Robert Pursche

• Intellectual History

• History of Archives and Archival Practices

• History of Critical Theory, especially the ‘Frankfurt School’

• History of the GDR

• Theory of History

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 towrite 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.

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.

• Umkämpftes Nachleben. Walter Benjamins Archive 1940-1990, updated PhD-thesis, announced for Fall 2024.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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/.