Critical Social Geography: Johanngeorgenstadt as a Vanishing City – micro-perspectives on the histories and geographies of loss

Duration: 2023-2026

Project management: Prof. Dr. Simon Runkel, PD Dr. Manuel Schramm (TU Chemnitz)

Funding: Gerda Henkel Foundation (Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung)

Research focus: Geographies of the life course

Content

Between 1950 and 1970, several places in Saxony and Thuringia disappeared from the map. They had to make way for the uranium mining operations of the Soviet-German joint stock company Wismut. The small Saxon town of Johanngeorgenstadt was particularly affected. The research project deals with the elaboration of a historical-geographical micrology of the loss using the example of Johanngeorgenstadt. The aim of the social-geographical sub-project is to examine the current geographies of loss in Johanngeorgenstadt with regard to biographies and life-world experiences. The question arises to what extent the microgeographies of loss paradoxically persist as negative spatialisations in the experience of the material environments of the town. The praxeological dimensions of loss ("doing loss") are traced as concrete practices of dealing with loss (remembering, mourning, reconstructing, repressing) in individual biographies and collective atmospheres.