(De)constructing Mediterranean Europe. Italian Farmers Facing the EEC's Southern Enlargement (1970s–1980s)
Dr. Antonio Carbone
Immediately after its launch in 1962, the EEC's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) turned out to be quite unfavorable for the agriculture of Mediterranean regions: whereas "continental" farm goods were subsidized, Mediterranean products enjoyed only tariff protection. Initially underestimated, this disadvantage proved to be substantial as the CAP became the most expensive item in the EEC budget. An important opportunity to ...
Der Dienstkalender Benito Mussolinis, 1923–1945
PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer, Dr. Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi
Mit dem Forschungsprojekt zu Mussolinis Dienstkalender soll in erster Linie eine elektronische Informationsquelle geschaffen werden, die es ermöglicht, die Arbeitsweise des faschistischen Diktators auf der Grundlage seiner persönlichen "Terminplanung" darzustellen. In einem ersten Schritt geht es darum, Mussolinis tägliche Audienzen aus den Akten seines persönlichen Sekretariats zu erschließen. Wichtigste Quelle ist dabei der von der ...
Die Last von Achsenbündnis und Besatzung. Nationale Erinnerungskulturen und deutsch-italienische Beziehungen 1945 bis heute
PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer
Die Schatten des Zweiten Weltkriegs reichen bis in unsere Gegenwart hinein: Die politische und gesellschaftliche Auseinandersetzung um die Kriegsvergangenheit (Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, Rückerstattungsdiskussionen, Wiedergutmachungsabkommen, Mediendebatten, das Bild der "sauberen Wehrmacht" auf bundesdeutscher Seite, das des "bravo italiano" und des "cattivo tedesco" auf der Apenninenhalbinsel) prägten einen ...
Elitenwandel in Italien im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert
PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer
Seit dem 19. Jahrhundert sind Staat und Politik in Italien geprägt von starken gesellschaftlichen Beharrungskräften. Der Elitenwandel war in der liberal-nationalen Monarchie ein eng begrenztes Phänomen, was sich schon in der hohen Exklusivität des Wahlrechts widerspiegelt. Die adelig-großbürgerliche Elite geriet im Faschismus unter Druck, ohne jedoch vom Regime vollends entmachtet zu werden. Der Sturz Mussolinis, der 1943 von innen heraus und ...
De(constructing) Europe – Euroscepticism in the History of European Integration

Joint project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
The research project embeds the ideal of cohesion in the European Union with the history of scepticism towards Europe. On the one hand, this scepticism has conditioned and been an obstacle to European unification from the outset; on the other, it has created its own forms of cohesion at a European level. While the field of research is currently dominated by political science, with a focus on the recent past, this project combines historical, ...
European Counter-Movements. Eurosceptic Entanglements from the Beginnings of European Integration to the Present Day
Andrea Carlo Martinez M.Phil.
My research project aims to map out the development of 'Euroscepticism' in Italy during the post-war period. According to the common historical and popular narrative, Italy represents a traditionally pro-European country which "fell out of love" with European institutions, a process that can be traced back to the Treaty of Maastricht, having gained speed in the 2010s as a result of the Eurozone and migration crises.
Evidence from ...
Ferdinand Gregorovius: Poetry and Science. Collected German and Italian Letters

Dr. Angela Steinsiek (together with Prof. Dr. Martin Baumeister)
Ferdinand Gregorovius lived in Rome for more than 20 years, where he wrote his main work, the Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, which in 1876 made him an honorary citizen of Rome. In addition to his historiographical and literary oeuvre he has left several thousand letters in which he, a contemporary witness, sheds light on Italian and German history of science as well as on politics and culture of the 19th century. On the basis of ...
Capitalism, what now? Growth Strategies in Western Europe since 1979
Dr. Lars Döpking
Economically speaking, Italy has recently been through hard times. Between 1999 and 2019 annual economic growth averaged less than 0.5%, resulting in high unemployment (especially among youngsters), collapsing household savings and political upheaval. These "lost decades" between joining the euro and the turmoil of a global pandemic are generally interpreted as the result of a long historical decline. Since Italy was unable to ...
War diary of the German General to the Italian Eighth Army High Command – Italian edition
Dr. Gerhard Kuck (in collaboration with PD Dr. Thomas Schlemmer)
The war diary of the German General to the Italian Eighth Army High Command gains its importance from the fact that the war diary of the Italian Army High Command had gone missing. Although until recently numerous studies in Italy have been dealing with the Italian participation in the "Operation Barbarossa", the German invasion of the Soviet Union, little attention has been paid to the relevant German sources. Only the minor part of ...
States of Emergency in Transnational Perspective. Politics, Ideas, and Mentalities in Europe and its Colonies, c. 1800–1960

