Johan Östling
am an Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, Wallenberg Academy Fellow and since 2020 Director of the newly established Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK).
My research is mainly devoted to the history of knowledge, but I have a more general interest in the intellectual, political and cultural history of modern Europe, including the history of the university, historiography and biography.
After having studied and carried out research at the universities of Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sussex, Tübingen and Berlin, I defended my doctoral thesis about Swedish experiences of Nazism in the wake of Second World War at Lund University in 2008. My dissertation was awarded several prizes, including the Clio Prize and the Nils Klim Prize. In 2016 a revised English translation was published by Berghahn Books, Sweden After Nazism: Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War.
My main postdoctoral project was devoted to the Humboldtian tradition in modern Germany, not least when I, as a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (2013–2014). My research resulted in my second monograph, published in English in 2018 as Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History (Lund University Press/Manchester University Press).
In recent years I have in close co-operation with my colleagues been engaged in establishing the history of knowledge in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries. We have created a research environment at Lund (see https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/) and our first joint book was published in 2018, Circulation of Knowledge, and our second volume in 2020, Forms of Knowledge.
In 2019 I took up a position as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Together with two postdoctoral researchers I will in the years to come investigate how knowledge in the humanities was reshaped and changed as it moved and circulated in the postwar society.
After having studied and carried out research at the universities of Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sussex, Tübingen and Berlin, I defended my doctoral thesis about Swedish experiences of Nazism in the wake of Second World War at Lund University in 2008. My dissertation was awarded several prizes, including the Clio Prize and the Nils Klim Prize. In 2016 a revised English translation was published by Berghahn Books, "Sweden After Nazism: Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War".
My main postdoctoral project was devoted to the Humboldtian tradition in modern Germany, not least when I, as a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (2013–2014). My research resulted in my second monograph, published in English in 2018 as "Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History" (Lund University Press/Manchester University Press).
In January 2019 I took up a position as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Together with two postdoctoral researchers I will in the years to come investigate how knowledge in the humanities was reshaped and changed as it moved and circulated in the postwar society.
In recent years I have in close co-operation with my colleagues been engaged in establishing the history of knowledge in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries. We have created a research environment at Lund (see https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/) and our first joint book was published in 2018, "Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge".
Address: Lunds universitet
Historiska institutionen
Box 192
221 00 Lund
SWEDEN
My research is mainly devoted to the history of knowledge, but I have a more general interest in the intellectual, political and cultural history of modern Europe, including the history of the university, historiography and biography.
After having studied and carried out research at the universities of Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sussex, Tübingen and Berlin, I defended my doctoral thesis about Swedish experiences of Nazism in the wake of Second World War at Lund University in 2008. My dissertation was awarded several prizes, including the Clio Prize and the Nils Klim Prize. In 2016 a revised English translation was published by Berghahn Books, Sweden After Nazism: Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War.
My main postdoctoral project was devoted to the Humboldtian tradition in modern Germany, not least when I, as a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (2013–2014). My research resulted in my second monograph, published in English in 2018 as Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History (Lund University Press/Manchester University Press).
In recent years I have in close co-operation with my colleagues been engaged in establishing the history of knowledge in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries. We have created a research environment at Lund (see https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/) and our first joint book was published in 2018, Circulation of Knowledge, and our second volume in 2020, Forms of Knowledge.
In 2019 I took up a position as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Together with two postdoctoral researchers I will in the years to come investigate how knowledge in the humanities was reshaped and changed as it moved and circulated in the postwar society.
After having studied and carried out research at the universities of Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sussex, Tübingen and Berlin, I defended my doctoral thesis about Swedish experiences of Nazism in the wake of Second World War at Lund University in 2008. My dissertation was awarded several prizes, including the Clio Prize and the Nils Klim Prize. In 2016 a revised English translation was published by Berghahn Books, "Sweden After Nazism: Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War".
My main postdoctoral project was devoted to the Humboldtian tradition in modern Germany, not least when I, as a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (2013–2014). My research resulted in my second monograph, published in English in 2018 as "Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History" (Lund University Press/Manchester University Press).
In January 2019 I took up a position as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Together with two postdoctoral researchers I will in the years to come investigate how knowledge in the humanities was reshaped and changed as it moved and circulated in the postwar society.
In recent years I have in close co-operation with my colleagues been engaged in establishing the history of knowledge in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries. We have created a research environment at Lund (see https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/) and our first joint book was published in 2018, "Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge".
Address: Lunds universitet
Historiska institutionen
Box 192
221 00 Lund
SWEDEN
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Books by Johan Östling
The book presents the history of knowledge in all its rich diversity. The role of knowledge in public life is the focus of some chapters, while others concentrate on the importance of knowledge for individuals or local communities; some chart the realities of academic or systematic knowledge, others consider its existential or mundane dimensions. Taken together, they make a significant contribution to the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological advances in the field.
