Dr Philipp Müller

Honorary Lecturer in Modern German History

I work on the social and cultural history of 19th- and 20th-century Germany. I grew up in South-West Germany. I studied German History and German Literature at the Ruhr Universität Bochum. Subsequently, I began my doctoral studies at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, where Regina Schulte inspired me to examine the inextricable relationship between Imperial Berlin, becoming a metropolis in this time, and its newspapers. After receiving my Ph.D. at the EUI in 2004 I had a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Research College "Media of History - History of Media" at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Universität Erfurt where I worked with the Arbeitsstelle für Historische Anthropologie, headed by Alf Lüdtke, and taught MA courses and advised MA and Ph.D. students. Since October 2006 I have held the position of the Francis Carsten DAAD Lectureship at the History Department of SSEES at University College London and teach modern German History. In September 2008 I was appointed Director of the Centre for the Study of Central Europe.

Research Interests
In general my interest covers 19th and 20th-century Germany. I specialised in the History of Crime and the Police, the History of the Media, Urban History and the History of Sciences and Academia. I have a special interest in Historical Anthropology, Microhistory and the History of the Everyday.

My book, Auf der Suche nach dem Täter. Die Dramatisierung von Verbrechen im Berlin des Kaiserreichs ('Searching for the Perpetrator. The Dramatisation of Crime in Berlin, 1870-1914'), published by Campus in the series Historische Studien (Vol. 40), explores the connection of media and crime. I examine the impact of new modern media such as dailies, picture postcards and cinema on the public negotiation of criminal affairs in the metropolis (e.g. the Captain of Cöpenick Case in 1906), paying particular attention to the ways the criminal investigation department, various media and ordinary city dwellers contributed to the urban crime drama in Imperial Berlin. In 2006 the book was awarded the prize "Das Historische Buch 2006". Furthermore, I published articles in the journal Crime, History and Societies on related issues such as the limited efficiency of Prussian police supervision (2010), and the attempts of the police to combat publicly urban crime in Imperial Berlin, e.g. the Berlin Jack the Ripper Case (2011).

My current research project focuses on the political and cultural conditions of doing history faced by historians in the 19th century. My essay, 'Making History' ('Geschichte machen. Überlegungen zu lokal-spezifischen Praktiken in der Geschichtswissenschaft und ihrer epistemischen Bedeutung im 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Literaturbericht', Historische Anthropologie 12 (2004) 3, reviewed by Barbara von Reichnitz in Neue Zürcher Zeitung in June 2005), combines a set of approaches as developed in the history of sciences, history of everyday life, gender and media studies in order to ask new questions about the past of the historical discipline. Closely related to my new project is the special issue 'About the Archive' ('Vom Archiv. Erfassen, Ordnen, Zeigen', Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 17 (2007) 2) which focuses on the archive and its power in political and academic terms. Furthermore, I have recently published an article in Storia della Storiografia, focusing on the archival policy in the early 19th century and Leopold Ranke's lobbying in the anteroom of the state's sphere of secrecy (2009).

Recent Publications

Reviews

Heinz Müller-Dietz in Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte 125 (2008)

Frank Bösch (Universität Gießen) in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte online

Patrick Merziger (FU Berlin) in Historisch Politische Buch (2006)

Jörg Requate (Universität Bielefeld) in Journal Werkstattgeschichte 43 (2006)

Hubertus Bueschel (ZZF Potsdam) in Historische Anthropologie 15 (2007)

Links

Centre for the Study of Central Europe
http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/csce.htm

CSCE Seminar Series
http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/cscesems.htm

DAAD
http://www.daad.de

German Historical Insitute London
http://www.ghil.ac.uk/