The research project examines processes and forms of modernisation through entertainment that developed along the cultural transfer axis connecting the major cities of Leipzig, Vienna and St. Petersburg. Two prominent nodes of this German-language communication axis were Pest and Prague. During the period under study, both cities occupied an outstanding position as cultural and literary centres of the Germans in Eastern Europe. They are therefore the focus of the project. The aim of the project is to analyse the fiction press and its networks in order to examine the mediation of new urban lifestyles and to illustrate the reciprocity of cultural transfer between 'West' and 'East'.
The research project continues the already established and productive cooperation between the Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies and the Institute for Eastern European History and Regional Studies at the University of Tübingen. The project work consolidates the research begun in Tübingen and bundled in the Centre for the Study of German History and Culture in Southeast Europe.
Outside the university, the project group is developing an interdisciplinary exchange with the Tübingen Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies and the Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe e. V. (IKGS) in Munich.
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