In recent years, historians have increasingly focused on the multifaceted nature of European postwar democracies (see, e.g., Conway 2020; Corduwener 2023). Almost unanimously, they have emphasized the “contained”, “controlled” nature of the first two decades after 1945, effectively declaring this period a sort of golden age of democratic stability. This project posits that postwar democracies during this period were not only “controlled” but also “rough” democracies (see also Nolte 2024 on this concept), in which physical violence remained a persistent feature of democratic conflict resolution. The project is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and is part of its historically oriented sub-program “Democracy as Utopia, Experience, and Threat”. The project is led by Petra Terhoeven (DHI Rome), Robert Kramm (University of Tübingen), and Sonja Levsen (University of Tübingen).

More information.

The project (2011-2022), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, examines the influence of different interpretations of the past and concepts of democracy on West German and French educational debates after 1945 from a comparative perspective. It questions the established narrative of supposedly specifically German "authoritarian traditions" and offers a new interpretation of the relationship between democracy and education after 1945. (Sonja Levsen)

The history of the Federal Republic of Germany is in flux. In March 2024, more than 30 historians discussed in Tübingen new developments and changing interpretations in research on the Federal Republic, asking which histories we (have to) narrate – and how we can today narrate these histories. A collected volume is in preparation. (Sonja Levsen)

Through the analytical lens of gender history, I approach in this study Spain’s fundamental political transformations of the 1930s and 1940s in the field of healthcare. Healthcare, particularly during the Civil War, became a battlefield, too, where competing conceptions of society were negotiated and translated into gendered practices, role expectations, and labour distribution of the medical day-to-day of the women and men. (Katharina Seibert)