Daniel Brandau | Universität Bielefeld (original) (raw)
Books by Daniel Brandau
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/jemms/14/1/jemms.14.issue-1.xml (open access) “Rev... more https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/jemms/14/1/jemms.14.issue-1.xml (open access) “Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky, or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when technological objects, such as rockets, airplanes, or nuclear reactors, are exhibited in museums or at heritage sites, with profound implications for underlying concepts of historical education. This special issue explores the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress but became the focus of controversies when the social, political, and cultural conditions of perceiving and remembering these objects changed. At former “places of progress,” visitors and exhibition makers are confronted with the remains of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Age of Coal, the Space Age, the Atomic Age and the Digital Age. Exhibitions and displays have been used to explain, teach, or make sense of the advents, successes, and failures of high-tech projects. Understanding technological artifacts and corresponding sites such as Chernobyl, Peenemünde, and Hiroshima as well as structures such as factories or bunkers as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire, a term coined by Pierre Nora) shifts our attention to processes of remembering modern technologies and the cases in which established narratives of progress have been supported or challenged. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the “heroes of invention,” leaving visitors with the impression of technological ambivalence. Attempts to teach and learn about history and technology via objects and sites have been complicated, politicized, and contested.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and c... more Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and violence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.
Schöningh, 2019
Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die 1960er Jahre organisierten sich deutsche Raumfahrt-Interessi... more Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die 1960er Jahre organisierten sich deutsche Raumfahrt-Interessierte in Vereinen, in denen sie an Raketen bastelten und für militärische wie zivile Visionen warben. Viele dieser Visionäre und Ingenieure verschrieben sich dem NS-Regime und entwickelten die Großrakete als Waffe. Den neuen, nunmehr friedlichen Raumfahrt- und Technikvisionen der Nachkriegszeit wurde daher mit Misstrauen begegnet. Während in der Bundesrepublik eine Debatte über die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle des Wissens der Techniker entbrannte, prallte in der DDR in der ‚Raketenfrage‘ die Kritik am Faschismus und seinen Waffensystemen auf die sozialistische Raumfahrt-Utopie.
Papers by Daniel Brandau
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
Given Peenemünde's ambivalent military and technological history, from rocket development during ... more Given Peenemünde's ambivalent military and technological history, from rocket development during the Nazi period to East German naval and air bases during the Cold War, its musealization was considered both a chance and challenge during the region's deindustrialization in the 1990s. Local residents' support of veteran engineers promoting an apologetic view of Nazi rocketry was met with bewilderment. However, a space park project and anniversary event were spearheaded by government and industry representatives, turning a regional affair into an international controversy. The article analyzes the function of memory work and the remembrance of technological progress in rural northeastern Germany before and after German reunification. Based on archival sources and interviews with former officers and museum advocates, it traces the Peenemünde museum project through a history of ideological and biographical caesurae, enthusiasm, political promises, and socioeconomic despair.
Historische Erfahrung, 2022
https://www.wochenschau-verlag.de/Historische-Erfahrung/41390 Multi-sensory experience and haptic... more https://www.wochenschau-verlag.de/Historische-Erfahrung/41390 Multi-sensory experience and haptics are of particular importance to processes of inclusive learning. The concept of ‘historical experience’ enables us to re-evaluate the narrativistic approaches of history education within the principles of inclusive pedagogy. This article takes into account the objects and spaces of learning, and it outlines specific themes and applications in interdisciplinary subjects and projects in primary education. The use cases focus on the use of tools and handicraft as the objects and means of labor and their contextual and material changes as gateways to understanding and discussing the passage of time.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
“Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky... more “Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky, or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when technological objects, such as rockets, airplanes, or nuclear reactors, are exhibited in museums or at heritage sites, with profound implications for underlying concepts of historical education. This special issue explores the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress but became the focus of controversies when the social, political, and cultural conditions of perceiving and remembering these objects changed. At former “places of progress,” visitors and exhibition makers are confronted with the remains of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Age of Coal, the Space Age, the Atomic Age and the Digital Age. Exhibitions and displays have been used to explain, teach, or make sense of the advents, successes, and failures of high-tech projects. Understanding technological artifacts and corresponding sites such as Chernobyl, Peenemünde, and Hiroshima as well as structures such as factories or bunkers as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire, a term coined by Pierre Nora) shifts our attention to processes of remembering modern technologies and the cases in which established narratives of progress have been supported or challenged. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the “heroes of invention,” leaving visitors with the impression of technological ambivalence. Attempts to teach and learn about history and technology via objects and sites have been complicated, politicized, and contested.
Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Gesellschaftswissenschaften, 2021
In Diskussionen über ‚Fortschritt‘ und Beschleunigungen modernen Wandels werden Technikgeschichte... more In Diskussionen über ‚Fortschritt‘ und Beschleunigungen modernen Wandels werden Technikgeschichte und -kritik besondere Bedeutung zugeschrieben. Lehrpläne und -bücher für den Geschichtsunterricht greifen Technikerzählungen entsprechend auf, problematisieren jedoch selten ihre oft linearen, eurozentrischen Fortschrittsvorstellungen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht bildungspolitische Vorgaben und Materialien und skizziert fächerübergreifende Potenziale einer kritischen Technikgeschichte.
Krieg oder Raumfahrt? Peenemünde in der öffentlichen Erinnerung seit 1945, 2019
2000 revisited. Visionen der Welt von morgen im Gestern und Heute, 2020
https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000117728 Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts verk... more https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000117728
Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts verknüpften sich mit dem Weltraum visionäre Zukunftsentwürfe. Schon in den 1920er-Jahren hatte ein regelrechtes „Raketenfieber“ in den USA, in Europa und in der Sowjetunion die (noch verhältnismäßig dilettantischen) Bestrebungen einer menschlichen Expansion ins All befeuert, die mit dem Start des sowjetischen Satelliten Sputnik im Oktober 1957 schließlich zum Greifen nah schien. Das in Folge enthusiastisch ausgerufene Space Age war reich an extraterrestrischen Zukunftshorizonten, die die Erforschung und Besiedlung des Weltraums in Aussicht stellten, und das Jahr 2000 spielte in diesem Zusammenhang eine wichtige Rolle.
Historical Social Research, 2015
During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its s... more During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its spatial perception were related to political and ideological controversies. The article highlights the specific relevance of Euclidean geometry in representations of outer space. Focusing on illustrations and expositions in both postwar German States, it argues that shifts within the spatial imagination and representation of space corresponded with the first satellite missions and condensed debates about the future of technology and the moral legacies of the Second World War. In October 1957, Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and a Soviet construction, urged engineers, scientists, and illustrators to find new ways of depicting and communicating the spaces of outer space to the public and to each other. For decades, space fiction had implicitly stifled theories on the relativity of space and time by hinting at traditional motifs of conquest through machines. Early spaceflight, however, was not about immediate flights to other planets, but about the orbit, a space without a traditional place, yet imagined as being of paramount importance for strategic superiority. Driven by political tensions and drawing on representations established in physics and astronomy, the first satellite projects were designed and explained as missions to places that needed to be defined and controlled because they were strange and new.
History and Technology, 2012
Space historians have predominantly identified Weimar Germany (1919–1933) as the starting period ... more Space historians have predominantly identified Weimar Germany (1919–1933) as the starting period of German debates over the possibility of spaceflight. However, spaceflight and the utopian potential of outer space were already topics of popular discussion in the late nineteenth century, when calls by German astronomers for speculative restraint were challenged in popular science accounts and fantasy literature. Mass-produced fiction in the first decade of the twentieth century increasingly depicted spaceflight as a technological vision, imagining the spaceship as the successor to the airship. While exploring the historical processes behind this ascent of plausibility of futuristic design, the article shows how popular science media gave public voice to both established and new professional elites and fostered interprofessional exchange. In the 1900s spaceflight developed into a popular theme and boundaries between fiction and popular science blurred.
