Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić (eds.): Habsburg Natures

 Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić (eds.): Habsburg Natures. Imperial Governance and Environment in Central Europe, 1850-1918. New York: Berghahn 2025. ISBN  978-1-83695-227-5 (available for preorder)

Description

Within the Habsburg Empire of the late nineteenth century, nature became a central focus of political, economic, and scientific attention. A source of valuable natural resources and a platform for consolidating wider, territorial rule, its management and control was subsumed into a broader system of imperial governance. In this exacting analysis of the correlation between the environment and power, Habsburg Natures explores how the natural world fundamentally shaped the political and economic landscape within the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1850 to 1918. Ranging from forestry and coal-mining to river politics and natural disasters, this volume spotlights how deeply intertwined the histories of environmentalism and empire are.

Contents

Introduction: Towards the Writing of an Environmentally Inspired History of the Late Habsburg Empire

Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić

Part I: (Inter/Intra) Imperial Entanglements

Chapter 1. Riparian Rivalries and River Politics: How the Danube Question Influenced Diplomatic Relations and Domestic Policies in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Robert Shields Mevissen

Chapter 2. Improving Landscapes, Peoples and the Habsburg Empire: A Cooperative History of Melioration

Jana Osterkamp

Chapter 3. Logging the Borderlands: Transborder Forest Conflicts and Contestations in the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires in the Nineteenth Century

Selçuk Dursun

Part II: Cooperation and Conflict

Chapter 4. Natural Resources as the Empire’s (Dis)integrative Force: The Case of Bosnian Timber Exports in the Late Habsburg Empire

Iva Lučić

Chapter 5. Get Out of Our Forest! Rural Societies, National Mobilization, State-Building and Modern Forestry in Late-Habsburg and Post-Habsburg Transylvania

Gábor Egry

Chapter 6. The Demilitarization of the Croatian-Slavonian Military Border as an Example of Imperial State Forest Management

Robert Skenderović

Part III: Engineering Nature

Chapter 7. A Natural History of the Global Habsburg Empire: Indian Mongooses and the Production, Circulation and Management of Animal Knowledge in the Adriatic Periphery

Wolfgang Göderle

Chapter 8. The Golden Age of the Bark Beetle: Aristocratic Landowners, Imperial Governance and the Ips typographus in the Šumava Region (1868–1876)

Kristýna Kaucká

Part IV: Managing Resources

Chapter 9. Resource Governance in Time of Drought: Conflicts over Fodder Exports in Austria-Hungary at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Jawad Daheur

Chapter 10. Fuelling the Diversity: A Regional Perspective on Coal in the Late Austro-Hungarian Empire

Ségolène Plyer

Chapter 11. The Industrialization of Forests: The 1852 Imperial Forest Act as an Intervention Towards a Modern Forest Regime

Simone Gingrich and Martin Schmid

Conclusion: Late Habsburg History Revisited

Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić

Jawad Daheur is a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), focusing on economic and environmental history. His main interest is the interaction between human societies and nature in nineteenth-century Central Europe, with a particular focus on the German-speaking regions (Prussia, Austria-Hungary) and Poland. His recent publications include a special issue of Global Environment, entitled ‘Extractive Peripheries in Europe: Quest for Resources and Changing Environments (15th-20th centuries)’ (2022), and the article ‘Cheap Labour on the Timber Frontier: Migration of Forestry Workers from Austria-Hungary to Southeast Europe, ca. 1880–1914’ (Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2024).

Iva Lučić is an associate professor of history at Stockholm University and a Pro Futura Scientia Scholar at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies. Previously, she held a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and a Linneaus-Palme Fellowship with Kolkata University. Lučićs first and award-winning monograph Im Namen der Nation (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018) examines the mobilization process for the political elevation of Muslims in Socialist Yugoslavia. Her second monograph, Gebrochenes Brot (Anton Pustet Verlag, 2020), analyzes the role of religion as a social practice among Roman Catholic noblewomen after the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy.

