Formed in 1989, the Franco-German Brigade was the first operational military unit established in peacetime Europe whose soldiers were recruited permanently from two nations and whose units were constantly under binational command. It became an important part of multinational military cooperation in Europe, with the political ambition of Germany and France being the driving force behind European security and defence policy.
Continue reading The View from the Island: Britain’s Perception of the Franco-German BrigadeCategory: Scholarships
The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5
Murder on Jabalya Street
Multiple shots were fired at Walter Guinness, better known as Lord Moyne, as his car was parking at his residence on Jabalya Street in Cairo. Later that day, on 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East succumbed to his wounds. After a shoot-out with the Egyptian police, the two assassins, who had also killed Moyne’s driver, were apprehended. During their interrogation, they revealed their identity to be Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri, Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in their early twenties. They declared themselves members of the militant underground organization Lehi—the Hebrew acronym for Loḥamey Ḥerut Isra’el or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.
Continue reading The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5Researching Religious Coloniality in East Africa: A Summer at the GHIL
Colonial Rule and Religious Resistance: My Research Project
My habilitation project, ‘“Arming the Natives and Inspiring Them to Resist German Influence”: Functions of Religion in Colonial Rule and Indigenous Resistance in German East Africa and Tanganyika (1885–1961)’, explores how religion functioned both as a tool of colonial domination and as a means of indigenous resistance. My research examines the period between 1885 and 1961, when German and British authorities used Christianity to establish their rule over present-day Tanzania.
Continue reading Researching Religious Coloniality in East Africa: A Summer at the GHILFrom Amboyna to Boston: How Massacres Become Media Events
Massacres and their staging in the media impact our everyday lives more than we realize. Whether it’s the latest news about the horrors unfolding in the Middle East or shocking images from Ukraine, the media coverage of these events is brought directly into our living rooms. This information penetrates deep into the collective memory of societies, as these incidents are not just local tragedies, but raise questions about humanity, responsibility, and international reactions.
Acts of violence are documented and interpreted selectively, which means that the media take certain events and mould and shape them into ‘massacres’ in the first place.1 Here, what takes centre stage is often the question of guilt, as well as whether the event can generally be classified as a massacre. The term ‘massacre’ evokes affective reactions such as fear and unease and implies a threat of brutal violence against defenceless victims. The media construction of events as massacres thus serves as an effective means of indoctrinating social groups. The term itself is derived from the French massacre, which comes from the Old French for ‘butcher’s bench/slaughterhouse’. During the French Wars of Religion at the end of the sixteenth century,2 it became associated with collective violence against defenceless victims, taking on a meaning that survives until today. This definition was shaped in particular by the so-called St Bartholomew’s Night (1572), which, due to the considerable number of victims and unbridled cruelty, became firmly anchored in a European culture of remembrance. The media staging of acts of violence as ‘massacres’ suggests the construction of cruelty and injustice is more relevant than the number of victims. An analysis of these media constructions must also look at non-European ‘massacres’, whose reception histories, despite their longevity, have often been forgotten.
Continue reading From Amboyna to Boston: How Massacres Become Media Events- I am using ‘media’ here as a collective term that encompasses various types of media (paintings, pamphlets, poems, newspapers, etc.) from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These vary in terms of their use, distribution, and target audience, but all aim to provide information and/or express opinions regarding the massacre. [↩]
- See Peter Burschel, ‘Massaker’, in Friedrich Jaeger (ed.), Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit (Stuttgart and Weimar, 2008), vol. viii, Manufaktur – Naturgeschichte, 110–11; Cornel Zwierlein, ‘Die Genese eines europäischen Erinnerungsortes: Die Bartholomäusnacht im Geschichtsgebrauch des konfessionellen Zeitalters und der Aufklärung’, in Frank Bezner and Kirsten Mahlke (eds.), Zwischen Wissen und Politik: Archäologie und Genealogie frühneuzeitlicher Vergangenheitskonstruktion (Heidelberg, 2011), 91–129, at 91. [↩]
Compassion Mobilized: Antisemitism, Racism, and the Politics of Animal Welfare in Germany, 1945–2002
In Judaism, the protection of life, including animal welfare, is a biblical commandment, and only the meat of uninjured animals is considered kosher (prepared or kept in conditions that follow the rituals of Jewish law). The Jewish method of slaughter (schechtia) is carried out without prior stunning and is intended to ensure rapid loss of consciousness and maximal exsanguination of the animal. It is performed exclusively by a shochet, a religiously certified slaughterer whose training encompasses not only technical precision and physical skill, but also strict ethical and spiritual qualifications. The act involves a single, uninterrupted incision across the animal’s throat using a flawlessly smooth and extremely sharp knife (chalaf). This cut severs the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries, jugular veins, and major nerve pathways, leading to quick unconsciousness and substantial blood loss, as required by Jewish dietary law. Animals that are diseased, injured, or show internal defects are disqualified from kosher status. These conditions are identified during the ritual inspection (bedika), following which the meat may be certified as kosher if no disqualifying signs are found.
Common stunning methods, such as a percussive blow to the head or the use of a captive bolt, cause injury to the animal’s skull and are therefore deemed unacceptable by Jewish authorities. For over 150 years, significant segments of German majority society have rejected the Jewish method of slaughter, demonstrating hate and hostility. Since the Second German Empire, animal protection societies have mobilized against shechita, denouncing it as a ‘cultural disgrace’ and ‘Jewish cruelty to animals’. Although numerous independent experts have disproved the allegation of cruelty, these societies have persisted in their calls for obligatory stunning in German slaughterhouses. Antisemitic voices have swiftly echoed this demand, while the rhetoric of animal welfare activists is itself not devoid of antisemitic undertones.
