Persona ficta? Social Figures, Property Subjects, and Investment Practices in the History of Financial Markets, 1950-1990 (B09*)

• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424638267

This project examines the changing treatment of financialized property via the example of popular investment practices. The illustration, negotiation, and intensification of economic, legal, and political conflicts by means of the construction of medially effective social figures is the focus. In this way, processes of financialization, which are regarded as key drivers of a paradigmatic social upheaval “after the boom,” can be historicized and their significance for the transformation of property regimes in the 20th century determined. The project is based on the assumption that this history is located in a complex field of tension between popularization and depersonalization, visualization, and invisibilization of financial capitalist property.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios
• Subproject of: TRR 294: Strukturwandel des Eigentums
• Applicant Institution: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Stefanie Anna Middendorf, since 1/2025