Research Fellowship for Manuel Mork

Manuel Mork spent six months – from May until end of October 2021 – in France with a research scholarship of the German Historical Institute (DHI) Paris, a cooperation partner of the INFOCOM-project. The period was primarily spent consulting the large variety of sources concerning the (informal) public under occupation in France (1940-44) that are available in French archives. The archives in Paris alone – primarily the Archives nationales, but also smaller institutions like the Archives de Paris, the archive of the Institut Historique du Temps Présent or the archive of the archdiocese of Paris – offered many sources to be examined: opinion reports, police files, the documentation of court cases, files of the German propaganda division in occupied France, but also unpublished diaries and memoirs.

Simultaneously, the six-month stay in France offered the possibility of discussing the dissertation with historians in France. In this regard, the institutional connection with the DHI in Paris and the Université de Paris-Saclay – where Manuel Mork is enrolled as a Cotutelle-student – were a special advantage. Three trips to the Norman city of Caen, where the Second World War plays a special role due to the Allied landing of June 1944, also enabled talks with French historians specialised in the period of occupation and research in a series of local archives – the Service historique de la defense, Archives départementals, Archive de Caen.

Without the generous support of the DHI none of this would have been possible. Manuel Mork hopes to return to France next year for further research.