CfP: Discipline and Punish: The Early Modern University Court in Theory and Practice

 Call for Papers: Discipline and Punish: The Early Modern University Court in Theory and Practice University of Limerick, Ireland, 14-15 January 2026 

The internal jurisdictional autonomy of early modern universities represented a significant inheritance from the medieval instruments of academic freedom. The rise of the territorial university as a model curtailed the independence of these institutions rendering them more directly subject to external political actors, a situation that became more pronounced as a consequence of the Reformation. Despite these transformations, the university’s powers of internal oversight and control of its members remained relatively intact. These powers were set out, instituted and sanctioned in charters, statutes and ordinances. The principal instrument through which the powers were asserted was the academic jurisdiction, i.e. the university court. At one level, these arrangements protected university members, ensuring their protection to a certain extent from external legal threat. However, in adhering to the university jurisdiction, the members submitted themselves to its regulating influence. In this forum, students, professors and the cives academici could be arraigned, prosecuted and sanctioned for minor or major acts of deviancy. Thus, the university court and other instruments of institutional authority could play a central role in the disciplining of university members, defining the parameters of and enforcing normative behaviours. This conference seeks to explore the characteristics of these jurisdictional regimes in the early modern period. Paper proposals that address the following themes are especially welcome:

The legal and administrative frameworks of discipline at early modern universities

The characteristics of university courts

Social disciplining and the normative functions of university courts

The pursuit of personal vendettas and factional strife through the instruments of university jurisdiction

The limits and limitations of academic disciplinary regimes

Subversions of academic jurisdiction

The conference is organised as part of the Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland Laureate Award project, Malcontents: Order and Disorder in the Early Modern World of Learning (https://malcontents.hcommons.org/), which is led by Dr Richard Kirwan (University of Limerick).

The conference will take place at the University of Limerick, Ireland from 14-15 January 2026.

Proposals for papers of c. 300 words with a short biography of c. 200 words should be sent to Dr Wouter Kreuze, wouter.kreuze@ul.ie, by 16 June 2025.

Call for articles: Encounters in Unexpected Places: Chinese and East-Central European Interactions...

Call for articles: Encounters in Unexpected Places: Chinese and East-Central European Interactions in Peripheral Spaces, 1700-1949

The proposed volume aims to investigate diverse accounts of encounters between Chinese and East-Central Europeans, focusing on interactions outside the major centres typically associated with intercivilizational exchange.

The volume is based on three premises. First, scholars of travel writing emphasize that ‘encounters are as essential to travel as place; they shape and define journeys’ (Mee 2014, 3). Even when travellers themselves write generally about “others”, still their knowledge owed a lot to individual encounters. Yet, despite their importance, depictions of individual interpersonal encounters have not been central to studies of travel writing. Therefore, we invite contributions that examine how Chinese and East-Central Europeans described these cross-cultural interactions and the role such representations played in shaping identity discourses.

Second, while there is a substantial body of scholarship on Western European encounters with the non-European world over the past few centuries – a period when European imperialism was the dominant force in world history – recent years have seen growing interest in studying intercivilizational contacts from a different perspective, namely, by focusing on actors from regions commonly regarded as peripheral. Therefore, we aim to take a closer look at encounters between Chinese and East-Central Europeans. Recent publications have explored this field and may serve as inspiration (Křížová and Malečková 2022; Huigen and Kołodziejczyk 2023; Kałczewiak and Kozłowska 2022; Mrázek 2024), though there is still much to explore.

Third, to investigate the topic of peripherality more deeply, we seek to focus on encounters taking place outside well-known cosmopolitan centres like Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or New York – places traditionally seen as melting pots – and instead shift our attention to small towns, remote villages, country roads, and other locations less commonly associated with multicultural exchange.

We are particularly interested in proposals that move beyond the framework of a single national tradition and engage in a dialogue between European and Asian sources, though we also welcome case studies focusing on the work of individual authors. We welcome analyses of a wide range of sources, including traditional travel accounts, diaries, memoirs, and personal letters, but with an emphasis on real interactions experienced by the authors. Contributors are encouraged to consider the material dimensions of individual encounters as described in their sources and to reflect on the broader aesthetic and ideological meanings these scenes convey. The following questions may serve as a guiding framework: How did authors’ backgrounds influence their encounters and the meanings they ascribed to them? How did the context of the interaction shape the encounter? How did authors navigate cultural differences in diverse realities? How did descriptions of the people they met contribute to the construction of their own identities? What rhetorical devices were used to describe cross-cultural interactions? How often did they achieve genuine understanding, and how?

Practical information

The volume is planned for Anthem Studies in Encounters between Peripheral Region series. Please submit a short abstract (about 300-400 words) with a short biographical note in English

by 31 August 2025 to the editorial team at tewert@shisu.edu.cn and tewert@amu.edu.pl. The editors of the publication will reply with any comments on the proposed topics and guidelines for the preparation of articles within two months. The planned deadline for full article submissions is April 2026.