In "Circulation of Knowledge", a group of Nordic scholars explore a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to this new and exciting area of historical research. The question of knowledge in motion is central to their investigations, and especially how knowledge is transformed when it circulates between different societal arenas, literary genres, or forms of media.
Reflecting on twelve empirical studies, from sixteenth century cartography to sexology in the 1970s, the authors make a significant contribution to the growing international research on the history of knowledge.
The authors draw on the latest research in order to bring the educational and research policies of our day into perspective. At a time when the university is undergoing deep-seated transformations worldwide, they address the question how we should relate to the ideas associated with Humboldt’s name. What is his relevance to the twenty-first century?
Contributors are: Mitchell Ash, Pieter Dhondt, Ylva Hasselberg, Marja Jalava, Peter Josephson, Thomas Karlsohn, Claudia Lindén, Johan Östling, Sharon Rider, Hans Ruin, Susan Wright.
The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive postwar characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context.
Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history.
»Overall, Nordic Narratives of the Second World War is an important book, as an introduction to the Nordic countries’ historical stories about World War II. The book invites to a stimulating discussion.« H-Soz-u-Kult
»Nordic Narratives of the Second World War is a solid starting point for those outside the Scandinavian field looking to include Nordic perspectives on World War II, national narratives, and memory construction. The book raises larger questions about nation-states and twentieth-century national myths, and individual essays to varying degrees seek to push historical interpretations to larger questions of the role of national histories in current historical writing. Given the ongoing concerns about the threat to professional historians’ authority in an age when access to archival and historical texts is expanding with digitization and Internet access, readers may find the underlying question of who has the authority to present and interpret the past as another way to engage with this text.« H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online
The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to analyze the repercussions of the Nazi experience for postwar society.
Inspired by the tradition of conceptual history and Reinhart Koselleck’s hermeneutical approach, I begin by elucidating the content of the Nazi experience in the aftermath of the war. The study shows that an unambiguous, homogenous interpretation of Nazism dominated. National Socialism was regarded as a nationalistic phenomenon, characterized by irrationalism and barbaric manner. According to the Swedish interpreters, Nazism had its roots in distinctively German traditions – militarism, Prussianism, Romanticism.
Against the background of the Swedish understanding of National Socialism, three major chapters are devoted to the conclusions that were drawn from the Nazi experience. In a biographical chapter, a process of stigmatization is uncovered, where those associated with National Socialism were branded. In this process, certain traditions were suppressed and other ideas gained ground. Drawing from two fundamental, normative fields of modern societies, the education and the law, I examine this historical dynamics further by relating the Nazi experience to the emergence of “the ideas of 1945”, a label for the ideological foundations of the early postwar era. Moreover, the Nazi experience had a profound impact on Swedish attitudes towards German culture and traditions. It contained a strong appeal to the Swedes: stay away from the German sphere.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates how historical experiences influence human minds and affect the attitudes of society. From the interplay between the dark experiences of the past and the bright dreams of the future, postwar Sweden emerged.
Keywords: Nazism, experience, Reinhart Koselleck, conceptual history, the Second World War, the postwar era, Thomas Mann, German culture, stigma, cultural radicalism, natural law, generation
This book discusses the theories, methods and perspectives of the scholarly biography. The point of departure is the continuously growing interest in biography as a genre over the last decade in history, literature and other fields of the humanities.
In the first section of the anthology, “The Biographical Genre”, three articles highlight general tendencies and problems in biography writing. Adopting a historical perspective, the contributors discuss the relationship between various cultural and intellectual currencies and changing practices and standings in the writing of biographies.
“The Biographical Gaze”, the second part of the book, is directed towards opportunities for and challenges to biography within four academic fields: history, literature, the history of ideas and archaeology. By focusing on the traditions of particular disciplines, the authors draw attention both to peculiarities in their own scholarly field and more wide-ranging issues in the writing of biographies.
The third part, “The Biographical Dialogue”, is dedicated to the interaction between the biographer and the object of the biography. The shifting feelings of frustration and pleasure in the encounter with another human being are a frequent theme in these articles, and also discussed are the need for ethical reflection, critical distance and power of insight.
The fourth and final section presents an overview of important biographies and scholarly biographical research.
The contributors to the anthology include: Yvonne Hirdman, Alf W Johansson, Kristina Josefson, Martin Kylhammar, Lisbeth Larsson, Ingmar Lundkvist, Birgitte Possing, Henrik Rosengren, Johan Svedjedal, Eva Helen Ulvros, Christina Carlsson Wetterberg and Johan Östling.