Technology Fiction: Technische Visionen und Utopien in der Hochmoderne, Bielefeld 2012, 65-91., 2012
Organized Conferences by Daniel Brandau
https://www.ifg-braunschweig.de/placesofprogress/ Advanced technologies or ‘revolutionary’ techno... more https://www.ifg-braunschweig.de/placesofprogress/
Advanced technologies or ‘revolutionary’ technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when their places of development or use are turned into heritage sites through practices of remembrance or museumization. Understanding technological sites as “lieux de mémoire” (Pierre Nora) shifts our focus to the actors engaged in processes of remembering modern technologies, and the cases in which established narratives have been supported or challenged on local levels. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the ‘heroes of invention‘, leaving visitors with the impression of ambivalent historical places. ‘Places of Progress‘ aims at investigating past and current challenges of remembering modern ‘high technologies’ (both military and civilian), such as weapons, information and communication technologies, transportation infrastructures, nuclear energy or nanotechnology, at or through their historical sites.
The conference investigates the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress, but became the focus of controversies when particular sites and objects were employed in exhibitions and other forms of remembrance. Contributions from various disciplines, ranging from science and technology studies to public history and heritage studies, examine the agendas, stakeholders, practices and institutions involved in remembering technologies. How have sites and technological objects been used to create traditions or consolidate cultural memories, to support or undermine established historiographies? Have postmodern debates transformed enthusiasm into nostalgia? What has been willfully ‘forgotten’ to promote divergent narratives?
The conference is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
If you wish to attend this conference, please register by 10 September 2019 at: meta-peenemuende[at]tu-braunschweig.de
Anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums des ersten bemannten Weltraumfluges präsentiert die Retrospektive WE... more Anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums des ersten bemannten Weltraumfluges präsentiert die Retrospektive WELTRAUMKINO eine Geschichte des Science-Fiction-Films. In ihrem Mittelpunkt stehen phantastische Visionen der Handlungssphäre Weltraum: Eroberungen des Kosmos, die Entdeckung extraterrestrischer Welten und die Begegnung mit fremden Zivilisationen in fernen Galaxien. Doch auch ihr komplementäres Motiv – die Landung der Außerirdischen auf der Erde und deren Eindringen in "unsere" Zivilisation – prägt eine zweite, kleinere Gruppe der für die Retrospektive ausgewählten Filme. Seit den frühen 1950er Jahren ein eigenständiges Genre und bis heute von einer anhaltenden Vitalität und Popularität, ist der Science-Fiction-Film ein kaum fassbares Genre geblieben: mitunter philosophischen Reflexionen nicht abgeneigt, zeitweise von einem schier grenzenlosen Fortschrittsglauben beseelt, doch immer häufiger auch von skeptischen Zukunftsvisionen durchzogen. Unabhängig von solchen, je unterschiedlichen Konfigurationen von Expansion oder Invasion, Utopie oder Dystopie hat kein anderes Medium unsere Vorstellungen von Weltall, außerirdischem Leben und zukünftigen Erfahrungsräumen so nachhaltig geprägt wie das Kino. Die umfassende Retrospektive spiegelt das Weltraumkino in seiner ganzen Bandbreite, legt dabei jedoch einen Schwerpunkt auf die Filme der 1950er bis 1970er Jahre.
If space exploration is understood as not just one of the twentieth century’s most prestigious fe... more If space exploration is understood as not just one of the twentieth century’s most prestigious feats of engineering, but also a central theme in period visions of the future and utopias, then how might we understand the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, with its emphasis on reduced possibilities and limitations to progress? The conference aimed to shift the focus away from explanations of transition from Cold War contexts and produce more nuanced narratives: from the familiar struggle between two superpowers, namely the USA and the former USSR, to distinctly West-European perspectives, and from political to socio-cultural dimensions of the Space Age. How were limits created, challenged and maintained? And in what sense was outer space invoked to transform cultural boundaries and how were these conveyed to different audiences? The conference looked at utopia not as a socio-cultural objective but rather as a process. Through defining limitless opportunities afforded by outer space, advocates of space exploration not only opened up new possibilities for accelerating or even surpassing human development, but also delineated the historicity and limitations of the imagination.
For much of the twentieth century, outer space has been envisioned as not only a site of heavenly... more For much of the twentieth century, outer space has been envisioned as not only a site of heavenly utopias, but also the ultimate battlefield. Concentrating on weapons, warfare, and violence, this conference explores the military dimensions of astroculture in the period between 1942 and 1990. By highlighting the militarization of extraterrestrial frontiers and conquest in politics and popular culture alike, ‘Embattled Heavens’ addressed the complex processes that oscillate between peaceful and aggressive characteristics of human endeavors in outer space. While the Space Age is usually associated with Cold War history, this conference complicated established narratives by integrating Western European and global perspectives. Examining astropolitics, technoscientific practices, and science fiction, the goal of this conference was to reconceptualize the history of outer space with a view towards its military dimensions.
Exhibitions by Daniel Brandau
https://museum-peenemuende.de/zeitreise/ In der Online-Ausstellung „Zeitreise“ präsentieren 14 St... more https://museum-peenemuende.de/zeitreise/
In der Online-Ausstellung „Zeitreise“ präsentieren 14 Studierende aus dem Bachelor-Studiengang Geschichte und dem Master „Kultur der technisch-wissenschaftlichen Welt“ an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig die Ergebnisse eines Projektseminars. In 28 Themenbereichen können die Besucher Einblicke in alle historischen Phasen des Ortes Peenemünde gewinnen, von der ersten Erwähnung über den Dreißigjährigen Krieg, die Einrichtung der Versuchsanstalten Peenemünde im Nationalsozialismus und des NVA-Standortes in der DDR bis in die Zeit des tiefgreifenden Strukturwandels nach der Deutschen Einheit. Dazu haben sich die Studierenden in Archiven, Bibliotheken und auf einer Exkursion nach Peenemünde intensiv mit den Erinnerungsorten und Objekten auseinandergesetzt, recherchiert, fotografiert und Interviews mit Anwohnern und Zeitzeugen geführt.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/jemms/14/1/jemms.14.issue-1.xml (open access) “Rev... more https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/jemms/14/1/jemms.14.issue-1.xml (open access) “Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky, or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when technological objects, such as rockets, airplanes, or nuclear reactors, are exhibited in museums or at heritage sites, with profound implications for underlying concepts of historical education. This special issue explores the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress but became the focus of controversies when the social, political, and cultural conditions of perceiving and remembering these objects changed. At former “places of progress,” visitors and exhibition makers are confronted with the remains of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Age of Coal, the Space Age, the Atomic Age and the Digital Age. Exhibitions and displays have been used to explain, teach, or make sense of the advents, successes, and failures of high-tech projects. Understanding technological artifacts and corresponding sites such as Chernobyl, Peenemünde, and Hiroshima as well as structures such as factories or bunkers as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire, a term coined by Pierre Nora) shifts our attention to processes of remembering modern technologies and the cases in which established narratives of progress have been supported or challenged. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the “heroes of invention,” leaving visitors with the impression of technological ambivalence. Attempts to teach and learn about history and technology via objects and sites have been complicated, politicized, and contested.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and c... more Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and violence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.