Quoted literature

Huigen, Siegfried, and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. 2023. East Central Europe Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Siegfried Huigen and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kałczewiak, Mariusz, and Magdalena Kozłowska, eds. 2022. The World beyond the West. Perspectives from Eastern Europe. New York: Berghahn.

Křížová, Markéta, and Jitka Malečková, eds. 2022. Central Europe and the Non-European World in the Long 19th Century. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

Mee, Catherine. 2014. Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing: French and Italian Perspectives. London: Anthem Press.

Mrázek, Jan, ed. 2024. Escaping Kakania: Eastern European Travels in Colonial Southeast Asia. Vienna: Central European University Press.

Editors

Tomasz Ewertowski, Shanghai International Studies University

Chen Yarong, Capital Normal University

Call for Papers: Women in Czech Philosophy

Katedra filosofie a dějin přírodních věd PřF UK ve spolupráci s Ústavem pro soudobé dějiny, Filosofickým ústavem a Sociologickým ústavem Akademie věd České republiky všechny srdečně zve k účasti na odborné konferenci Mezi myšlenkou a institucí: ženy v české filosofii 20. století, která se uskuteční ve dnech 2. a 3. září 2025 v Akademickém konferenčním centru, FLÚ AV ČR, Husova 236/4a, Praha 1.

Konference si klade za cíl prozkoumat různorodé role žen ve vývoji a fungování české filosofie minulého století – ať už z hlediska myšlenkového přínosu, institucionálního působení, nebo širších společenských a kulturních souvislostí.

Návrhy příspěvků (abstrakty v rozsahu max. 300 slov) a případné dotazy prosím zasílejte do 13. června 2025 na adresu: zeny.filosofie.2025@gmail.com

Tématické okruhy:

 

Ženy a vzdělanost: role v univerzitním a akademickém prostředí

Zapojení žen do filosofické komunity: instituce a organizace, vědecká činnost

Rekonstrukce filosofického světa: filosofie a přesahy k dalším disciplínám

Proměny filosofie a toho, jak se na ní ženy podílely v kontextu politických a společenských změn

URL: https://natur.cuni.cz/biologie/katedry-a-pracoviste/katedra-filosofie-a-dejin-prirodnich-ved/o-katedre/aktuality/7383-call-for-papers-zeny-v-ceske-filosofii

Seminar Schedule of the Ludwik and Aleksander Birkenmajer Institute of the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences

 Seminar Schedule of the Ludwik and Aleksander Birkenmajer Institute of the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences

Plan Seminariów Pracowni Naukoznawstwa Instytutu Historii Nauki im. Ludwika i Aleksandra Birkenmajerów PAN, które w ramach cyklu "Naukoznawstwo: historia i współczesność" odbędą się w najbliższych dniach.

19 maja 2025 r. od g. 16:15 

dr Mateusz Hübner (Instytut Historii Nauki im. Ludwika i Aleksandra Birkenmajerów PAN) 

Reforma szkolnictwa akademickiego w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej – od uniwersytetu profesorów do uniwersytetu urzędników

26 maja 2025 r. od g. 15:00 

prof. dr hab. Lidia Michalska-Bracha (Uniwersytet Jana Kochanowskiego w Kielcach)

O historii kobiet z perspektywy badań nad dziewiętnastowiecznymi egodokumentami – od teorii do praktyki badawczej

9 czerwca 2025 r. od g. 16:15

dr hab. Beata Szczepańska (prof. Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego)

Zasoby archiwalne Muzeum Polskiego w Rapperswilu w aspekcie możliwości prowadzenia badań historyczno-oświatowych 

Hybrydowo. Zaineresowanych prosimy o kontakt mhubner@ihnpan.pl

Reminder: Call for Applicants, Asynchronous Histories Summer School

 Asynchronous Histories Summer School

Call for Applicants

First Edition: Conceptual Change

22–26 September 2025, Warsaw

The Asynchronous Histories Summer School aims to explore regions and moments in history marked by the coexistence of asynchronous sociopolitical tendencies and processes. These conditions often reveal paradoxical outcomes when seemingly well-established actors and mechanisms are put into practice. The absence—or inefficiency—of “The Great Synchronizer,” whether imperial order, centralized state apparatus, or the power of capital, has, in various periods and regions, created fertile grounds for blending the old and the new in unequal and unexpected ways.

Rather than viewing this coexistence of asynchronicities as a static phenomenon, we understand it as a dynamic and intricate process. In such situations, old forms may act as tools paving the way for new developments, while new forms may consolidate old arrangements, laws, and privileges. This interplay also triggers epistemological challenges, as research tools developed in global centres often fail to yield productive results when applied to these complex settings. This is why it is both challenging and indispensable to abandon normative definitions of phenomena and states of affairs in favour of listening to local actors, whose diversity ultimately calls into question apparently universal models and descriptions of reality—models that, in practice, are deeply rooted in Western centres.

In the first edition of the Asynchronous Histories Summer School, we seek to stimulate reflection on the theme of conceptual change, broadly understood. Our goal is to examine how concepts, ideas, and ideologies evolve amidst the coexistence of asynchronicities. We aim to move beyond binary perspectives, such as portraying given actors as never-fully-Western imitators or as guardians of domestic traditions. Instead, we propose thinking outside such frameworks, exploring the diverse intellectual stakes pursued by actors in the world’s “grey zones.”

Exemplary areas of inquiry include:

Western ideologies in non-Western settings.

Domestic political terminologies and procedures.

Christian ideas in non-Christian worlds.

Non-institutionalized areas of intellectual debate.

Transfers as resistance; transfers as domination.

Unrealized potentials, repressed imaginaries, and projects halted midway.

Local academic traditions in the history of ideas or philosophy.

Confirmed Lecturers

Among the distinguished lecturers for the first edition are:

László Kontler (Central European University)

Franz Fillafer (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Augusta Dimou (University of Leipzig)

Waldemar Bulira (University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska in Lublin)

Jan Surman (Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic)

Elías José Palti (University of Buenos Aires; National University of Quilmes)

Olena Palko (University of Basel)

Banu Turnaoglu (Sabancı University)

Maciej Janowski (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

Jani Marjanen (University of Helsinki)

Organizing Institutions

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw

in partnership with

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences

The History of Concepts Group

Organizing Comittee

Anna Gulińska, Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Jan Krakowian, Piotr Kuligowski

Eligibility and Application

We welcome submissions from PhD students. Advanced MA students and early career postdocs (up to two years post-defence) are also encouraged to apply.

How to Apply

Please submit the following materials by May 31, 2025:

A short CV (maximum two pages).

A concise description of your research interests (up to 1,000 words).

Send your application to ahss.warsaw[at]gmail.com

Participation Fee

The participation fee is 150 EUR. In justified cases, this fee may be reduced.

Call for participants / Summer school: Habsburg Central Europe in Global History, 17th–20th centuries.

Call for participants / Summer school: Habsburg Central Europe in Global History, 17th–20th centuries. Prague, 23-25 October 2025, Deadline 15 August 2025.

Organisers: Austrian Academy of Sciences; Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; Johann Gottfried Herder-Forschungsrat (Johannes Feichtinger / Franz L. Fillafer, Vienna; Michael Wögerbauer, Prague; Steffen Höhne, Weimar-Jena)

Global history has established itself as a particularly fertile field of scholarly enquiry from which Habsburg Central Europe still remains strangely absent. To redress this imbalance, our summer school seeks to rediscover Habsburg Central Europe as a switchboard for the circulation of ideas, practices and objects across the globe. It tries to do so by bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines who work on the history of the region since the 17th century: Our event is geared to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from the humanities (historians and literary scholars, historians of culture and the arts, of science and the humanities, anthropologists etc.) whose research resonates with the overall aim of our meeting described above. Our event will consist of two subsections: A mini-series of seminars hosted by our faculty in which a pre-circulated reader will be discussed and a subsequent set of workshops that will allow participants to present and discuss their research.

Faculty: Marketa Křížová (Praha), Johannes Mattes (Vienna), Ulrich Schmid (Basel), Jonathan Singerton (Amsterdam), Jan Surman (Praha)

We plan to cover participants’ travel and accommodation costs.

We invite papers by doctoral and post-doctoral researchers that contribute to one or several of the following thematic fields:

- the global history of Central European institutions (administrative bodies, learned societies, academies, universities, sacred institutions and religious orders, museums, theatres etc.)

- the social history of Central Europe’s interactions with the world, including, but not restricted to the activities of go-betweens, brokers, and liaison agents

- the interplay of regional and global literatures (translations, travelling forms, medias and genres)

- the practises of erudition, science, scholarship and cultural production

Special attention will be given to Bohemia as an interface between the various regions of the Habsburg lands and as a clearing house between Central Europe and the globe.

In spotlighting the global entanglements of Habsburg Central Europe, our event pursues two broader agendas, the first is historiographical, the second methodological.

