Eine Welt/One World: Arno Peters, R. Buckminster Fuller and the Media History of Globalism, 1940s to 1990s

• Applicant: Dr. David Kuchenbuch
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 267865025

The research project aims at reconstructing the political semantics of "One Worldism" in the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany in the second half of the 20th century. Assuming the perspective of media history, it focuses on two individuals who specialized in the mediatisation of global interdependencies: German historian and cartographer Arno Peters (1916-2002) and American inventor R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). Peters and Fuller designed bestselling world maps and world-history charts as well as role-playing exercises - media that conveyed how individuals in the "West" were entangled in global structures. On the basis of extensive archival research, the project will trace the knowledge on which these representations of the global were based. Further, their resonance within both American and German political culture will be fathomed. The project attempts to historicize hopes placed in the capability of media to evoke feelings of personal responsibility towards planet Earth and mankind, thus broadening our understanding of "subjectivation" in the 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants