of lifeworlds, the dissolution of boundaries in social life and the fragmentation of life courses, this approach seems predestined for contemporary historical analysis. In this context, an interdisciplinary field of research has emerged from biography in recent years, which is receiving privileged attention. It is particularly concerned with shedding light on patterns of perception and interpretation that guide action as well as the scope of action of individuals and the analysis of forms of interpersonal relationships and interactions in their historical social and cultural context. The focus of the project work is on finding and evaluating new sources on the life and work of Willy Gehler. Comparisons with Gehler's professional contemporaries who were considered similarly exposed within the reinforced concrete construction community, but whose biographies show no or far less extensive "entanglements" in the political systems of the 20th century (e.g. Kurt Beyer, Franz Dischinger and Emil Mörsch), form an essential part of this.

The results of the research project are documented by Uwe Fraunholz, Maximilian Gasch and Anna Mattern in an online exhibition for the German Digital Library (ddb). In addition to Willy Gehler and his Dresden colleague Kurt Beyer, "Construction - Deconstruction: Civil Engineers in War" looks at numerous other civil engineers from the development of the profession from the 16th century to the 20th century in order to explore the role of civil engineers in times of war. Brief introductory texts characterize the respective epoch from the perspective of the profession, while short biographies situate the respective construction experts in their time. Above all, the presentation of rich source material invites visitors to conduct their own research.

You can access the exhibition in the ddb here: Construction - Deconstruction
You can download the accompanying brochure for the exhibition via Qucosa: Construction - Deconstruction

The printed version of the brochure is available free of charge in the BZW, room A 515, while stocks last.

The promise of progress in technology and the engineers' assertion of altruism in technocratic high modernism (ca. 1880-1970)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hänseroth
Project management: Dr. Mirko Buschmann, Dr. Uwe Fraunholz, Detlev Fritsche, M.A., Prof. Dr. Thomas Hänseroth, Dr. Ralf Pulla, Dr. Volker Stöhr, Anke Woschech, M.A., Sylvia Wölfel, M.A., Martin Schwarz, M.A., Hagen Schönrich, M.A.
Duration: 2009-2014
Subproject M of the DFG Collaborative Research Center 804 "Transcendence and Common Sense"

One of the defining phenomena of high modernity is a scientistically fueled promise of technological progress, with which the future and technology were developed as resources for experiencing transcendence. We still know little about its constitutive and stabilizing conditions. For this reason, the sub-project is interested in the constellations that led to the emergence and robust persistence of a technological optimism based on the assumption that technical means could be used for the common good without limit. The central hypothesis is that the engineers' assertion of altruism endowed the technological optimism of progress with a high degree of trustworthiness and fascination. Through the altruism formula, particular interests were transcended into a status-enhancing and criticism-immunizing public spirit. While, firstly, the assertion of altruism formed a common point of reference for the group of engineers and in this sense was common-sense, secondly, technologized expectations of progress formed a common sense that extended beyond this group and characterized the period under investigation. Thirdly, engineers seem to have not only assigned themselves an innovative function, but also claimed a curative function by ascribing a common good orientation to technical action per se. The key question is therefore to what extent this assertion of altruism substantially supported and repeatedly vitalized normatively connoted technical "progress", and vice versa, how the pathos for the future inscribed in technical change stabilized and vitalized the engineers' assertion of public spirit. Three systematically and historically closely interwoven areas of discourse are distinguished, in which self-interpretations and interpretations by others as well as promises of progress manifested themselves in specific forms on the one hand, but on the other hand were formed with reference to each other. These areas of discourse also form the research fields of the sub-project: firstly, the introduction and use of new technologies will be examined, with energy, everyday life and production technology serving as examples. Secondly, in a further field of research, conceptions of the technologized pathos of the future in the form of technical utopias are examined. Thirdly, the perception and handling of risky technologies and technical disasters as a supposed counterpoint to promises of progress and altruism will be focused on.

Between ecological responsibility and economic constraints.
Environmentally friendly product development for the household in the Federal Republic and the GDR

Project management: Sylvia Wölfel, M.A.
TU Dresden program for the promotion of young female scientists
Duration: 2007-2010

The doctoral project aims to examine the development of environmentally friendly household technology in the Federal Republic and the GDR from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. The analysis of environmentally friendly product development processes in the household appliance industry in both German states is located at a tense interface between questions of innovation, environmental and economic history at a time when environmental protection was transformed from an almost unknown concept into one of the most important "pacesetters of socio-political change". The focus is on the conflict-laden process of integrating the idea of environmental protection as a new guiding principle into innovation processes and the organizational culture of the companies and businesses concerned, with a focus on reducing consumption values in the washing and cooling product sectors. The focus is also on issues relating to the environmentally friendly design of production, transportation and disposal processes as well as changes in consumer behavior or the mediating function of the retail sector with regard to greater consideration of ecological criteria when purchasing and using household appliances. Based on the findings of a comprehensive ecologization of society and politics since the late 1960s in the Federal Republic of Germany and a period of environmental political awakening in the GDR until around the mid-1970s, the questions arise as to how changed ecological knowledge, ideas or values found their way into companies or businesses in the sector, how they were perceived there and how they were translated into communication and innovation processes of companies or businesses. Who were the carriers of this model in the companies and businesses in the sector and what impulses came from consumers and politics in both German states?

