The Ruhr region was once Germany’s industrial heartland par excellence. Then, as a result of the coal and steel crises, came what is euphemistically described as “structural change.” Today, the Ruhr region promotes itself as a “region of industrial culture.” In this process, old identities and the region’s former image have been called into question. How exactly are structural change, identity change, and image change interrelated in the Ruhr region? How are not only industrial facilities changing, but also everyday life, self-perception, and public image? The research project “Industrial Culture, Image, and Identity” explored these questions using the Zollverein Coal Mine—Europe’s largest coal mine, now a World Heritage Site—as a case study to examine perceptions of its transformation. Approximately 150 interviews conducted in 2003–2004 and 2007 with residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, former employees of the Zollverein coal mine and coking plant, visitors to the World Heritage Site, former migrant workers who stayed even after the jobs disappeared, visionary new users of the Zollverein site, local politicians, and business owners form the basis of the study. Their opinions, attitudes, wishes, hopes, and fears reflect the shift in the mindsets of the residents of a region undergoing structural change.

History has become an integral part of contemporary popular culture. Alongside long-established analog media, more and more digital formats have emerged since the 1980s, presenting historical material to an increasingly diverse audience. Video games have now become one of the most popular of these “new” media through which popular history is explored. They give people the feeling of being able to immerse themselves in a world that promises to reflect past realities and bring them to life anew. The workshop “When Opposing Sides Throw ‘Plague-Infected Cows’ at Each Other Again,” or: Video Games – History – Science, held in December 2008, offered German-speaking historical scholars their first forum to discuss the possibilities that this medium might offer historical scholarship—a medium whose producers all too often advertise that players can “experience history” or even change it. In the publication resulting from the conference, released in October 2010—a second, updated edition appeared in October 2012 —featuring contributions on numerous historical periods, places, and topics, the authors demonstrate not only the diversity of historical popularization in video games but also the insights that their documentation, classification, and interpretation offer to the field of history. The research project, comprising the workshop and the publication, also marked the beginning of the development of a distinct research focus within the department dedicated to the study of the popularization of history using digital games as a case study.

In recent years, Web 2.0 applications have become established at a breathtaking pace. Websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Instagram invite users to share their own content. A significant portion of this content has historical references or is directly devoted to historical topics. Here, history is—as a rule—presented by laypeople for laypeople; history is popularized. For historians, this raises the question of what impact this form of presentation might have on the general public’s perception of history and what consequences this might have for scholarly work in the field. At the same time, a discussion has arisen regarding whether and to what extent Web 2.0 applications represent—or could represent—an important innovation for academic teaching and research practices within the discipline. Both aspects were addressed at a conference held at the University of Siegen in October 2009, which examined the functional significance of “Web 2.0” for teaching and research processes in historical studies. Existing experiences with social media were presented and subsequently examined to determine whether and to what extent these new technical platforms could or must be accompanied by a transformed culture of teaching and research in history—which would signify a paradigm shift in historical research. The results of the conference were published online in 2010 as the “Siegen Theses.” They served as a starting point for the chair’s further research into popular history in online media.

The Internet is generally seen as a new public sphere with few barriers to access, but it can also become an isolated virtual space—or even a metaphorical bunker: The project “Welcome to My Bunker”—Vietnam War Experiences in the Digital World —examined the significance of the internet for the remembrance and assessment of what is arguably the most controversial war involving the United States, from the perspective of its participants. The media coverage of the Vietnam War went through several phases: While it could be followed on television with unprecedented intensity in the 1960s and 1970s, the World Wide Web also shaped how people engaged with experiences of the war in the late 20th century. An analysis of over 650 case studies from the internet revealed that the interpretations of those who participated in the war were predominantly male-dominated and tended to marginalize certain groups involved in the war, such as women, Vietnamese, and ethnic minorities in the U.S.: The veterans’ narratives amounted to a self-centered isolation, a veritable retreat into a (now virtual) bunker. Using a combination of approaches and methods from history, media studies, and communication studies, the project explains why the internet is becoming increasingly important for veterans in coming to terms with past wars and conflicts.

