Kieser
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Historisches Seminar » Neuzeit, Fachbereich » PD Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser » Kieser
Current research project
| Title / Titel | Turkey 1908-14: biographical approaches | ||||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | This project attempts to ascertain the social and cultural dynamics of the Ottoman world before the catastrophe of World War I. It emphasizes the utopian moment of the Young Turk Revolution in Summer 1908, that is the hopes, fears, trends, doctrines, fraternizations and polarizations expressed against the backdrop of the crucial quest for the Ottoman Near Eastern future. The project tackles the years of 1908-1914 as a formative period of political, intellectual, and literary biography. It asks to take a particularly close look at Ottoman lifes when there was still hope of a common future; especially among those who tried hard to resist against the temptation of thinking the future in terms of exterior and interior war, and ethno-religious “cleansing”. To put the emphasis upon a relatively open period, or precarious Belle Epoque, upon potential not trauma, is a methodical decision of this project. It assumes that historical reflection may gain strength and precision from this emphasis and be finally better ready to fully fathom the traumata of the 1910s. These, too, as well as the early post-Ottoman period, are logically included in the biographical approaches of the project. At the core of the project is the biographical work, but also the ongoing challenge of a common future – the challenge of a constructive appropriation of a vertiginous multitude of conflicting, or seemingly conflicting historical and cultural resources, as they appeared in those short years. In particular, we attempt to rethink Turkey from the Ottoman world of the early 20th century, from the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the end of the Belle Époque, instead of thinking it from its founding period, or “hour zero”, after World War I. |
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| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
Foundation |
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| In collaboration with / In Zusammenarbeit mit |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Apr 2008 to Dec 2013 |