Zeitgeschichte

Robert Pursche

Academic Researcher

Contact

Wilhelmstraße 12, room 307.

07071 29 75228

robert.purschespam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

Office hours

During winter semester 2024/25, after taking contact.

Curriculum Vitae

since April 2025
"Walter-Benjamin-Stelle"

funded by the German Research Foundation

October 2025
Program for the Promotion of Junior Researchers

University of Tübingen

since 2023
Researcher and lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter)

at University of Tübingen

July 2022
PhD in History (summa cum laude)

University of Basel

2021 and 2022
Parental Leave
2021
Scientific Assistant

at University of Basel

2017 - 2022
PhD student

at Basel Graduate School of History

2015 – 2016
Associated student

at graduate school Jena Center 20th Century History

2013 – 2016
Master of Arts History and Politics of the 20th century

Friedrich Schiller University Jena

2010 – 2011
ERASMUS-student

at Södertörns Högskola, Stockholm

2008 – 2013
Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Political Sciences

University of Leipzig

Research

Research interests

  • Intellectual History, especially the History of Critical Theory/'Frankfurt School'
  • History of Archives in the Cold War
  • Theory and Historiography
  • Environmental History, especially the History of Water in the context of Colonialism and Decolonisation (19th-20th centuries)

Current research projects

The Search for Water beyond Modern Infrastructures in the 19th and 20th Centuries

In my research project, I would like to investigate the search for water in remote places and regions in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the age of the "new imperialism" from the late 19th century onwards, the colonial powers were more concerned with the development of larger territories than in earlier periods. This inevitably gave rise to the problem of how to deal with water-scarce areas. In my research project, I would like to explore the question of how people searched for water in order to survive, to grow crops and keep livestock, to plan and build infrastructures, to wage wars or to flee from them. Thus, I am to write a history of knowledge and environmental history of the search for water in a trans-imperial perspective and in the period from ca. 1880 to ca. 1960.

I am taking a closer look at three regions: Southwest Africa with the Kalahari Desert, the arid regions of East Africa and the western United States, in particular the Great Plains. Due to their specific environmental conditions, all of these regions posed major challenges for expansion efforts or troop movements in times of war. A large number of actors were involved whose forms of knowledge and practices in the search for water will be examined: Farmers, settlers, engineers, scientists such as geologists and geographers, pioneer military units, but also diviners. It is also important to note that the colonial actors always encountered local populations who themselves possessed water knowledge and practices, such as the Herero in Southwest Africa. I am therefore interested in which forms of knowledge of the various actors in imperial power structures competed with each other, were negotiated as legitimate or illegitimate, scientific, pragmatic or as superstition.

Finished research projects

A Contested Afterlife. Walter Benjamin's Archives 1940-1990

There has often been talk of a miracle when it comes to Walter Benjamin's posthumous fame. After his suicide while fleeing from the Nazis in September 1940, Benjamin's name was "one of the most lost in the intellectual world" (Gershom Scholem). At the end of the Cold War, Benjamin was a globally received author, and the controversies surrounding his work and his tragic fate continue to have an impact to this day. In my dissertation, I have reconstructed the history of this eventful afterlife along the conflicts surrounding Benjamin's scattered archives, starting with the first rescue efforts of his friends Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, through the fierce debates about Benjamin's Marxism in the 1960s and the disputes about Benjamin's estate in the GDR. Not only the great intellectual figures come into view, but also archivists, editors, publishing house employees, political activists, journalists and Stasi agents.

The doctorate at the University of Basel was completed in 2022.

Publications

Monographies

Articles in magazines and anthologies

  • Traces d’inarchivable: Le travail de Gretel Adorno et Kitty Marx-Steinschneider pour l’au-delà de Walter Benjamin”, in: Flahutez, Fabrice; Hincker, Louis; Jakobi, Marianne (Hg.), Cahiers de l’Inarchivable 3. Exil, Clermont-Ferrand (im Erscheinen).
  • Gerhard Seidel and Walter Benjamin in the GDR: Lost Possibilities of an East German Counter Legacy?, in: Adler, Caroline; Buck, Sophie (Hg.): Walter Benjamin in the European East: Networks, Conflicts, and Reception, London/New York 2025 (im Erscheinen).
  • Philologie als Barrikadenkampf. Rolf Tiedemann und die Arbeit für Walter Benjamins Nachleben, in: Mittelweg 36. Zeitschrift des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung 30 (Juni/Juli 2021), H. 3, p. 12-40.
  • Forcierte Distanz, ungewollter Kontakt. Theodor W. Adorno und die DDR, in: Göttel, Dennis; Wessely, Christina (Hg.): Im Vorraum. Lebenswelten Kritischer Theorie um 1969, Berlin 2019, p. 47-66.
  • Die Aufgabe der Maulwürfe. Heiner Müllers konstruktiver Defaitismus, in: Haas, Annika; Hock, Jonas; Leyrer, Anna; Ungelenk, Johannes (Hg.): Widerständige Theorie. Kritisches Lesen und Schreiben, Berlin 2018, p. 155-162.

Reviews

  • Voigt, Frank; Tzanakis Papadakis, Nicos; Loheit, Jan; Baehrens, Konstantin (Hg.): Material und Begriff. Arbeitsverfahren und theoretische Beziehungen Walter Benjamins, in: https://www.soziopolis.de/lesen/buecher/artikel/aus-walter-benjamins-werkstatt/ (published on 23.09.2019).
  • Zwarg, Robert: Die Kritische Theorie in Amerika. Das Nachleben einer Tradition, in: Das Argument 60 (2018), H. 4, S. 572-574.

Other

  • Über den Begriff und in die Quellen. Walter Benjamin zu Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung, in: Geschichtstheorie am Werk, URL: https://gtw.hypotheses.org/15109#identifier_1_15109 (published on 25.4.2023).
  • Interview mit Dagmar Herzog, zusammen mit Norbert Frei und Tobias Freimüller: »Ich habe eine riesige Datenbank in meinem Herzen«. Ein Gespräch über Sozialisation, Sexualgeschichte und die USA der Gegenwart, in: Herzog, Dagmar: Lust und Verwundbarkeit. Zur Zeitgeschichte der Sexualität in Europa und den USA, Göttingen 2018, p. 200-226.
  • Walter Benjamin zwischen Ost und West, in: http://www.literaturarchiv1968.de/content/walter-benjamin-zwischen-ost-und-west/.