In the 19th century, history took on an entirely new meaning. The historical perspective became increasingly important for experiencing and interpreting the world—and this was true for a wider circle of people than ever before. History was perceived, received, and increasingly consumed, and thus integrated into people’s own lives. How did this play out in different countries? While modern historical scholarship was developing and becoming professionalized in Great Britain and the German-speaking world, a diverse market for popular printed materials on historical topics emerged at the same time. Illustrated popular magazines such as *The Penny Magazine*, *Über Land und Meer*, and *The Graphic*, which recognized and catered to readers’ desire for historical context and entertainment in a variety of ways, struck a chord with the spirit of the times. This popularization of history through the magazine market was characterized in many respects by transnational dynamics, interactions, and developments, which contradicts the long-prevailing scholarly view of a historical reception focused primarily on one’s own nation. Instead, illustrations, text translations, and formatting ideas circulated across national and cultural boundaries. Numerous actors corresponded and collaborated at various levels within a transnationally shaped space. Techniques of cultural translation and adaptation therefore play a key role in understanding European—and particularly British-German—historical culture. The project traces this phenomenon from a diachronic perspective, examines the changes and differentiations within this diverse medium, and explores the medium-specific logic underlying the transnational popularization of history.

The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s gave this era a tremendous boost as a topic of research. Since then, a wide range of aspects of those years have been and continue to be examined, including the very question of what the Cold War actually was and what defined it. Of course, the attempt to explain the phenomenon was already one of the things that preoccupied people at the time, even if the focus was on various threat scenarios and the fears they triggered—ranging from espionage and infiltration to nuclear catastrophe and the annihilation of one’s own country or even all life on the planet. Politics, the military, science, the media, and various forms of popular culture all participated in the contemporary discourse on the nature of the Cold War, and played a significant role in shaping how it was experienced and lived through during the decades of the 20th century that it spanned—if not actually creating the concept and, ultimately, even the phenomenon itself. The focus of this project is the role that video games—as a then-new branch of popular culture—played in the construction of the Cold War. To this end, it uses the methods of discourse analysis to examine approximately 150 games from the 1980s and 1990s, which are evaluated in exemplary case studies with regard to the prevailing patterns of interpretation during the period of their creation. This highlights video games as a popular-cultural medium of meaning-making that provided people with explanations and concrete representations of something difficult to grasp.

To base its rule on far more than just terror and propaganda, National Socialism made use of a wide range of elements, such as greater economic security, more opportunities for social advancement, and recreational activities and entertainment. Different groups in society had access to different opportunities for integration, allowing them to participate in and benefit from the Nazi regime, to welcome it in many ways, or simply to accept it. In many cases, ideology took a back seat to these various elements in order to create the appearance of continuity and to garner greater approval among the population as a whole. The fact that, after 1933, the brief chapter of German colonialism continued to be addressed in speeches—and above all in popular culture—is one of these seemingly traditional German elements, rather than specifically National Socialist ones. The theme of German overseas colonialism persisted after the loss of the colonies in 1918–19 in already established media and formats such as youth magazines, penny-paper series, and collectible advertising pictures, and even gained greater prominence in popular culture during the 1930s and early 1940s with a considerable number of documentaries and feature films. This project examines the tropes conveyed through various media to mobilize people in support of the regime, highlighting the potential of the colonial as the epitome of the exotic.

The fact that nations are a human-made construct for classifying both oneself and others into large social groups is hardly disputed in academic research today. Modern studies on the construction of the national in the present day therefore focus more on the transfer of historical conceptions of the nation from the 19th century into the present and the resulting influence of ideas dating back some 200 years on the modern worldview. This research project assumes that the “national,” as defined by Ernest Renan and Eric Hobsbawm, is based on a shared understanding of a common—national—memory and “invented traditions” within a community assumed to be national. As a result, traditional historical notions of a highly popularized and staged history become the central pillars of the national. The project explores this phenomenon using the example of popular digital games from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Games present not only narratives and images but also the structures of historical constructions of nationality, which are reflected in the game mechanics of process-oriented games. The project examines both aspects to investigate the extent to which traditional 19th-century notions of the nation remain anchored even in contemporary popular culture and thus continue to shape the ideas of our society.