First, much of global history is still marked by a Franco- or Anglocentric bias: Its categories of imperial rule, national culture, sovereignty, and the production of scientific truth are derived from the study of Britain and France, as well as of their respective overseas possessions. Acting as a welcome incentive for further research, several excellent recent studies of Habsburg Central Europe show that these categories are not only inadequate for grasping the past of the region, but that the latter produced a set of alternative concepts, ideas and practises for engaging with the world whose trans-regional impact and ramifications are yet to be discovered. What does this rediscovery imply for a fresh understanding of modern history?

Second, the summer school will provide ample opportunity for reflecting on what a “global” perspective implies for the methods of the humanities: In what ways does this perspective force us to rethink our habitual units of enquiry (regions, empires, states, cultural systems, disciplines, genres and forms)? How can we avoid the pitfalls of connectivity talk, i.e. the appeal to allegedly self-propelled, benignly liquid “flows” and processes of effortless “circulation”? What conceptual lexicon and what explanatory devises do we find particularly helpful in researching and presenting our findings? What challenges and potential benefits does this global perspective entail for interdisciplinary work in the humanities?

Kontakt

Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena)

Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna)

Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna)

Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

or: summerschool@oeaw.ac.at

Application: Abstract of your contribution/research project (250-300 words) and a brief CV (preferably as a PDF), please write to: summerschool@oeaw.ac.at

or to the organizers Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena), Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna), Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna), Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

Deadline for submissions: 15 August 2025

Notification: 1 September 2025

Gaibulina Karina: Etnografowie z przymusu

 Gaibulina Karina: Etnografowie z przymusu. Polscy zesłańcy w służbie kolonialnej Cesarstwa Rosyjskiego [Ethnographers Under Coercion. Polish Exiles in the Colonial Service of the Russian Empire]. Warszawa: WUW 2024.

Spis treści w PDF: https://www.wuw.pl/data/links/db75999b67e83830c419ec54f1ff66e4/19637_13999.pdf

Streszczenie w pdf: https://www.wuw.pl/data/links/bb307624cb94774ecf552312c69c88bf/19637_14128.pdf

Książka dotyczy udziału polskich zesłańców w ekspansji kolonialnej Cesarstwa Rosyjskiego na kazachskich stepach Azji Centralnej w XIX wieku. Zagadnienie to omówiono na podstawie wybranych tekstów autorstwa trzech polskich więźniów politycznych: Adolfa Januszkiewicza, Bronisława Zaleskiego i Seweryna Grossa, które do dziś są ważnymi źródłami dla kazachstańskiej historiografii. Podstawową perspektywę analityczną pracy stanowią teoria oralności i piśmienności oraz studia postkolonialne.

******

Ethnographers Under Coercion. Polish Exiles in the Colonial Service of the Russian Empire

The books deals with the part Polish exiles played in the colonial expansion of the Russian Empire on the Kazakh steppes of Central Asia in the 19th century. The issue is discussed on the selected texts by three Polish political prisoners: Adolf Januszkiewicz, Bronisław Zaleski and Seweryn Gross, which to this day are important sources for Kazakh historiography. The basic analytical perspective of the work are the theory of orality and literacy and post-colonial studies.

Dispelling the spell of illness. Local tradition, “old” diseases, and “new” medicine in Ukraine in the 18th–19th centuries / Collective monograph edited by V. Masliychuk and I. Serdyuk

 Розчаклування недуги. Локальна традиція, «старі» хвороби та «нова» медицина в Україні ХVІІІ–ХІХ ст. / Колективна монографія за ред. В. Маслійчука та І. Сердюка. 2-ге вид.,  Харків : Олександр Савчук, 2025. // Dispelling the spell of illness. Local tradition, “old” diseases, and “new” medicine in Ukraine in the 18th–19th centuries / Collective monograph edited by V. Masliychuk and I. Serdyuk. ISBN: 978-617-7538-66-9

Титульна сторінка та зміст: https://savchook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Neduhazmist.pdf

Сторінки вибірково: https://savchook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Neduhavybrane.pdf

У книжці йдеться про початки формування нових медичних уявлень та державної системи медицини в Україні ХVІІІ–ХІХ ст. Автори звертають увагу на те, як імперські ініціативи були реалізовані на локальному рівні та накладалися на місцевий контекст, а унауковлені знання поєднувалися з традиційними практиками зцілення. Тематика розділів охоплює різні проблеми: бачення «інакшої» тілесності та використання «монструозного» як ресурсу; побутування епідемій в локальних спільнотах; перші спроби вакцинації та боротьбу з віспою; ствердження домінування чоловіка у медицині та залученість жінки до професійної родопомочі; витіснення цехових лікарських практик.