Dr. Amerigo Caruso
The multiple crises of the twenty-first century have brought into sharper focus emergency politics and the surrounding debates. However, this field remains a domain of political science, philosophy, and jurisprudence, whereas the practice and theory of emergency politics has not received the same degree of scholarly attention among historians. Most of the existing research focuses on national experiences, especially on the use and abuse of ...
Re-constructions: Changing Times for Germany and Italy since 1989

Joint project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Resarch (BMBF)
The project "Re-Constructions of the German-Italian Academic Forum for Contemporary History and Politics", developed in cooperation with "Villa Vigoni - German-Italian Centre for European Dialogue" and funded by the BMBF, examines the patterns of reaction to political and social crises, starting from the situation triggered by the Covid-19 epidemic.
The part of the project being rolled out by DHI Rome (Max Weber ...
Shadows of the Occident. Catholicism in the Political Thought of Post-War Europe, 1945–1960
Dr. Simon Unger-Alvi
This project examines the intellectual evolution of Catholic-conservative movements across Western Europe. Specifically, it focuses on the relations between Christian Democrats and former supporters of dictatorial regimes in Italy, Germany, and France. In this context, the project primarily analyses the role of the Catholic Church in Europe's political landscape. Thereby, it questions narratives of post-war historiography that mainly revolved ...
Technocrats with Government Authority in Italy since the 1990s

Dr. Sarah Lias Ceide
As part of the project "Re-Constructions of the German-Italian Academic Forum for Contemporary History and Politics" (financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF], in cooperation with Villa Vigoni – German-Italian Centre for the European Dialogue). Over the course of the last decades, 'technocrats' have strongly impacted Italian politics, as demonstrated by the example of the ...
The Global Pontificate of Pius XII. Catholicism in a Divided World, 1945–1958

Dr. Simon Unger-Alvi (Principal Investigator)
We are a group of historians analyzing newly available sources on Pope Pius XII in the Vatican Archives. Our team unites scholars from the German Historical Institutes in Rome and Warsaw, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Oxford, KU Leuven, Fribourg University, and Collegium Carolinum Munich.
While the opening of the Apostolic Archive in 2020 has been accompanied by strong media attention and many questions about the ...
Übergangsgesellschaften im Vergleich. Überlegungen zur "Sattelzeit" auf der italienischen Halbinsel und in Europa
PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer
Ausgehend von der Analyse der Reaktionsmuster der Bevölkerung im linksrheinischen Deutschland und in Piemont auf die französische Herrschaft von 1798 bis 1814 zielt das Projekt auf eine Bewertung bestimmter Transformationsprozesse in Staat und Gesellschaft vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Restaurationszeit. Im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit steht die Generierung von neuem gesellschaftlichen Wissen, das sich erweitert um politische ...
History and Translation in the German-Italian Linguistic Area during the 19th and 20th Centuries
Dr. Gerhard Kuck
In the beginning of the 20th century the number of translations increased considerably both in the literary and – in the broadest sense – non-fictional field and did not even diminish during the period of Fascism and National Socialism. The project is aimed essentially at studying this period and primarily the field of non-fictional essays, the translation of which until now, in contrast to literary works, has been largely neglected. In the ...
On the "Transformation" of the New Political Elites in Italy – from the 1990s to Today

PD Dr. Francesco Di Palma
As part of the project "Re-Constructions of the German-Italian Academic Forum for Contemporary History and Politics" (financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF], in cooperation with Villa Vigoni – German-Italian Centre for the European Dialogue).
This research project examines the question of whether, to what extent and why there has been a "transformation" ...