Dissertation Project

Colonial Knowledge and the Political Public Sphere in the German Empire: The Party Press as a Site of Meaning-Making (1884–1919) (working title).

This dissertation project examines the production, circulation, and transformation of colonial knowledge in the German Empire (1884–1919) using the political party press as a case study. Here, “colonial knowledge” does not refer to objective facts, but rather to interpretations constructed by the media—that is, the ways in which colonial events, actors, and conditions were perceived, evaluated, and conveyed to the German public. The focus is on daily newspapers and magazines that were affiliated with or directly associated with the Center Party, the SPD, and the National Liberal Party. In addition to major national newspapers such as Germania, Vorwärts, and the Kölnische Zeitung—sources also include smaller regional party newspapers as well as political-satirical periodicals such as Wahre Jakob and Kladderadatsch.

This study is situated at the intersection of colonial, party, and media history, and pursues two closely related research objectives: First, it examines how colonial narratives were constructed, transformed, and mobilized for party-political purposes in the press organs of the three parties—and what linguistic, argumentative, and visual strategies were employed in the process, taking into account both party-specific differences and cross-party commonalities. Second, the study focuses on internal differences within the respective party milieus: Through a social-historical approach to newspapers situated in diverse regional and social contexts— ranging from leading national media to local provincial papers—the study aims to demonstrate that colonial knowledge was not only contested between the parties but also ideologically diverged within their own media landscapes.

Theoretically and methodologically, the project draws on a combination of Foucauldian discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis from the field of communication studies. The aim is to expand German colonial historiography to include a systematic analysis of the political press, in which the press is understood as an active producer and transformer of colonial interpretive frameworks. In doing so, political parties are to be portrayed not as static vehicles of fixed positions, but rather in their internal diversity of voices and ideological ambivalence.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Olaf Blaschke