Volker Roelcke, Ed., Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Evaluierung von „NS-Belastung“ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten

Volker Roelcke, Ed., Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Evaluierung von „NS-Belastung“ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten, Halle (Saale), Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2024. doi: 10.26164/leopoldina_10_01229.

OA: https://levana.leopoldina.org/receive/leopoldina_mods_01229;jsessionid=D2BD0C3BA0575D907555A7BC5FFF336A

Die Erforschung der NS-Vergangenheit und die Aufarbeitung der „NS-Belastung“ von Behörden, Unternehmen und wissenschaftlichen Institutionen erlebte in den letzten Jahren eine beachtenswerte Konjunktur. Dabei spielte der Begriff der „NS-Belastung“ der historischen Akteure eine zentrale Rolle. Die „Belastung“ wurde dabei oft mit Umfang, Zeitpunkt und Dauer der Mitgliedschaft in NS-Organisationen (NSDAP) gleichgesetzt. Diese Reduktion wird wegen des tendenziell formalen Charakters im Herangehen zunehmend kritisch diskutiert. Der vorliegende Band weitet am Beispiel ausgewählter Gruppen von Akademiemitgliedern (z. B. Psychiatern und Psychologen, Mathematikern u. a.), ausgewählten Biographien und Fallstudien den Blick von individuellen Haltungen und Verhaltensweisen auf strukturelle Bedingungen, die Zwänge und Handlungsspielräume für die Akteure ausmachten. Zudem werden die historische Wandelbarkeit des Begriffs „Belastung“ und die unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen in Ost und West im Kontext der „Entnazifizierungs“-Prozeduren problematisiert.

Content

Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Frage einer „NS-Belastung“ bei Mitgliedern der Leopoldina : Einleitung

p. 7 Roelcke, Volker

Fallstricke, Sackgassen, Auswege : NS-Belastungsforschung jenseits der „Individualisierung des Faschismusproblems“

p. 19 Steuwer, Janosch

Taxonomien der Schuld: Zur historischen Bedeutung (straf-)rechtlicher und quasi-rechtlicher Kategorien im Umgang mit NS-‚Belastungen‘ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten, 1935 –1950

p. 31 Weinke, Annette

Die justizielle Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen in Ost- und Westdeutschland seit 1945 : ein Überblick

p. 47 Raim, Edith

Handlungsspielräume von Wissenschaftlern im Nationalsozialismus: Metahistorische Vorüberlegungen und einige Beispiele aus der Mathematik

p. 77 Epple, Moritz

Parteigänger, Kollaborateure, Abtrünnige? Anmerkungen zur Analyse von Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern im Nationalsozialismus

p. 93 Schmiedebach, Heinz-Peter

Biowissenschaftler als Akteure in Menschenversuchen zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zum Verantwortungsproblem biomedizinischer Forschung

p. 117 Schwerin, Alexander von

„NS-Belastung“ unter Akademiemitgliedern. Strategien der (Neu-) Ausrichtung im Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel der Psychiatrisch- Neurologischen Sektion der Leopoldina

p. 141 Rotzoll, Maike

NSDAP-Mitglieder in den Akademien der Wissenschaften : Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Leipzig, München und Wien im Vergleich

p. 177 Feichtinger, Johannes; Klos, Sandra

The Virologist Eugen Haagen (1898 –1972) as a Late Nazi Election to the Leopoldina of a Virologist and Professor of Hygiene at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg

p. 193 Weindling, Paul

Das Leopoldina-Mitglied Johannes Stark (1874 –1957): Duell mit der Dogmatik

p. 213 Stolz, Lisa

Das Leopoldina-Mitglied Richard Siebeck (1883 –1965) im Nationalsozialismus und in der frühen Nachkriegszeit

p. 233 Roelcke, Volker

Now online: Call for Papers: Eastern Marxisms – A Special Issue of Historical Materialism

 Now online: Call for Papers: Eastern Marxisms – A Special Issue of Historical Materialism

Guest editors: Anna Beria (Kingston University, London), Isabel Jacobs (Queen Mary University of London), Giorgi Kobakhidze (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès), Jiří Růžička (The Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

 

The distinctive tradition of post-war critical and radical thought in East and Central Europe has long been forgotten or suppressed. Even more controversially, the idea that this tradition found its most productive expression in a unique form of Marxist thought is often denied. This is because ‘Eastern Marxism(s)’ – whatever the term may encompass – has frequently been conflated with the rigid, state-imposed, Stalinist version of Marxist ideology. We believe the time has come, especially in light of the contemporary multiple crises of capitalism, to reassess and revive this tradition. However, while ‘Western Marxism’ has been retrospectively canonised around figures such as Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci, ‘Eastern’ Marxism(s) in CEE face much more significant challenges in terms of temporal, personal and also regional demarcations.