Continue reading Compassion Mobilized: Antisemitism, Racism, and the Politics of Animal Welfare in Germany, 1945–2002Markets, Marginalization, and Maritime Violence in Late Medieval England
Investigating Violence at Sea
In 1343, more than 150 inhabitants of Great Yarmouth attacked two ships belonging to a certain Robert Morley that were anchored at the roadstead of Kirkley, a village ten kilometres to the south, and seized around £5,000 worth of goods.1 The assailants were members of the leading families of Great Yarmouth and ranged from ship owners and traders, to holders of political office (both royal and municipal), customs officers, bailiffs, and admirals. They were involved in the administration of justice, including as members of commissions appointed by the king or his chancery to investigate violence at sea. The victim, Morley, was also a familiar figure. He came from the local area, on the border between Suffolk and Norfolk, and was one of the most important landowners in the region. He also owned multiple merchant ships. In short, he was an important man in the early years of the war between the English and French kings, which had broken out in 1337. He had been appointed Admiral of the North several times by Edward III and had defended the Norfolk coast from a possible French invasion.2
The scene of the crime—a relatively unremarkable patch of water at first glance—plays an extremely prominent role in English sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as one of the key sites of economic activity in the region, as a place where customs were collected by the Crown and by local actors, and not least as a hotspot of maritime violence. The fact that Kirkley Roads became such a hotspot in the first place was due to the resource conflicts fought there between various actors from Great Yarmouth and other ports along the coast—specifically, over the catching and trading of herring.
Continue reading Markets, Marginalization, and Maritime Violence in Late Medieval EnglandHow to Commemorate Railways at 200? Unearthing Histories of Maintenance, Global Material Flows, and Colonialism
In recent years, railways have undergone a remarkable renaissance in Europe—night train lines have been (re-)established, the high-speed rail network continues to grow, and in the continent’s effort to reduce CO2 emissions, railways play a key role in the much-needed reform of the transportation sector. However, persistent issues like delays and cancellations highlight the consequences of the long-term neglect of railway infrastructure in many European countries today. Inspired by the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825, a series of events and exhibitions will celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of modern railways in Great Britain and all around the world in 2025. So, how should we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the railways? A good starting point to explore this question is a unique location on the British Isles where the past, present, and future of this transformative transport technology converge: the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York.
Continue reading How to Commemorate Railways at 200? Unearthing Histories of Maintenance, Global Material Flows, and ColonialismKnowledge Production between Mission, University, and Colonial Administration: Swahili Studies in Britain and Germany, 1840s–1940s
The brutalist Philips Building in central London does not look very inviting at first. Nevertheless, it is a magnet for students and researchers from all over the world working on Asia and Africa. Nowadays probably the most important institution in the Global North for research on the Global South, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) was originally founded in 1916 to train colonial officials and to produce knowledge about the British colonies.1 Little trace of this remains—today, SOAS calls itself ‘The World’s University’ and is considered internationalist, left-wing, and anti-imperialist.
Continue reading Knowledge Production between Mission, University, and Colonial Administration: Swahili Studies in Britain and Germany, 1840s–1940s- Ian Brown, The School of Oriental and African Studies: Imperial Training and the Expansion of Learning (Cambridge, 2016). [↩]
‘Woman’s Work’? What Debates about Policewomen in the Inter-War Period Tell Us about Contemporary Understandings of Sexual Violence
‘It’s a woman’s work.’ With these words, a 1939 leaflet encouraged women to join the Metropolitan Women Police, which at this point had existed for twenty years. While one of the photos in the brochure shows female officers learning self-defence, other pictures emphasize more gender-conformist tasks: a photo of a female officer comforting a child is captioned ‘Her first job’.1 Louise A. Jackson’s 2006 book on the history of female police officers in the UK has commented on their ambivalent position between welfare work and policing.2 Jackson has shown that the decision to recruit female police officers in the early twentieth century was influenced by the contemporary idea that victims of sexual assault should give their statements to women. According to her, the difference female police officers made was ‘structural rather than ideological’, as they operated on the basis of prejudices towards complainants of sexual violence that were similar to those of their male counterparts.3 Instead of discussing the practices of policewomen, however, my blog post focuses on the debates about the nature of their employment, as well as that of female doctors, and asks what these reveal about contemporary understandings of sexual violence and victimhood.

Fig. 1: Leaflet: ‘It’s a Woman’s Work’. Courtesy of The Women’s Library at LSE, 4NVA/4/06/11
Continue reading ‘Woman’s Work’? What Debates about Policewomen in the Inter-War Period Tell Us about Contemporary Understandings of Sexual Violence- The Women’s Library at LSE (hereafter TWL), 4NVA/4/06/11, Leaflet: ‘It’s a Woman’s Work’, 112 WP, The Metropolitan Women Police. A Career for Women (June 1939). [↩]
- Louise Jackson, Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2006). [↩]
- Louise Jackson, Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2006). P.171 [↩]
An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)
Public performance of the dawsa, a traditional Sufi ritual, was an inseparable part of the traditional mawlid festival1 held every year in Cairo. Mainly affiliated with and performed by the Saʿdiyya Sufi order, the ritual had several phases. The most striking part of the ritual was when the Shaykh of the Saʿdiyya Sufi order rode his stallion, on his way to his tent, over the backs of hundreds of dervishes (disciples) lying face-down in the streets of Cairo. According to some historical accounts, the Shaykh (Master) was also accompanied by other dervishes who performed various ‘radical’ practices such as piercing their bodies, eating broken glass, or swallowing burning coals.2
Continue reading An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)