Infrastructure policy of the SED and infrastructure development in the GDR using the example of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, 1949-1989

Project management: Ralph Kaschka, M.A.
Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship

The research project examines the efforts of the GDR in the field of low technologies in the period from 1949 to 1989. The aim is to shed light on a further area of the political, transport, economic and technological history of the East German state. Capable technical infrastructures (including railroad tracks) form an important basis for the success of a national economy. The project focuses on how this fact was perceived by the responsible political bodies and decision-makers of the SED with regard to the infrastructure of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR) and what initiatives it pursued. This will also have to be analyzed with regard to the specifics of technical infrastructures (e.g. the local nature of the facilities). The focus will also be on the efforts and success of the SED in pushing through its goals in the responsible administrative bodies and the reactions of these bodies. In addition, the extent to which the executive was able to implement the party's guidelines in practice and how it itself took the specifics of technical infrastructures into account will be explored. Another focus of the study is the Ministry for State Security (MfS). It examines what knowledge the MfS gathered about the state of the DR's infrastructure and whether it possibly took action itself to increase its capabilities. Finally, the thesis will be examined for the SED, the administration and the MfS that a major cause for the lack of capabilities of the DR's infrastructure can be found in characteristics of the culture of innovation in the GDR. The source basis of the project is formed by the holdings of the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde, the documents of the Federal Commissioner for State Security of the GDR and numerous published sources. In addition, a limited number of interviews with contemporary witnesses will be conducted.

DFG-funded machine science research in the field of tension between path dependency and path change, 1920-1970

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hänseroth
Project management: Dr. Mirko Buschmann
Duration: 2004-2008
DFG Research Unit "History of the German Research Foundation"

Mechanical engineering is a core area of the industrialization process and a strategic center of technical-industrial development par excellence. Throughout the 20th century, mechanical engineering was a mainstay of the German economy and one of its most important export sectors. The technical sciences in particular stood for a growing orientation of the sciences towards technocratic goals and immediate usability, which led to profound transformations in the epistemic and institutional orientation of science, to the growing hybridization of research fields and scientific practices, to the increasing importance of interdisciplinarity and to the "through-nationalization" of scientific systems.
Within this general trend, however, historical technology and science research has identified strong national specifics. For around two decades, innovation research has used the "national innovation system" model to analyze the innovation process and its national characteristics with fruitful results. This approach focuses primarily on the institutions involved in the innovation process - the state/politics, industry and universities, their respective structures, their interactions and their functional interrelationships. Recent research has shown that the conditions for successful innovation processes can only be adequately measured if the respective cultural "impregnations" of these fields are taken into account. This points the way for research from the national innovation system to the "national innovation culture". The project in question follows this research perspective.
This includes questions about the relationship between continuity and change of long-standing research-guiding ideas and collective research profiles, including discernible caesuras. The central question is whether DFG funding has stabilized and vitalized traditional paths in mechanical engineering or contributed to the opening of new paths. Was the DFG willing and able to intervene in the engineering sciences in an orienting and modernizing way, or did the cultural "impregnations" of the stakeholders and their networks prove to be rather resistant to science policy control efforts?

Innovation through concentration? Focus formation and competitiveness in higher education in the GDR and the Federal Republic, 1949-1990

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hänseroth
Project management: Dr. Johannes Abele, Dr. Uwe Fraunholz, Dr. Johannes Raschka, Dr. Manuel Schramm
BMBF Research Network "Innovation Culture in Germany"
Duration: 1999-2004
Final report Download via Qucosa

Universities and colleges are of strategic importance for economic policy in an increasingly globalized knowledge and service society. In order to strengthen the efficiency of the research landscape, Federal and State governments are calling for "profile building and concentration" within the research landscape. Federal German science policy is thus designing university structures that had already been created in the GDR in the 1950s and then purposefully developed further. In the previous exploratory study, a specific pattern of German innovation culture emerged, which will be examined in more detail. Since the 1960s, there have been efforts in both German states to integrate the strengths of higher education in traditional disciplines such as electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and chemistry into a globalized economy that is increasingly characterized by knowledge-based services. The aim of the research project is to identify interactions between the organization of the higher education system in Germany and the development of economic competitiveness.