Hansjakob Ziemer
Senior Research Scholar, Head of Research Communication and Management
Dr.
Room 254
Hansjakob Ziemer is a Senior Research Scholar and Head of Research Communication and Management. His research focuses on how cultural, spatial and knowledge practices constructed imagined communities and influenced boundary-drawing between disciplines and social groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. He studies practices such as musical listening and journalistic writing in the context of societal venues such as the concert hall and the feuilleton, with attention to the history of community formation in Germany and Central Europe.
Hansjakob Ziemer’s publications attend to 1) cultural histories of musical listening, and 2) knowledge histories of journalistic practices, both as forms of communication and community-building. He has published on the role of music and the senses in society, histories of the concert hall, the institutionalization of disciplines of musicology, sociology and communication studies, the history of the feuilleton, the relationship of journalism to the creation of academic disciplinary boundaries, and on journalistic knowledge practices and identities. In his monograph “Die Moderne hören” (2008), he studied the role of music listening in communal venues such as the concert hall in constructing modern urban German culture, with a focus on the case of Frankfurt am Main.
He has been involved in several large-scale collaborative projects:
With Daniel Morat he edited the Handbuch Sound: Geschichte, Begriffe, Ansätze (Metzler, 2018), and with Christian Thorau he edited the Oxford Handbook on the History of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries (OUP, 2019). He co-directed a working group focused on the relationship of sound and language, resulting in a co-edited special issue in History of Humanities (2021, with Viktoria Tkaczyk and Julia Kursell).
He coordinated a working group on journalistic knowledge practices, sponsored by the German Historical Institute (Washington D.C.) and the MPI for the History of Science, and edited the resulting volume Journalists and Knowledge Practices: Histories of Observing the Everyday in the Newspaper Age (Routledge 2023).
He is currently working on two new projects: a monograph entitled “Knowing to Claim, Claiming to Know: Journalists and Epistemic communities in 20th century Europe,” and he co-directs an interdisciplinary project, funded by the DFG (2025-28), on "Music Seeing and Music Listening: Historical Reciprocities from the 17th to the 21st centuries" (with Anne Holzmüller / University of Marburg and Christian Thorau / University of Potsdam).
Hansjakob Ziemer earned his doctorate in Modern History in 2007 from Humboldt University. Before joining the MPIWG he was a Research Scholar at Dubnow-Institute for Jewish Culture and Life at the University of Leipzig.
In addition to his scholarly work, he heads the research communication and management team (RCM) at the MPIWG.
Current Projects
Completed Projects
Books
Selected Publications
Ziemer, Hansjakob (2023). “What it Means to Be a Journalist: Constructing the Journalistic Persona at the End of the Weimar Republic.” In Journalists and Knowledge Practices: Histories of Observing the Everyday in the Newspaper Age, ed. H. Ziemer, 91–117. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003111993-7.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob, ed. (2023). Journalists and Knowledge Practices: Histories of Observing the Everyday in the Newspaper Age. Routledge Studies in Modern History. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003111993.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2021). “Sound in the Papers: Musical Hermeneutics in the Age of the Feuilleton.” History of Humanities 6 (1): 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1086/713257.
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Kursell, Julia, Viktoria Tkaczyk, and Hansjakob Ziemer (2021). “Introduction: Language, Sound, and the Humanities.” History of Humanities 6 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1086/713254.
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Thorau, Christian and Hansjakob Ziemer (2020). “Die Kunst des Hörens in Bildern.” In 150 Jahre Dresdner Philharmonie 1870-2020, ed. A. Schloemann and C. Woldt, 12–38. Dresden: Dresdner Philharmonie. https://www.dresdnerphilharmonie.de/festschrift-150-jahre-dresdner-philharmonie/.
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Thorau, Christian and Hansjakob Ziemer, eds. (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190466961.001.0001.
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Thorau, Christian and Hansjakob Ziemer (2019). “The Art of Listening and Its Histories: An Introduction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. C. Thorau and H. Ziemer, 1–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190466961.013.1.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2019). “The Crisis of Listening in Interwar Germany.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. C. Thorau and H. Ziemer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190466961.013.13.
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Morat, Daniel and Hansjakob Ziemer, eds. (2018). Handbuch Sound: Geschichte — Begriffe — Ansätze. Stuttgart: Metzler.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2018). “Konzertsaal.” In Handbuch Sound: Geschichte — Begriffe — Ansätze, ed. D. Morat and H. Ziemer, 271–276. Stuttgart: Metzler.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2017). “Konzerthörer unter Beobachtung: Skizze für eine Geschichte journalistischer Hörertypologien zwischen 1870 und 1940.” In Wissensgeschichte des Hörens in der Moderne, ed. Netzwerk “Hör-Wissen im Wandel”, 183–206. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110523720-008.
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Morat, Daniel, Viktoria Tkaczyk, and Hansjakob Ziemer (2017). “Einleitung.” In Wissensgeschichte des Hörens in der Moderne, ed. Netzwerk “Hör-Wissen im Wandel”, 1–19. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110523720-001.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2014). “Der ethnologische Blick : Paul Bekker und das Feuilleton zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts.” In Kommunikationsräume des Europäischen - Jüdische Wissenskulturen jenseits des Nationalen, 113–129. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2014). “Listening on the home front : music and the production of social meaning in German concert halls during World War I.” In Sounds of modern history : auditory cultures in 19th- and 20th-century Europe, ed. D. Morat, 201–224. New York [u.a.]: Berghahn.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2013). “Klang der Gesellschaft : zur Soziologisierung des Klangs im Konzert, 1900-1933.” In Auditive Medienkulturen : Techniken des Hörens und Praktiken der Klanggestaltung, ed. A. Volmar and J. Schröter, 145–163. Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2017). “Opferstiere und Barbaren im Konzert: zu einer historischen Anthropologie des Musikhörens der 1920er Jahre.” In Geschichte und Gegenwart des musikalischen Hörens: Diskurse - Geschichte(n) - Poetiken, ed. K. Aringer, F. K. Praßl, P. Revers, and C. Utz, 257–274. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag.
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Ziemer, Hansjakob (2008). Die Moderne hören : das Konzert als urbanes Forum, 1890-1940. Campus Historische Studien ; 46. Frankfurt am Main [u.a.]: Campus-Verlag.
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Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
with Anne Holzmüller (Marburg) and Christian Thorau (Potsdam)
Study Group "Auditory History", Online Colloquium, International Musicological Society (IMS)
International Society for Intellectual History, Venice
Der Journalist als Produzent. Publizistische Autorschaft in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Workshop, Berlin/Halle
Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Washington D.C.
Vorlesung im Wintersemester 2021/2022: "Wissen und seine Ressourcen: Historische Reziprozitäten", 13.01.2022, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Technische Universität Berlin
Graduierten Kolleg "Kleine Formen", Panel Discussion, 04.03.2021, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Below the Line. The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures, Conference, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Portland, Oregon
Sounds of Language, Workshop, MPIWG