According to a still widespread Western-centric view, which identifies Eastern Marxisms with the ‘dogmatic’ state doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, a properly ‘Eastern’ period of Eastern Marxism begins with the rise of Stalin, loses steam with the critique of Stalin in the 1950s and 60s, and finally reaches its inevitable demise when the regimes supporting it collapse in 1989–91. Individual radical theorists from the CEE are, of course, well-known to some in the West, but they tend to be regarded as exceptional personalities, solitary figures who arose despite their Eastern context, thanks in large part to their exposure to Western influence (K. Kosík, E. Ilyenkov, Praxis School etc.).

A closer historical examination might reveal a very different picture. As a more or less coherent body of philosophical ideas, political doctrine, and socio-economic theory, Marxism emerged in CEE before World War II, whereas, in the West, one finds only scattered Marxist thinkers rather than a fully developed Marxist tradition. Even the so-called founding figures of Western Marxism shaped their perspectives outside Western Europe, primarily in response to the Russian Revolution – a shared foundational moment of both ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Marxisms. Conversely, what has been termed ‘Eastern Marxism’ (e.g., by Marcuse and Merleau-Ponty) has typically referred exclusively to ‘Marxism-Leninism’, which appears to be rather a belated offshoot of Second International Marxist orthodoxy, albeit with a strong emphasis on political revolution.

It may therefore be more appropriate to shift the East/West Marxist divide to the post-1945 era, or more precisely, to 1956 for the Eastern Bloc. From this perspective, the term ‘Eastern Marxism’ should designate various currents of Marxist thought that primarily criticised and sought ways out of Stalinism. While all of these currents reflected their international intellectual moment and reacted to developments in the West, the ideas that emerged were their own, made possible by the specific context of the often-neglected region of CEE and its post-Stalinist condition.

As a result, the simplistic perspective that reduces Eastern Marxism(s) to the rise and fall of Marxist-Leninist dogma neglects the fact that we can hardly speak about the division line between the eastern and the western Marxisms in the pre-war era. ‘Marxism-Leninism’ continued to develop within the epistemological and ontological (but not political) constraints set up by the Marxist orthodoxy, while the ‘revisionist’ or heterodox currents of that time should not be viewed as precursors of western Marxism but, rather, as a reaction to both theoretical and practical shortcomings of the orthodoxy as well as to the interwar (often) revolutionary conditions of the CEE region. There is no denying that an East/West divide can be discussed, but it should not be framed through the shallow opposition of a creative postwar West versus a dogmatic postwar East. Instead, it should be drawn based on concepts that capture the differences between these respective ‘modes’ of Marxism – both as totalities that encompass internal plurality and as responses to the specific historical and social conditions in which they emerged.

This project of questioning and scouring the past of Eastern Marxism(s) calls for different research methods from those used for researching the Marxisms of the West. ‘Western Marxism’ could be reconstructed with knowledge of German, along with some French and English and a selective reading of Gramsci in translation. And, by the early postwar period, almost all the key works were either published or available in accessible archives. The ‘tradition’ of Eastern Marxism(s) has been written in dozens of languages, sometimes published in now-obscure journals, or in samizdat, or hidden in dresser drawers until the 1990s, when many of the born-again-right-wing authors no longer wanted their old leftist writings to be made public, and when few publishers in any case wanted to publish them.

While the context of capitalism and fascism that gave birth to Western Marxism is relatively comprehensible to the international reader, the diverse context of Central and Eastern Europe is barely understood, obscured by stereotypes and Cold War tropes and rhetorics that continue into contemporary leftism. The reconstruction of a plurality of Eastern Marxisms and their emancipatory-theoretical fellow travellers calls for a large collaborative effort, pooling linguistic and locally embedded knowledge and access to libraries and archives across CEE and providing the detailed historical context necessary to illuminate the region’s theories, as a vast source of globally unknown theorising on issues that remain urgent today: science and ecology, humanism and technology, nationalism and internationalism, history and political subjectivity, planning and participation, material determination and cultural emancipation.

