Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Post-Doc, Department I; CDLI

Thesis Title: Šulgi of Ur: Life, Deeds, Ideology and Legacy of a Mesopotamian Ruler As Reflected Primarily in Literary Texts

About

Interested in ideologies of kingship in 3rd and early 2nd millennium Mesopotamia (particularly the divine kingship); Sumerian royal literature (particularly the Šulgi corpus); Mesopotamian religion (particularly 3rd millennium); 1st millennium literary, religious and scholarly bilinguals (particularly incantations).

The key findings of my dissertation have already been (or soon will be) published in separate papers (in journals as well as conference proceedings).

In the next 2 years (starting July 2012) I shall work mainly on 1st millennium material, as I will participate in the project "Bilinguals in Late Mesopotamian Scholarship" (BLMS), and focus on incantations.

Apart from Assyriological research, I also work on topics in the history of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. I am particularly interested in the "personality cult" of Klement Gottwald, the first communist president of Czechoslovakia (1948-1953). Despite the wealth of sources available, there are virtually no studies devoted to this topic, although the cult of leaders in communist dictatorships has recently been the subject of a number of illuminating papers (e.g. in B. Apor et al., ed.: "The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships. Stalin and the Eastern Bloc", Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

I am currently preparing a monograph on the mausoleum of Kl. Gottwald (working title: "The Technology of a Stalinist Leader's Immortalization. Genesis, Operation, Symbolism and Decline of the Gottwald Mausoleum in Prague"), based on extensive research in Czech archives. This book will cover the history of the mausoleum (1953-1962) - poorly researched and often played down in contemporary Czech historiography as a "marginal", "tragicomical" and "embarrassing" episode - in the broader context of the ups and downs of Czechoslovak de-Stalinization.

My interests in this area also include:
- repression of monastic orders (particularly military orders) in Stalinist Czechoslovakia
- repression of modern Christian denominations (and new religious movements) in Stalinist Czechoslovakia
- Antisemitism in Czechoslovakia of the early 1950s (culminating during the Slánský trial in November 1952)

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