German Historical Institute London - Deutsches Historisches Institut London

Join us next Tuesday, 23 June, for a lecture in cooperation with the Modern German History Seminar (Institute of Historical Research)! 📅

Benjamin Ziemann (University of Sheffield) will talk about 'Remaking German Socialism during the Great War: The Social Democratic Party between Opposition to War and National Integration, 1914–1918'.

By 1912, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest socialist party in the world. Yet when war was imminent in July 1914, the party failed to mobilize effectively against it. Instead, on 4 August 1914, the party approved war credits in the German parliament and signed up to a domestic political truce, the Burgfrieden. The talk will explain the reasons for this decision, discuss the relation between socialist opposition to war and national integration, and analyse the process by which German social democracy splintered during the war.

Sign up now to join us in person or online: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures 🔗



📷 Extract from leaflet issued by the Spartacus Group, 1915

It's almost kick-off time! The 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup begins today! ⚽

The GHIL Library has put together a selection of books on football, exploring its history, politics, and cultural significance. 🥅

While our building is currently closed, you can browse the titles in our online catalogue: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/library/catalogue🔗

Join us online on 16 June for the last lecture in our summer series on environmental history! Debjani Bhattacharyya (Universität Zürich) will give a talk on 'Valuing Indian Ocean Monsoon Risk and the Making of Climate Science'. 🌊🌪

This lecture brings together the intertwined histories of maritime insurance and of technical as well as vernacular representations of maritime storms in the late eighteenth century Indian Ocean. The technical representation of storms became an urgent issue of prediction, and was also important in arbitrating legal questions around liability for insurers, underwriters in Britain, and local courts in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. The question of commodification drove both these issues, as the lecture shows, as weather disturbance became the object of revenue generation; indeed, the uncertainty attached to it was precisely what drove its commodification. ⚖

Focusing on this process of double commodification, the lecture reveals how the non-corporeal entity of the monsoon was enclosed as a commodity and its risk further priced and thus offloaded through the courts as well as other financial instruments. Ultimately, the lecture makes a case for historicizing what is too often seen as a contemporary phenomenon: the financialization of the climate crisis. 🪙

Sign up now: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures



📷 A storm card from the Text-Book of Seamanship, 1891, by S B Luce. Public domain via Wikimedia.

Apply for the Prize of the German Historical Institute London! 📢

🎓 It is awarded annually for an outstanding thesis on

- German history (submitted to a British or Irish university),
- British history or British colonial history (submitted to a German university),
- British-German relations or British-German comparative history (submitted to a British, Irish, or German university).

The Prize is 1,000 Euros. To be eligible, applicants must have successfully completed doctoral exams and vivas between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026. 🥇

Applications close 31 July 2026. 📅

For more details: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/opportunities/prizes

If the prize-winning thesis is on British history, British colonial history, British-German relations or British-German comparative history it may also be considered for publication in one of the Institute's publication series. 📕

Join us next Wednesday, 10 June, for a lecture in cooperation with the Earlier Middle Ages Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, given by Gerda Heydemann (Freie Universität Berlin) on 'The Social Life of Carolingian Exegesis'!

The study of Carolingian exegesis has become a remarkably dynamic field in recent years. The pre-eminent role of the Bible and its interpretation in Carolingian political discourse has been much emphasized, as has the impact of biblical models on conceptions of history. This lecture will highlight a different aspect of the ‘social life’ of biblical exegesis in this period, namely its impact on the legal culture of the Carolingian period.

As Gerda Heydemann will attempt to show through selected examples, analysing the interplay between legal and exegetical thought offers a way to better understand not only the role of the Bible in a legal world characterized by a multiplicity of norms, but also the social functions of Carolingian exegesis.

Sign up now to join us in person or online: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures

to last Friday! Thanks for a wonderful workshop on medieval Germany! 🏰

It was inspiring to get insights into so many different projects — from nuns' letters and Hildegard of Bingen to accounting records and the artistic world of Nuremberg. We were delighted to welcome participants and guests from across the UK, Germany and beyond.

A special thanks to everyone who presented, and especially to our senior commentators Henrike Lähnemann (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford) and Christian Jaser (Universität Kassel) for their thoughtful contributions throughout the day.

As one participant put it: "It was great to present somewhere outside my own uni and to see what people at other places are working on — I very much enjoyed meeting new people and following the discussions in a very collegiate atmosphere."

It's ! To mark the occasion we have compiled some of our most recent GHIL library acquisitions on ‘Queer History’! 🏳️‍🌈

Browse our library catalogue to find out more: https://library.ghil.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-shelves.pl?op=view&shelfnumber=125&sortfield=title 🔗

Join us on Wednesday, 3 June, at 5:30pm at the GHIL for a special lecture by Robbie Duschinsky (University of Cambridge) on 'The Legacy and Loose Ends of "the Queen of Attachment Research": The Work of Mary Main and Its Transnational Reception'. 🫂

Robbie Duschinsky is Professor of Social Science and Health and Head of the Applied Social Science Group within the Primary Care Unit. He is also Director of Studies in Sociology at Sidney Sussex College. Robbie is co-PI of the “Living Assessments” Collaborator Award, funded by Wellcome, exploring the integration of health and social care in assessments of children. He is also co-PI of the “COACHES” study, funded by the NIHR and What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care, examining mental health referrals and treatment for young people with social care involvement.

Sign up now: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures

New on the GHIL Blog:

Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth Century

Written by former GHIL scholarship holder Okcan Yıldırımtürk (Freie Universität Berlin), the post draws on his PhD research exploring Famagusta in the nineteenth century. It examines competing proposals to regenerate the historically marginalised port town, and traces how Ottoman, French, and British imperial projects interacted with local initiatives as the city’s ruins became a palimpsest for trans-imperial and trans-communal visions of maritime revival.

Read the full post here: https://ghil.hypotheses.org/7917

Join us on 9 June at 5:30pm (BST) for the next lecture in our summer series on environmental history! 📅

Maximilian Schuh (Freie Universität Berlin) will talk about 'Demesne Accounts, Court Rolls, and Prognostic Treatises: Weather and Its Perceptions in Fourteenth-Century England'.

His lecture examines how changing weather conditions in fourteenth-century England were perceived and interpreted by contemporaries. While the consequences of environmental change in the later Middle Ages have long remained underexplored, the focus here is on how weather was observed, recorded, and made meaningful. 🌦️

Drawing on a wide range of sources—from demesne accounts and court rolls to learned prognostic treatises—the lecture considers both the presence and absence of references to weather phenomena. Particular attention is paid to the communicative contexts in which such observations were documented. By situating perceptions of weather within their political, social, and economic frameworks, the lecture offers a historically grounded perspective on how societies respond to environmental change. 📜

Sign up now to sign up to attend in person or on Zoom: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures



📷 Courtesy British Library, Add. 42130, f. 170 [cropped].