Schöningh, 2019
Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die 1960er Jahre organisierten sich deutsche Raumfahrt-Interessi... more Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die 1960er Jahre organisierten sich deutsche Raumfahrt-Interessierte in Vereinen, in denen sie an Raketen bastelten und für militärische wie zivile Visionen warben. Viele dieser Visionäre und Ingenieure verschrieben sich dem NS-Regime und entwickelten die Großrakete als Waffe. Den neuen, nunmehr friedlichen Raumfahrt- und Technikvisionen der Nachkriegszeit wurde daher mit Misstrauen begegnet. Während in der Bundesrepublik eine Debatte über die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle des Wissens der Techniker entbrannte, prallte in der DDR in der ‚Raketenfrage‘ die Kritik am Faschismus und seinen Waffensystemen auf die sozialistische Raumfahrt-Utopie.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
Given Peenemünde's ambivalent military and technological history, from rocket development during ... more Given Peenemünde's ambivalent military and technological history, from rocket development during the Nazi period to East German naval and air bases during the Cold War, its musealization was considered both a chance and challenge during the region's deindustrialization in the 1990s. Local residents' support of veteran engineers promoting an apologetic view of Nazi rocketry was met with bewilderment. However, a space park project and anniversary event were spearheaded by government and industry representatives, turning a regional affair into an international controversy. The article analyzes the function of memory work and the remembrance of technological progress in rural northeastern Germany before and after German reunification. Based on archival sources and interviews with former officers and museum advocates, it traces the Peenemünde museum project through a history of ideological and biographical caesurae, enthusiasm, political promises, and socioeconomic despair.
Historische Erfahrung, 2022
https://www.wochenschau-verlag.de/Historische-Erfahrung/41390 Multi-sensory experience and haptic... more https://www.wochenschau-verlag.de/Historische-Erfahrung/41390 Multi-sensory experience and haptics are of particular importance to processes of inclusive learning. The concept of ‘historical experience’ enables us to re-evaluate the narrativistic approaches of history education within the principles of inclusive pedagogy. This article takes into account the objects and spaces of learning, and it outlines specific themes and applications in interdisciplinary subjects and projects in primary education. The use cases focus on the use of tools and handicraft as the objects and means of labor and their contextual and material changes as gateways to understanding and discussing the passage of time.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2022
“Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky... more “Revolutionary” technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky, or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when technological objects, such as rockets, airplanes, or nuclear reactors, are exhibited in museums or at heritage sites, with profound implications for underlying concepts of historical education. This special issue explores the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress but became the focus of controversies when the social, political, and cultural conditions of perceiving and remembering these objects changed. At former “places of progress,” visitors and exhibition makers are confronted with the remains of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Age of Coal, the Space Age, the Atomic Age and the Digital Age. Exhibitions and displays have been used to explain, teach, or make sense of the advents, successes, and failures of high-tech projects. Understanding technological artifacts and corresponding sites such as Chernobyl, Peenemünde, and Hiroshima as well as structures such as factories or bunkers as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire, a term coined by Pierre Nora) shifts our attention to processes of remembering modern technologies and the cases in which established narratives of progress have been supported or challenged. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the “heroes of invention,” leaving visitors with the impression of technological ambivalence. Attempts to teach and learn about history and technology via objects and sites have been complicated, politicized, and contested.
Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Gesellschaftswissenschaften, 2021
In Diskussionen über ‚Fortschritt‘ und Beschleunigungen modernen Wandels werden Technikgeschichte... more In Diskussionen über ‚Fortschritt‘ und Beschleunigungen modernen Wandels werden Technikgeschichte und -kritik besondere Bedeutung zugeschrieben. Lehrpläne und -bücher für den Geschichtsunterricht greifen Technikerzählungen entsprechend auf, problematisieren jedoch selten ihre oft linearen, eurozentrischen Fortschrittsvorstellungen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht bildungspolitische Vorgaben und Materialien und skizziert fächerübergreifende Potenziale einer kritischen Technikgeschichte.
Krieg oder Raumfahrt? Peenemünde in der öffentlichen Erinnerung seit 1945, 2019
2000 revisited. Visionen der Welt von morgen im Gestern und Heute, 2020
https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000117728 Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts verk... more https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000117728
Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts verknüpften sich mit dem Weltraum visionäre Zukunftsentwürfe. Schon in den 1920er-Jahren hatte ein regelrechtes „Raketenfieber“ in den USA, in Europa und in der Sowjetunion die (noch verhältnismäßig dilettantischen) Bestrebungen einer menschlichen Expansion ins All befeuert, die mit dem Start des sowjetischen Satelliten Sputnik im Oktober 1957 schließlich zum Greifen nah schien. Das in Folge enthusiastisch ausgerufene Space Age war reich an extraterrestrischen Zukunftshorizonten, die die Erforschung und Besiedlung des Weltraums in Aussicht stellten, und das Jahr 2000 spielte in diesem Zusammenhang eine wichtige Rolle.