Articles and Chapters by Johan Östling
The book presents the history of knowledge in all its rich diversity. The role of knowledge in public life is the focus of some chapters, while others concentrate on the importance of knowledge for individuals or local communities; some chart the realities of academic or systematic knowledge, others consider its existential or mundane dimensions. Taken together, they make a significant contribution to the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological advances in the field.
In "Circulation of Knowledge", a group of Nordic scholars explore a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to this new and exciting area of historical research. The question of knowledge in motion is central to their investigations, and especially how knowledge is transformed when it circulates between different societal arenas, literary genres, or forms of media.
Reflecting on twelve empirical studies, from sixteenth century cartography to sexology in the 1970s, the authors make a significant contribution to the growing international research on the history of knowledge.
The authors draw on the latest research in order to bring the educational and research policies of our day into perspective. At a time when the university is undergoing deep-seated transformations worldwide, they address the question how we should relate to the ideas associated with Humboldt’s name. What is his relevance to the twenty-first century?
Contributors are: Mitchell Ash, Pieter Dhondt, Ylva Hasselberg, Marja Jalava, Peter Josephson, Thomas Karlsohn, Claudia Lindén, Johan Östling, Sharon Rider, Hans Ruin, Susan Wright.
The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive postwar characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context.
Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history.
»Overall, Nordic Narratives of the Second World War is an important book, as an introduction to the Nordic countries’ historical stories about World War II. The book invites to a stimulating discussion.« H-Soz-u-Kult
»Nordic Narratives of the Second World War is a solid starting point for those outside the Scandinavian field looking to include Nordic perspectives on World War II, national narratives, and memory construction. The book raises larger questions about nation-states and twentieth-century national myths, and individual essays to varying degrees seek to push historical interpretations to larger questions of the role of national histories in current historical writing. Given the ongoing concerns about the threat to professional historians’ authority in an age when access to archival and historical texts is expanding with digitization and Internet access, readers may find the underlying question of who has the authority to present and interpret the past as another way to engage with this text.« H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online
The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to analyze the repercussions of the Nazi experience for postwar society.
Inspired by the tradition of conceptual history and Reinhart Koselleck’s hermeneutical approach, I begin by elucidating the content of the Nazi experience in the aftermath of the war. The study shows that an unambiguous, homogenous interpretation of Nazism dominated. National Socialism was regarded as a nationalistic phenomenon, characterized by irrationalism and barbaric manner. According to the Swedish interpreters, Nazism had its roots in distinctively German traditions – militarism, Prussianism, Romanticism.
Against the background of the Swedish understanding of National Socialism, three major chapters are devoted to the conclusions that were drawn from the Nazi experience. In a biographical chapter, a process of stigmatization is uncovered, where those associated with National Socialism were branded. In this process, certain traditions were suppressed and other ideas gained ground. Drawing from two fundamental, normative fields of modern societies, the education and the law, I examine this historical dynamics further by relating the Nazi experience to the emergence of “the ideas of 1945”, a label for the ideological foundations of the early postwar era. Moreover, the Nazi experience had a profound impact on Swedish attitudes towards German culture and traditions. It contained a strong appeal to the Swedes: stay away from the German sphere.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates how historical experiences influence human minds and affect the attitudes of society. From the interplay between the dark experiences of the past and the bright dreams of the future, postwar Sweden emerged.
Keywords: Nazism, experience, Reinhart Koselleck, conceptual history, the Second World War, the postwar era, Thomas Mann, German culture, stigma, cultural radicalism, natural law, generation
This book discusses the theories, methods and perspectives of the scholarly biography. The point of departure is the continuously growing interest in biography as a genre over the last decade in history, literature and other fields of the humanities.
In the first section of the anthology, “The Biographical Genre”, three articles highlight general tendencies and problems in biography writing. Adopting a historical perspective, the contributors discuss the relationship between various cultural and intellectual currencies and changing practices and standings in the writing of biographies.
“The Biographical Gaze”, the second part of the book, is directed towards opportunities for and challenges to biography within four academic fields: history, literature, the history of ideas and archaeology. By focusing on the traditions of particular disciplines, the authors draw attention both to peculiarities in their own scholarly field and more wide-ranging issues in the writing of biographies.
The third part, “The Biographical Dialogue”, is dedicated to the interaction between the biographer and the object of the biography. The shifting feelings of frustration and pleasure in the encounter with another human being are a frequent theme in these articles, and also discussed are the need for ethical reflection, critical distance and power of insight.
The fourth and final section presents an overview of important biographies and scholarly biographical research.
