Christoph Gollasch

Born 1985 in Hof

2007-2014: Studied social sciences and philosophy with a focus on political science in Leipzig, Edinburgh, Be‘er Scheva and at the Free University of Berlin

since 2013: Honorary employee in the educational team of the cemetery of the fallen in March

since 2014: Employee of the educational services at the Ravensbrück Memorial and Memorial

01 / 2015-03 / 2015: Scholarship holder of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the TU Berlin

since 2016: Scholarship holder of the Ludwig Rosenberg Graduate College as a PhD scholarship holder of the Hans Böckler Foundation

PhD Project

The proletarian reception of Silvio Gesell's “Free economy,” “Free land” and “Free money” (Working title)

The lessons of Silvio Gesell have gained social relevance with the increasingly finance-dominated accumulation of capital and the resulting global economic and so-called European financial crisis. This was most recently made apparent at the beginning of 2016, when Stanley Fisher, Vice President of the US Federal Reserve, referred to it in lectures on the current low interest rate policy.

Debates have already been held that - at least in Germany - resulted in a stigmatization of Gesell and his writings. Robert Kurz called free economics a “political economy of antisemitism,” Elmar Altvater attributed a structural proximity to antisemitism to it. And Jutta Ditfurth subsumed Gesell to "eco-fascism." However, these and other attributions were always made against the background of virulent political disputes, which is why Gesell was not sufficiently historicized.

The aim of the doctoral project is to trace the left-wing reception of Gesell in particular, and of the so-called abbreviated criticism of capitalism in general to its initial phase. Was the criticism of money and interest also received in proletarian milieus and, if so, how were antisemitism and various ethnic elements negotiated in this context? In order to answer the question, archives should be consulted that preserve testimonies from different milieus of the workers' movement in the interwar period.

Publications

"People, let the dead rest. The Sonnenburg concentration camp as a prism of the early phase of National Socialism, in: Sozial.Geschichte Online, Volume 19, Issue 2 (2016) [to be published shortly].

The Sonnenburg concentration camp, in: Hans Coppi, Kamil Majchrzak (ed.): The Sonnenburg concentration camp and prison, Berlin: Metropol 2015, pp. 38-48.

Civil clauses, or the question: war is peace? (Review by Thomas Nielebock, Simon Meisch, Volker Harms (ed.): Civil clauses for research, teaching and studies. Universities committed to peace), in: kritisch-lesen.de, 4/2014.

Paul Albrecht, in: Siegfried Mielke, Stefan Heinz (ed.): Trade unionists in the Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, Berlin: Metropol 2013, pp. 67-88.

Willi Müller, in: ibid., Pp. 147-162.

Max Müller, in: ibid., Pp. 574-586.

Talks

The Sonnenburg concentration camp. Possibilities and limits of its historical and pedagogical processing. Lecture at the conference “Sonnenburg / Słońsk. A European Place of Remembrance and Learning on Persecution and Resistance,” House of Democracy and Human Rights in Berlin, December 2015.

Persecuted in the Berlin police hospital 1933-45. Lecture as part of the workshop “The State Hospital of the Police under National Socialism. A research gap,” Topography of Terror, November 2015.

Photography in the Sonnenburg concentration camp and prison. Lecture at the 10th European Summer University of the Ravensbrück Memorial / Brandenburg Memorials Foundation on the subject of “Photography in Concentration Camps. Practice, function and tradition,” Ravensbrück, August 2015.

Teaching

2012-2014: Tutor at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin