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Dr. Gregor Feindt

Member of the academic staff, project "Neue Menschen" schaffen und werden
Room: 04-18, Diether-von-Isenburg-Str. 9-11, 55116 Mainz (Besucheranschrift)
Phone: +49 6131 39 39369

E-Mail


Personal Details:

Gregor Feindt joined the Leibniz Institute of European History in 2014. Since November 2021, he is also an associated member of special research area 1482 human differentiation with his project Making and Becoming "New (Wo)Men”: Rationalisation, Subjectification, and Materiality in the Industrial Town of Zlín and the Baťa Company, 1920–1950,funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Gregor studied Eastern European and Modern History, and Slavonic Studies in Bonn and Cracow (Jagiellonian University) and completed a PhD at Bonn on national discourse in Central European Samizdat. His thesis was awarded the Fritz Theodor Epstein-Preis of the Verband der Osteuropahistorikerinnen und –historiker in 2014 and the Johannes-Zilkens-Promotionspreis of the German Academic National Foundation in 2015. In 2015/2016, he was Visiting Professor for history and culture of East Central Europe with a focus on Poland at the University of Bremen.

Research Interest:

Gregor is a historian of Central Europe and studies the transnational history of Czechoslovakia and Poland in twentieth century. In his new project, he enquires into the cultural history of social engineering and the making of “new (wo)men” in the Czechoslovak shoe company Baťa and the factory town of Zlín. Gregor also works on European Memory and its impact on the integration and disintegration of Europe as a political project. Beyond this, he is interested in processes of human differentiation and contributes to the special research area 1482 human differentiation.

Selected Publications:

Auf der Suche nach politischer Gemeinschaft. Oppositionelles Denken zur Nation im ostmitteleuropäischen Samizdat 1976–1992 [Seeking Political Community: Oppositional Political Thought towards the Nation in Eastern Central European Samizdat] (Ordnungssysteme 47), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2015
From Zlín to the World: Transfer, Emigration and Personal Agency of Jewish Employees of the Bat'a shoe company, 1938-1940, in: Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts/Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 18 (2019 [2022]), S. 27–52, Open Access https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/book/10.13109/9783666370991
Cultural Sovereignty beyond the Modern State: Space, Objects, and Media, edited with Bernhard Gißibl and Johannes Paulmann, Theme Issue: European History Yearbook 21 (2020), Open Access https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110679151/html
Europe's Europes: Mapping the Conflicts of European Memory, together with Félix Krawatzek, Friedemann Pestel and Rieke Trimçev, Journal of Political Ideologies 25 (2020), S. 51–77
Making and Unmaking Socialist Modernities. Seven Interventions into the Writing of Contemporary History on Central and Eastern Europe, European History Yearbook 19 (2018), pp. 133–154, Open Access https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/books/9783110581508/9783110581508-008/9783110581508-008.xml

Research projects:

Making and Becoming "New (Wo)Men": Rationalisation, Subjectification, and Materiality in the Industrial Town of Zlín and the Baťa Company, 1920–1950

Making and Becoming "New (Wo)Men" examines the history of social experiments in industrial capitalism. The Czechoslovak shoe company Baťa produced cheap shoes in Zlín and transferred the rationalisation logics developed in the process to the notion of efficient people, which was communicated as inevitable and unavailable. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation from 2020 to 2024.