Creating Communities, Citizens, Outcasts and Heroes: Mediated Identities around the Baltic Sea, ca. 1850-2000

This project, which covers historical changes in the construction and communication of identities, is comparative, both in space and time. Geographically, we cover the Pale of settlement, Russia, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, investigating communication and identity on sub-national, national, and international levels. This area’s political landscape and, hence, the political identities have shifted and evolved dramatically over the last centuries. One sub-project researches Jewish identities, another sub-project Polish and German Identities in the early 20th Century in Danzig; with focus on newspaper discourse and public spheres’ models of inclusion and exclusion. A third sub-project focuses on heroes and heroic actions in a trans-national perspective.