Research projects and PhDs

1. How the past counts. On the history of the Federal Statistical Office (GeStat)
Cooperation project with the Federal Statistical Office, 2024-2028
Lead: Prof Dr Kerstin Brückweh and Prof Dr Markus Zwick (Federal Statistical Office)

In the "GeStat - how the past counts" project, the history of the authority will be researched together with the Federal Statistical Office from July 2024. The focus will be on the period from the 1980s onwards: The census boycott, the revival of a broader social interest in National Socialism and the beginning of the end of the GDR and accession to the Federal Republic of Germany represent key social conditions for the history of the Federal Statistical Office. The participatory involvement of the office's employees and thus a new approach to so-called government research is an important component of the project. Questions such as: What is of interest to the employees and what are their expectations of the project? How much reappraisal do we need - as the Federal Statistical Office and as a society?

2. Social data as sources for contemporary history
AG in the Association of German Historians

Social science long-term observations provide insights into the lives of many people. These qualitative and quantitative social data collected for the observation of societies allow a variety of insights into the present and past and thus form a complex, heterogeneous source that challenges contemporary historians: They are often stored in archives, sometimes in the basements of researchers, and require special methodological knowledge and contextualisation in terms of the history of knowledge. The purpose of the "Social Data and Contemporary History" working group, which was founded in 2025, is to discuss methodological, technical, content-related, legal and ethical standards when using social data. A first WG meeting is planned for the Historikertag 2025, the next annual conference for March 2026.

My interest in these questions arose from my habilitation thesis "Menschen zählen" (People count), a history of knowledge examination of the production of social data, and has developed into working with data as sources for contemporary history - primarily in the form of secondary analyses of qualitative and quantitative data. I am currently the spokesperson for the AG.

"Who owns the city?" This question has been increasingly asked and partially answered in recent years - including with citizen science approaches. Less attention has been paid to the even more fundamental question: Who owns the land? My research on the reorganisation of home ownership in East Germany before, during and after 1989 and a first look at ownership structures in Great Britain have clearly shown that - in addition to the acute question of housing shortages - the relevant long-term question is that of land ownership. Historically, conflicts have always arisen when ownership of buildings and land have been in different hands. This is because the materiality of buildings is perishable - faster or slower depending on the durability of the material used (concrete vs. wood) - but land is a limited resource. It is highly decisive not only locally and nationally, but also globally for questions of social and economic organisation, order and distribution of power and thus for social and spatial inequalities.

Cities, suburbs and rural regions with their typical forms of development and the people living in them are at the heart of several projects and applications - from a doctoral thesis on stories of experience from large housing estates and a project application on (in)visible homelessness to this ongoing work:

1. (Nightmare) dream of a detached house. The history of a form of living and ownership in the long 20th century (monograph)

How do political participation and private property relate to each other? To what extent does private home ownership (e.g. through mortgages) restrict the political scope of citizens or does it create greater involvement? The single-family home is understood as a specific form of housing and lifestyle of the long 20th century, especially in suburban areas. The history of a specific house, which is placed in a larger historical context, serves as a common thread. This links micro and macro history and raises questions about the interplay of political framework conditions and individual lifestyles, which are expressed in forms of housing or desires depending on economic and social opportunities and limitations in history.

2. Where the Rich Live: Mapping Villa Neighbourhoods and Cultures of Wealth in Germany's Long Twentieth Century (RichMap)

Funded as part of the Leibniz Competition 2025-2028 in the funding line "Cooperative Excellence"
Coordination: Leibniz Institute for Spatial Social Research Erkner
Director: Prof. Dr Kerstin Brückweiler
. Dr Kerstin Brückweh and PD Dr Eva Maria Gajek


Superbass and Raimond Spekking: Glienicke Bridge, seen from Babelsberg Palace as an aerial view

"Tell me where you live and I'll tell you who you are." This saying sums up the close connection between where you live and your social status. While neighbourhoods characterised by poverty have been intensively researched, the question of where the rich live in Germany and why remains largely unanswered. Villa neighbourhoods, often referred to as "good addresses", embody exclusivity and social prestige. But how do such privileged areas come about? How do they manage to retain this status over decades? Why do some villa neighbourhoods lose their significance, and how do some manage to regain their reputation after political and social upheavals - especially in East Germany after 1989? The interdisciplinary project combines an established method, the dense description, with a digital tool, the rich map, and uses citizen science to find out how exclusive residential neighbourhoods are perceived and used internally and externally.

When I started at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in 2023, I asked myself what I, as a historian, should actually do with the drone available there. This resulted in a project funded by the Incubator Funds of the National Research Data Initiative "NFDI4Memory" on the use of drones in historical research, which was also accompanied by a seminar at the Viadrina. It is embedded in numerous activities on the topic of mapping in the research focus "Contemporary History and Archives" at the IRS.

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"Something like this was blown up in the USA" was the headline of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in the 1980s about large housing estates and also recommended thinking about demolishing the estates in the Federal Republic of Germany. Journalists, planners and researchers had also long been critical of the housing estates. In the 1980s, they therefore wanted to focus on the people who lived in the housing estates. Under the heading of "improvements", planners and residents discussed how the estates could be structurally changed. At the same time, further new housing estates for the population were being built in the GDR. Here, too, the spatial design was intended to do more justice to the people and their lives and not just fulfil planning requirements. The upheaval of 1989/1990 was a particular turning point for the residents and the GDR housing estates themselves. The focus was now on these estates: Residents, planners and journalists discussed both social and structural problems. While demolitions had been averted in West Germany in the 1980s, they had been carried out in East German housing estates since the end of the 1990s.

Pia Kleine's research project expands the planning, construction and discourse history of these large housing estates to include a perspective on the history(ies) of the residents. Using two case studies in Wolfsburg and Magdeburg, the project examines developments from the 1980s to the 2000s. Three thematic areas are central: 1. the descriptions and patterns of description of the large housing estates that both the residents and external actors chose during this period; 2. the spatial changes that the residents promoted or helped to shape; 3. everyday life in the large housing estates against the contemporary background of social developments.

The project is a cooperative doctoral project between the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (supervisor Prof Dr Eva Maria Froschauer) and the European University Viadrina (supervisor Prof Dr Kerstin Brückweh).

Statistics are the most important instrument for describing economic and social mass phenomena. The Federal Statistical Office is the central authority for the collection, processing and dissemination of this quantitative form of knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany. As the production centre for official statistics, it is of outstanding importance for the state's understanding of the economy and population in the country. The forms of statistical description are not rigid. The methods and definitions of statistical descriptions of society are constantly changing - especially dynamically when their subject matter changes dynamically.

In the transformation period, profound economic and social processes have overlapped since the 1980s: West Germany underwent structural change due to the shift of a large proportion of the labour force from the industrial to the service sector, and the unification of the two German states resulted in the restructuring of the East German economic and social system. Not only were West German administrative structures transferred to East Germany - the statistical system with its methods, concepts and definitions was also replaced by the West German system. These processes changed the way in which statistics were described and the state structures they produced in a reciprocal relationship. Analysing this complex relationship over time is the central focus of my research project. In addition, the 1980s were also the starting point for a politicisation of official statistics, driven by scepticism towards the use of new information technologies in statistical work, which quickly turned against the state as a controlling institution.

In my dissertation, I analyse the developments at the Federal Statistical Office, its key players and official statistics. The question of the various dimensions of change structure the work: I examine structural, personnel and methodological aspects, but also content-related aspects such as the office's publication and interpretation practices. The dissertation project thus lies at the interface between historical research into authorities and institutions on the one hand and research into quantitative knowledge production on the other.