Since the massive social, economic, and cultural transformations of the modern era, anything that appeals to travelers’ need to wander into a sense of distance—whatever form that may take—can become a tourist destination. Since the 19th century, a great curiosity about history has also developed and spread, with the allure of the past taking center stage. As with tourism, this encounter with history revolves around the extraordinary and the experience of the foreign and the distant, in which the past appears like a country that can be traveled through and explored. It is therefore hardly surprising that both phenomena have converged—and continue to do so—today as they did in the past, giving rise to historical tourism as a distinctive phenomenon and a unique experience (or experience offering). But what makes history so attractive as a tourist destination? The project posits that the tourist’s view of history on site has a specific character that is distinctly different from other forms of popularizing history and the ways in which it is received. From the “tourist gaze”—which transforms the everyday into the extraordinary and thus makes it consumable—and the “historical gaze” —the willingness to classify what is perceived as historical—something new has emerged in the modern era. This approach aims to address the research gap regarding a model for analyzing historical tourism.

As part of Subproject B05 within the SFB 1472 “Transformations of the Popular,” this research project examines the emergence of global commonalities and regional differences in the popularization of historical events through the popular medium of digital games. It is divided into two parts: First, based on representative market data from the gaming industry, the most popular titles with historical settings for the German market are identified. The games are then divided into categories that distinguish them by game format. Within each category, the most popular titles are selected. This approach takes into account varying degrees of popularization and different communities, thereby highlighting potentially diverse conceptions of history and a wide range of ways in which history is popularized. Second, the study examines which historical forms of political order—and their manifestation or disruption through (warlike) violence—are popularized. The case study is based on the previously identified most popular titles from the categories of political simulations and strategy games, which focus on statecraft and warfare. It analyzes elements of statecraft and the indirect control of subjects in relation to the discrepancy between game-relevant simplifications and the implementation of complex historical structures. In this context, aspects of diplomatic actions in historical contexts play just as significant a role as the construction of large social groups in the past and present.

This research project constitutes another area of focus for Subproject B05 within the SFB 1472 “Transformations of the Popular.” It examines the most popular games with regard to their use of various historical images and topoi. These are then related to factors inherent to the games themselves—such as visual aesthetics, game mechanics, origin, budget, and target audience—as well as to adaptations of the same material in other media, such as novels or films, and to contemporary debates about the chosen setting. At the same time, feedback from the German-speaking community—published primarily on social media—is analyzed to draw conclusions about the reception of specific historical constructions and their discussion in the public sphere. From the expected results, further questions can be derived, such as why certain game genres and historical themes are more popular in Germany than in other countries, what significance is attributed to themes considered historically problematic in today’s society, which themes are no longer as easy to convey in the present as they appear in games, and how players engage with them in public debates. Thus, within the tension between strategies for popularizing history and forms of appropriation in its reception, this research explores the relationship between historical mainstreaming and historical diversification.

This research project constitutes a third area of work within Subproject B05 of the SFB 1472 “Transformations of the Popular.” It aims to document the individual reception of history in video games based on oral history interviews, thereby revealing the local, culturally sensitive, and situation-specific engagement with history through these games, as well as the specific patterns of appropriation of the history popularized in digital games. The interviewees come from clearly defined communities that have formed around the most popular games with historical settings. The interviews focus on the assimilation, integration, and transfer of the historical knowledge presented in these games. Which digital games have had the most lasting impact on players? Which elements do they perceive as historical, and which do they not? Does the medium promote the purported authenticity of history within the game, or does it have a negative effect on it (for example, due to the contingency of gameplay or alternative historical trajectories)? What role does prior historical knowledge play in this process? What adjustments to conceptions of history—in the sense of “historical mainstreaming”—can be identified regarding individual topics or entire eras? Or is popular history received more in the sense of “historical diversification,” with individual interpretations?