Prof. Dr. Martin Aust

At Bonn University, Martin Aust has continued his work on early modern Russia. The department of Eastern European and Russian History of Bonn University is currently working to establish a European forum on Premodern Russian History. Research topics include politics, society and religion in premodern Russia, varieties of dependency in the premodern Russian empire and comparative perspectives. In regard to politics and society, it is remarkable that it was not only peasants who were enslaved in premodern Russia. Russian nobles used to call themselves slaves of the Tsar in their correspondence with the ruler. Thus, premodern society in Russia displays multiple layers of dependency. It is still an open question as to how this multi-layered dependency played out in various regions of the expanding empire from the sixteenth into the eighteenth centuries.

3 books, 7 edited volumes, 36 scientific papers. 17 international lectures and presentations, 4 ongoing doctorate theses, 35 Magister, Master and Bachelor theses as supervisor/first reviewer.

Histories of Forced Labor. Poland and the Soviet Union under German Occupation, Polish and Soviet Forced Laborers in Germany, 1939–1945

Occupying Poland and the Soviet Union from 1939 and 1941 respectively, the Germans forced civilians to perform work on the spot. At first there were also attempts to attract Poles and Soviet citizens to migrate for work into the German Reich. However, the Germans soon abandoned that approch in favor of hunting civilians to deport them into forced labor in Germany. Millions of ordinary people from Poland and the Soviet Union were deported to Germany to perform forced labor in mining, industry and agriculture. The history of forced labor under German occupation or in the Reich is part and parcel of both Germany’s colonial exploitation of Eastern Europe and its war of annihilation in the East. This project reaches out to deliver a book on the history of forced labor under German guidance which will discuss the state oft he art of the field in four chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 will discuss edited and digitalized sources and the relevant literature on forced labor in Poland and the Soviet Union and on forced labor of Polish and Soviet citizens in Germany as well. In terms of methodology these chapters will be informed by discussions within Research Area D of the cluster which focuses on labor and spatiality. Chapters 3 will follow up on the recent public debate in Germany on the histories of colonialism and National Socialism. To which extent can National Socialism and Germany’s warfare be understood as a colonial project? How to establish differences and similarities between the two? And further: was colonialism a precursor which ultimately helped National Socialism come into being? Chapter 3 will address these issues through the lens of the history of forced labor. Finally, chapter 4 will explore the status of these cases of forced labor in contemporary memory cultures in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and most of all in Germany.

2008
Habilitation and Venia legendi in Eastern European and Russian History

1999–2002
Ph.D. in Eastern European and Russian History, Free University Berlin, Germany

1993–1998
M.A. in Modern History, Eastern and Southeastern European History and Political Science, University of Hanover and Free University Berlin, Germany

since 2015
Professor for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe and Russia, University of Bonn, Germany

2015 
Visiting Professor at the Department of History, University of Basel, Switzerland

2010–2015
Professor for Eastern and Russian History, University of Munich (LMU) and University of Regensburg, Germany

2003–2010
Research Associate at the Department of History, CAU Kiel, Germany

2002–2003
Research Associate at the Center for Comparative History of Europe, Berlin, Germany

since 2015
Research Associate

2012
Founding Member of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany

• German Research Foundation DFG-SNF research project "Imperial Subjects" (University of Munich (LMU) and University of Basel 2013–2016)
• DAAD Summer Schools (2012–2015)
• German Research Foundation (DFG) Heisenberg Fellowship (granted in 2010, declined due to a professorship at the University of Munich (LMU))
• conferences funded by the ZEIT Foundation (2005) and the Thyssen Foundation (2008)

Total sum of approximately € 0.5 million