Frevert, Ute

Can the meaning of feelings be studied scientifically, and that in retrospect, in past decades and centuries? Yes, of course, says historian Ute Frevert. In Berlin, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research is developing a new area of research. Her thesis: Feelings are (also) a man’s business.

Ute Frevert has always been fast. She had her school-leaving certificate in the pocket with sixteen, her doctoral dissertation with honours at twenty-eight. Her habilitation on the history of duelling made the expert in social and gender history known beyond the boundaries of her subject – and saw to it that in 1998, at the age of 44, she was awarded the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the richest endowed German scientific award. „Ute Frevert’s frequently translated books and individual studies are distinguished by the surmounting of the dichotomy between women’s and men’s history by means of a candid look at the social history of both sexes” – thus the encomium accompanying the award. It continues: The historian is „one of those who has introduced” gender studies, the scientific study of gender questions, in Germany – notable praise in a research landscape still dominated by men.

Science and married life

„I’m interested in connections between past and present, the strangeness of the familiar”, says Frevert about her motivation. It has got her about in the world. Following her doctoral dissertation and habilitation in Bielefeld, she went to the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, accepted a professorship for modern history at the Free University of Berlin, switched then to professorships at Constance and Bielefeld, before finally accepting an appointment at renowned Yale University. It is a career of which other researchers can only dream – and during which Frevert also found time for three children and an active family life. „My family is the adjuster, my second mainstay”, she once said, and then immediately added a declaration of love for her husband. After all the years she still finds him „intelligently selected”, and that was no accident: „After all, in the question of whom one should marry, one is not disinterested!”

The politics of emotions

In 2008, the historian was lured back to Berlin from the U.S.A. Frevert is now one of four directors of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research, which became known particularly through the PISA comparative study of schools. At the same time, she is a colourful exception. Educational research has hitherto hardly been her métier. And many people have difficulty understanding at first what her research area, „History of Feelings”, has to do with education.

„Displaying and talking about feelings in public isn’t new”, says Frevert about her approach. „But now this may be found not only in the columns of notorious scandal sheets: feelings are also closely discussed by the serious press”. She detects a regular „feelings boom”. Examples are Hillary Clinton’s tears in the presidential primary and the infectious enthusiasm of the Obama fans. For Frevert, such eruptions are the continuation of a long development: the „emotionalisation of public space” has been going on for a good hundred years. Propagandists of the most various stripes have repeatedly exploited this.

Feelings are a man’s business

According to a widespread opinion, feelings are almost exclusively the preserve of women. Frevert sees this differently. Looking at political history, it soon appeared that (male) mass politics has always been based on feelings – for instance, when it was a matter of national honour or disgrace, but also of fear of nuclear or climate catastrophe. „How far such emotional politics bears specifically national traits remains moot in the research”, says Frevert. Thus the alleged „anxiety of the Germans”, the particularly pronounced propensity of Germans to a fundamental posture of fear, would be a rewarding area of study.

Making the connection between the historical research on feelings and education, studying the significance of feelings as the bonding force of social groups and movements, and so taking „feelings as a capacity for acting” seriously, is the interesting task that Frevert is now pursuing in Berlin. In interviews with journalists she has described herself, somewhat coquettishly, as a „risky appointment”. But the Berlin educational researchers are convinced that they have fetched the right women on the Spree. Frevert’s work, says director colleague Ulman Lindenberger, is „an enormous enrichment” for the Institute: „It gives to the study of the interplay between individual lives and social institutions an historical depth that was hitherto lacking”.

That sounds as if we have something to look forward to from Ute Frevert.

Book tips: Ute Frevert: Geschichte bewegt. Über Spurensucher und die Macht der Vergangenheit. Edition Körber-Stiftung 2006, ISBN 10-3896840649 Ute Frevert: Men of honour: A social and cultural history of the duel. Oxford: Polity Press, 1995 (Ehrenmänner. Das Duell in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag / DTV, 1995, ISBN 10-3423046465)