Historical Social Research, 2015
During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its s... more During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its spatial perception were related to political and ideological controversies. The article highlights the specific relevance of Euclidean geometry in representations of outer space. Focusing on illustrations and expositions in both postwar German States, it argues that shifts within the spatial imagination and representation of space corresponded with the first satellite missions and condensed debates about the future of technology and the moral legacies of the Second World War. In October 1957, Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and a Soviet construction, urged engineers, scientists, and illustrators to find new ways of depicting and communicating the spaces of outer space to the public and to each other. For decades, space fiction had implicitly stifled theories on the relativity of space and time by hinting at traditional motifs of conquest through machines. Early spaceflight, however, was not about immediate flights to other planets, but about the orbit, a space without a traditional place, yet imagined as being of paramount importance for strategic superiority. Driven by political tensions and drawing on representations established in physics and astronomy, the first satellite projects were designed and explained as missions to places that needed to be defined and controlled because they were strange and new.
History and Technology, 2012
Space historians have predominantly identified Weimar Germany (1919–1933) as the starting period ... more Space historians have predominantly identified Weimar Germany (1919–1933) as the starting period of German debates over the possibility of spaceflight. However, spaceflight and the utopian potential of outer space were already topics of popular discussion in the late nineteenth century, when calls by German astronomers for speculative restraint were challenged in popular science accounts and fantasy literature. Mass-produced fiction in the first decade of the twentieth century increasingly depicted spaceflight as a technological vision, imagining the spaceship as the successor to the airship. While exploring the historical processes behind this ascent of plausibility of futuristic design, the article shows how popular science media gave public voice to both established and new professional elites and fostered interprofessional exchange. In the 1900s spaceflight developed into a popular theme and boundaries between fiction and popular science blurred.
Technology Fiction: Technische Visionen und Utopien in der Hochmoderne, Bielefeld 2012, 65-91., 2012
https://www.ifg-braunschweig.de/placesofprogress/ Advanced technologies or ‘revolutionary’ techno... more https://www.ifg-braunschweig.de/placesofprogress/
Advanced technologies or ‘revolutionary’ technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when their places of development or use are turned into heritage sites through practices of remembrance or museumization. Understanding technological sites as “lieux de mémoire” (Pierre Nora) shifts our focus to the actors engaged in processes of remembering modern technologies, and the cases in which established narratives have been supported or challenged on local levels. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the ‘heroes of invention‘, leaving visitors with the impression of ambivalent historical places. ‘Places of Progress‘ aims at investigating past and current challenges of remembering modern ‘high technologies’ (both military and civilian), such as weapons, information and communication technologies, transportation infrastructures, nuclear energy or nanotechnology, at or through their historical sites.
The conference investigates the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress, but became the focus of controversies when particular sites and objects were employed in exhibitions and other forms of remembrance. Contributions from various disciplines, ranging from science and technology studies to public history and heritage studies, examine the agendas, stakeholders, practices and institutions involved in remembering technologies. How have sites and technological objects been used to create traditions or consolidate cultural memories, to support or undermine established historiographies? Have postmodern debates transformed enthusiasm into nostalgia? What has been willfully ‘forgotten’ to promote divergent narratives?
