Research Group Military Cultures of Violence at the University Potsdam
Speaker: Prof. Sönke Neitzel
The research group involves nine scholars from the universities of Potsdam, Göttingen and Bochum, as well as from Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam. The cooperation partner is the the Centre for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr (ZMSBw).
Project manager at the ZZF: Prof. Jan C. Behrends
PhD projects at the ZZF: Evgen Zinger und Jonas Baake
The DFG Research Group ‘Military Cultures of Violence’ aims to fill an important gap in both scholarship on military history and research on violence: the introduction of the concept of ‘military cultures of violence’ is designed to allow for the systematic description and explanation of sometimes very divergent acts of violence on the part of regular European armed forces that were viewed in contemporary assessments as illegitimate.
‘Military cultures of violence’ are defined as the violent practices proceeding from members of a collective military agent of violence belonging to a state or a state-like entity, and the associated interpretative ascriptions and discourses. The research group investigates in which ways and to what extent specific military cultures of violence developed in the regular armies of the European great powers from the early modern period to the end of the Second World War.
1. Funding phase: six Sub-Projects, 2. Funding phase: five Sub-Projects