The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000
Joint project
Project Management: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch (ZZF Potsdam), Prof. Dr. Gideon Botsch (MMZ Potsdam)
Supported by the Volkswagen Foundation
Social Consequences of the Transformation of the World of Work in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Postgraduate Research Group of the Hans Böckler Foundation
Direction: Frank Bösch/ZZF, Winfried Süß/ZZF (spokesman), Stefan Berger/ISB Bochum, und Andreas Wirsching/IfZ München-Berlin
Duration: 2021 - 2025 (second funding phase of the Kolleg).
Political-social concepts of time and process
Joint project
Project leader at ZZF: Rüdiger Graf
Funding period: April 2022 - March 2025
Funded by the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
Expecting Limits and Limiting Expectations – Economic Expertise, Environmental Policy and Consumption, 1970-2000
Completed Joint project
Project-Leader: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Graf
Auto(im)mobile Infrastructures in West Germany and Western Europe in the Great Acceleration
Joint project
Project Leaders: Rüdiger Graf und Christopher Neumaier
Funded by the Leibniz Association, funding line “Cooperative Excellence” (2026)
moving history - Festival of historical movies
Film festival
The ZZF co-organises the festival
Project management at ZZF: Dr Jutta Braun
Eastern European violence and military research
Under the direction of Jan Claas Behrends, the department has been working on war and violence in Eastern Europe from the First World War to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine since 2014. Studies on illegitimate military violence, occupation and war crimes form one focus. The regional focus is on Poland, the USSR, Ukraine and Russia.
Communism in the West and exile
From 2014 to 2018, the Graduate School (Graduiertenkolleg): History of Left-Wing Politics in Germany beyond Social Democracy and Communism" was conducted at the ZZF Potsdam with several sub-projects. The Graduate School was established under the auspices of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) and funded by the Federal Ministry of Science and Research between 2014 and 2018. Mario Keßler, who was the project co-leader at ZZF and is since 2021 a Senior Fellow at the institute, is working on a book project in this field.
Departments
The five departments of the ZZF conduct research on various topics of contemporary history and their connections to the present day.
Our research centres on German and European social history after 1945. We also analyse contemporary history in its international context; Department V, which deals with globalisation in a divided world, places a particular focus on this. Founded in 2023, it is the youngest department at the ZZF. Many research projects are also conducted across departments, thus promoting internal exchange and networking within the institute.
Work, Welfare State, Inequality
The research area Work, Welfare State, Inequality focuses on the public regulation of market-induced and life situation-related inequalities and the associated conflicts. Our research programme understands social security as a core element of political culture and investigates welfare state regimes as central social norming and relational mechanisms of modern societies and arenas of social opportunity distribution. It thus profiles security and inequality as leading categories of contemporary historical social analysis.