PD Dr. Gregor Feindt
Member of the academic staff
Room: 04-18, Diether-von-Isenburg-Str. 9-11, 55116 Mainz (Besucheranschrift)Phone: +49 6131 39 39369
Personal Details:
Gregor Feindt joined the Leibniz Institute of European History in 2014. Since November 2021, he is also an associated member of collaborative research centre 1482 human differentiation.
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. Gregor received his habilitation at the University of Kiel in 2024 with a postdoctoral thesis on Baťa’s People. Rationalisation, Social Engineering and Differentiation in the Czechoslovak Company Town Zlín, 1918–1948.
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. Gregor received his habilitation at the University of Kiel in 2024 with a postdoctoral thesis on Baťa’s People. Rationalisation, Social Engineering and Differentiation in the Czechoslovak Company Town Zlín, 1918–1948.
Research Interest:
Gregor is a historian of Central Europe and studies the transnational history of Czechoslovakia and Poland in the twentieth century. In his postdoctoral 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. He is interested in processes of human differentiation and contributes to the collaborative research centre 1482 human differentiation. In his next project, we will study the politics of reparations and reconciliation between Poland and Germany after the Second World War.
Selected Publications:
Shades of Blue. Claiming Europe in the Age of Disintegration, gemeinsam mit Félix Krawatzek, Friedemann Pestel und Rieke Trimçev, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, erscheint Februar 2025
Auf der Suche nach politischer Gemeinschaft. Oppositionelles Denken zur Nation im ostmitteleuropäischen Samizdat: 1976–1992 (Ordnungssysteme 47), Berlin/Bosten: 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, hrsg. mit Bernhard Gißibl und Johannes Paulmann, Theme Issue: European History Yearbook 21 (2020), Open Access unter https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110679151/html
Making and Unmaking Socialist Modernities. Seven Interventions into the Writing of Contemporary History on Central and Eastern Europe, in: European History Yearbook 19 (2018), S. 133–154, Open Access unter https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110581508-008/html
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.