We particularly invite contributions that are conceptually oriented rather than pure case studies and address the following non-exclusive questions and themes in relation to the critical and radical thought in East and Central Europe post-1956:

What are the difficulties and potentials of searching for a definition of Eastern Marxism? Which working definitions of Eastern Marxisms can be developed?

In what ways does the term ‘Eastern’ categorise the Marxist perspectives from CEE?

What distinct and interrelated currents can be identified within different Eastern Marxist traditions?

When and where does Eastern Marxism begin and end? Continuities and ruptures within the tradition? Problems of periodisation?

Relevance of Eastern Marxisms today?

East meets West. The intersections, dialogues, parallel developments and mutual influence between Eastern and Western Marxisms

East meets South. Imperialism, colonialism and humanism in Eastern Marxisms and anticolonial and decolonial praxis?

Regional differences, distinctions, schisms and local Marxist traditions within Eastern Marxisms?

We welcome proposals for contributions to the Eastern Marxisms special issue of Historical Materialism. Interested authors are invited to submit a title and an abstract (maximum 300 words) outlining the proposed article to info@historicalmaterialism.org by 20 June 2025. Please clearly indicate in the subject line or body of the email that the submission is intended for the Eastern Marxisms Special Issue.

Following a selection process, chosen contributors will be invited to submit full articles to Historical Materialism. All articles will be subject to the journal’s standard peer-review process and editorial evaluation.

Please note that an invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee publication, and acceptance of the abstract does not imply any commitment by the journal to publish the final piece. Deadline for the submission of full papers is 1 March 2026.

hps.cesee global book talk: Borbála Zsuzsanna Török, László Kontler, Morgane Labbé: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880

 hps.cesee global book talk: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880. Monday, May 26, 11:00 am EDT / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk on a new publication on history of statistics. László Kontler and Morgane Labbé will join Borbála Zsuzsanna Török to comment on her recent book: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (2024) [1], in a discussion moderated by Katalin Stráner.

Monday, May 26, 11:00 am DST / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://forms.gle/mFnfLEDXEbC8L8iY8 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com

[1] Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (Oxford, New York: Berghahn 2024)

“The formation of modern European states during the long 19th century was a strenuous process, challenged by the integration of widely different territories and populations. The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 builds on recent research to investigate the history of statistics as an overlooked part of the sciences of the state in Habsburg legal education as well as within the broader public sphere. By exploring the practices and social spaces of statistics, Borbála Zsuzsanna Török uncovers its central role in imagining the composite Habsburg Monarchy as a modern and unified administrative space.”

Participants

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török is a historian specializing in the social history of civil justice and modern state knowledge in the Habsburg Monarchy. She currently serves as part-time acting professor for Modern History at the University of Heidelberg. She is Privatdozentin at University of Vienna’s Institute for Austrian Historical Research and PI of the research project “Mobilisierung der Ziviljustiz und Sozialpolitik in der Habsburgermonarchie, 1873–1914,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), whose follow-up project has been recently approved. Her research focuses on the social history of law, property, statistics, nationalism, and knowledge transfer in East-Central Europe. She has held fellowships from the FWF, DFG, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and is the author of Exploring Transylvania. Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790 – 1914 (2015).

László Kontler is a historian of early modern European intellectual history and the Enlightenment, with a focus on political thought, historiography, and the transnational circulation of ideas. Based at Central European University since its inception, he has also held fellowships and taught at institutions including Cambridge, Rutgers, and Oxford. His recent work includes studies on the reception of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, the Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell, and the cultural construction of humanity in the early modern period.

Morgane Labbé is a historian and demographer specializing in population policies, nationalism, and social protection in Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. She is a Directrice d'études at the EHESS (Paris), affiliated with the Centre of Historical Research (CRH), and has played key roles in international academic partnerships with institutions in Warsaw and Michigan. Her research focuses on the history of statistics, social politics, demography, and charitable institutions in imperial contexts, and she has been an active contributor to scholarly networks and editorial boards in these fields.

Katalin Stráner is a historian of modern Europe at Newcastle University, with a focus on transnational history, particularly the history of science, migration, and urban culture in the Habsburg Empire and East Central Europe. She holds a PhD in History from Central European University and has held fellowships and academic positions across Europe and the US, including at Harvard, UCL, and the European University Institute. Her research explores how knowledge and scientific ideas are produced, translated, and transformed through cultural mobility, with current projects on Darwinism in Habsburg Hungary and migration from East Central Europe to Britain.