Research field: Dictatorship Research

This research field, in accordance with the purposes defined during HAIT's foundation in 1993, is tasked with studying the dictatorships of the 20th century and the way that society dealt with them. It also ties in with the politological research approach of comparative autocracy research. The focus of the predominantly historiographic projects is on the Nazi and SED dictatorships, which are complemented by studies of dictatorships or autocracies especially in Europe. In all projects, the aspiration is to seize the conceptual and methodological expansions of contemporary historical research in the recent decades, to link approaches of political, social, cultural, media and everyday history with each other and to integrate innovative approaches from the social and cultural sciences. The relationship of the two German dictatorships to each other is treated from a systematic-comparative as well as an experiential-historical perspective. Furthermore, explorations of non-democratic regimes in the interwar period and in other regions of the world form reference points for historical comparison. A particular challenge for projects in this research field is the connection of regionally or nationally limited (Saxony or Nazi Germany, GDR) with supra-regional and international objects of investigation, which also includes non-dictatorial societies, especially the Federal Republic at the time of German division. The scientists active in this area are working together with institutions of political education, victim groups and reappraisal initiatives in the Free State of Saxony and the East German federal states, in accordance with the goals defined in HAIT's statute.

Researchers: Dr. Claudia Böttcher, Dr. Andreas Kötzing, Anselm Meyer, Prof. Dr. Mike Schmeitzner, Dr. Francesca Weil