The conference is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
If you wish to attend this conference, please register by 10 September 2019 at: meta-peenemuende[at]tu-braunschweig.de
Anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums des ersten bemannten Weltraumfluges präsentiert die Retrospektive WE... more Anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums des ersten bemannten Weltraumfluges präsentiert die Retrospektive WELTRAUMKINO eine Geschichte des Science-Fiction-Films. In ihrem Mittelpunkt stehen phantastische Visionen der Handlungssphäre Weltraum: Eroberungen des Kosmos, die Entdeckung extraterrestrischer Welten und die Begegnung mit fremden Zivilisationen in fernen Galaxien. Doch auch ihr komplementäres Motiv – die Landung der Außerirdischen auf der Erde und deren Eindringen in "unsere" Zivilisation – prägt eine zweite, kleinere Gruppe der für die Retrospektive ausgewählten Filme. Seit den frühen 1950er Jahren ein eigenständiges Genre und bis heute von einer anhaltenden Vitalität und Popularität, ist der Science-Fiction-Film ein kaum fassbares Genre geblieben: mitunter philosophischen Reflexionen nicht abgeneigt, zeitweise von einem schier grenzenlosen Fortschrittsglauben beseelt, doch immer häufiger auch von skeptischen Zukunftsvisionen durchzogen. Unabhängig von solchen, je unterschiedlichen Konfigurationen von Expansion oder Invasion, Utopie oder Dystopie hat kein anderes Medium unsere Vorstellungen von Weltall, außerirdischem Leben und zukünftigen Erfahrungsräumen so nachhaltig geprägt wie das Kino. Die umfassende Retrospektive spiegelt das Weltraumkino in seiner ganzen Bandbreite, legt dabei jedoch einen Schwerpunkt auf die Filme der 1950er bis 1970er Jahre.
If space exploration is understood as not just one of the twentieth century’s most prestigious fe... more If space exploration is understood as not just one of the twentieth century’s most prestigious feats of engineering, but also a central theme in period visions of the future and utopias, then how might we understand the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, with its emphasis on reduced possibilities and limitations to progress? The conference aimed to shift the focus away from explanations of transition from Cold War contexts and produce more nuanced narratives: from the familiar struggle between two superpowers, namely the USA and the former USSR, to distinctly West-European perspectives, and from political to socio-cultural dimensions of the Space Age. How were limits created, challenged and maintained? And in what sense was outer space invoked to transform cultural boundaries and how were these conveyed to different audiences? The conference looked at utopia not as a socio-cultural objective but rather as a process. Through defining limitless opportunities afforded by outer space, advocates of space exploration not only opened up new possibilities for accelerating or even surpassing human development, but also delineated the historicity and limitations of the imagination.
For much of the twentieth century, outer space has been envisioned as not only a site of heavenly... more For much of the twentieth century, outer space has been envisioned as not only a site of heavenly utopias, but also the ultimate battlefield. Concentrating on weapons, warfare, and violence, this conference explores the military dimensions of astroculture in the period between 1942 and 1990. By highlighting the militarization of extraterrestrial frontiers and conquest in politics and popular culture alike, ‘Embattled Heavens’ addressed the complex processes that oscillate between peaceful and aggressive characteristics of human endeavors in outer space. While the Space Age is usually associated with Cold War history, this conference complicated established narratives by integrating Western European and global perspectives. Examining astropolitics, technoscientific practices, and science fiction, the goal of this conference was to reconceptualize the history of outer space with a view towards its military dimensions.
https://museum-peenemuende.de/zeitreise/ In der Online-Ausstellung „Zeitreise“ präsentieren 14 St... more https://museum-peenemuende.de/zeitreise/
In der Online-Ausstellung „Zeitreise“ präsentieren 14 Studierende aus dem Bachelor-Studiengang Geschichte und dem Master „Kultur der technisch-wissenschaftlichen Welt“ an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig die Ergebnisse eines Projektseminars. In 28 Themenbereichen können die Besucher Einblicke in alle historischen Phasen des Ortes Peenemünde gewinnen, von der ersten Erwähnung über den Dreißigjährigen Krieg, die Einrichtung der Versuchsanstalten Peenemünde im Nationalsozialismus und des NVA-Standortes in der DDR bis in die Zeit des tiefgreifenden Strukturwandels nach der Deutschen Einheit. Dazu haben sich die Studierenden in Archiven, Bibliotheken und auf einer Exkursion nach Peenemünde intensiv mit den Erinnerungsorten und Objekten auseinandergesetzt, recherchiert, fotografiert und Interviews mit Anwohnern und Zeitzeugen geführt.