The contributors to the anthology include: Yvonne Hirdman, Alf W Johansson, Kristina Josefson, Martin Kylhammar, Lisbeth Larsson, Ingmar Lundkvist, Birgitte Possing, Henrik Rosengren, Johan Svedjedal, Eva Helen Ulvros, Christina Carlsson Wetterberg and Johan Östling.
The Swedish case stands out in various ways also in the Nordic framework. In contrast to the neighbours, the Swedes had not been directly affected by the war through occupation, bombardment or devastation. The year 1945 did not mark an absolute turning point in Swedish history, and Sweden remained neutral in the Cold War.
Moreover, since the early 1990s, the controversies seem to have been more passionate and the assault on the dominating post-war narrative more fundamental than in the other Nordic countries. This text explores this historiographical transformation in Sweden during the last two decades.
Im Nachhinein können wir feststellen, dass es ihm misslang. In vielerlei Hinsicht war der Fall Wittenberg eine persönliche Tragödie, ein schmerzhafter Rückschlag für einen einzelnen Menschen, dabei steht jedoch im Blickfeld, wie er Stimmungen in der intellektuellen und akademischen Kultur widerspiegelte. In einem größeren Zusammenhang beleuchtet der Fall Wittenberg die schwedische Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Erfahrungen in den Nachwehen des Zweiten Weltkriegs.
Récits suédois de la deuxième guerre mondiale: une perspective européenne
Cet article présente les récits dominants de l'après deuxième guerre mondiale en Europe. A partir du champ croissant de la mémoire et de l'histoire, un modèle général dans les interprétations européennes des années de guerre émerge: tandis que les expériences et les souvenirs de la guerre sont racontés dans un cadre patriotique jusqu'aux années 1980, une modification significative vers une interprétation universaliste est apparue dans les deux dernières décennies. Même si les expériences de la Suède pendant la guerre diffèrent fortement de ceux de la plupart des pays similaires, il est avancé que la transformation des récits suédois de la deuxième guerre mondiale reflète des tendances européennes générales après 1945. Une attention particulière est portée à l'émergence d'une compréhension universaliste de la guerre dans les années 1990 et à comment ce changement a interagi avec une critique plus générale des fondations de la société suédoise de l'après-guerre.
Schwedische Erzählungen vom Zweiten Weltkrieg: Eine europäische Perspektive
Dieser Artikel ordnet die Nachkriegsnarrative, die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Schweden entstanden, in einen europäischen Zusammenhang ein. Indem der Artikel vom expandierenden Feld der Erinnerung und der Geschichte ausgeht, entwickelt er ein Modell europäischer Interpretationen der Kriegsjahre. Während die Erfahrungen und Erinnerungen des Krieges bis in die 1980er Jahre im Rahmen eines patriotischen Narrativs erzählt wurden, fand in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten eine signifikante Verschiebung zu einer universalistischen Interpretation statt. Obschon Schwedens Kriegserfahrungen grundverschieden von den meisten ähnlichen Ländern waren, spiegelte der Wandel schwedischer Nachkriegsnarrative diese allgemeinen europäischen Tendenzen nach 1945 wider. Die Entstehung eines universalistischen Verständnis des Zweiten Weltkriegs in den 1990er Jahren und der Zusammenhang dieser Entwicklung mit einer fundamentalen Kritik der Grundlagen der schwedischen Nachkriegsgesellschaft findet dabei besondere Beachtung.
om humanioras framtid. men man kan också märka en ny offensiv anda och vilja att ta sig an problemen. Allt fler inser att humanister själva måste definiera vad humaniora kan bidra med.
under senare delen av 1900-talet. En ny avhandling undersöker
hur föreställningen om ett sammanhållet kulturområde föddes.
Globalhistoria har på senare år blivit en av historievetenskapens viktigaste grenar. I dagens globaliserade värld låter sig historien inte längre lika självklart som förr begränsas till behandlingen av enskilda länders historia. I stället har intresset för gränsöverskridande processer och globala sammanflätningar ökat kraftigt.
Men hur skriver man globalhistoria och vad omfattar ämnet? Handlar det om hela vår planets historia? Om den mänskliga artens? Om ”Big History”, tiden sedan the big bang? Eller handlar det snarare om ett visst perspektiv som kan anläggas även i en undersökning av en liten bys historia? Vilka frågor kan bäst besvaras utifrån ett globalt perspektiv och vilka samband hamnar då i förgrunden?
Sebastian Conrad, en av Tysklands mest välkända globalhistoriker, ger i den här boken en åskådlig introduktion till forskningsfältet med hjälp av konkreta exempel och presenterar centrala frågor och teorier samt viktiga teman och motsättningar. Han visar samtidigt att globala synsätt inte är något radikalt nytt – och inte heller något som har uppnåtts enbart tack vare västerländska tänkare.
Bokens svenska förord är skrivet av Johan Östling.