Maren Francke

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Maren Francke
Maren
Francke
PhD Candidate

Am Neuen Markt 9d
14467 Potsdam
Raum 1.06

Telephone: 
0331/745101-19
Email: 
francke [at] zzf-potsdam.de
Website: 
https://zzf-potsdam.de/en/mitarbeiter/maren-francke

Since 04/2019
Research Associate/Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Contemporary History, Dissertation Project: ‘Hungarian University Colleges since Late Socialism’ within the network ‘Legacies of Communism? Post-Communist Europe from Stagnation to Reform and between Autocracy and Revolution’

02/2017–03/2019
Student Assistant at the Centre for Contemporary History, Department I: Communism and Society

12/2016–03/2019
Student Assistant at Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum

10/2015–03/2019
M.A. in Modern European History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

08/2014–06/2017
Student Assistant at Leistikowstraße Memorial Foundation, Potsdam

09/2013–07/2014
Erasmus visit at Károli Gáspár University Budapest

10/2012–10/2015
B.A. in History and German at Universität Potsdam

2011
Abitur (A-levels) in Hagen

1992
Born in Neubrandenburg

Research Project

A Liberal Project? Hungarian University Colleges Since Late Socialism

After student protests against the government, in 1970 a handful of Budapest students founded the first self-governing university college (szakkollégium) in Communist Hungary. In doing so they followed Hungarian educational traditions, but simultaneously modelled the colleges on British and French examples. Since then, the colleges have been characterized by student self-government and a largely autonomous status within the university administration. From the very beginning, however, they have also served the attempts to single out a new academic elite. Until today the colleges offer exclusively to highly talented students not only a range of classes and seminars, that go beyond the universities’ regular curriculum, but also affordable accommodation and a familial, even fraternity-like atmosphere. In addition, they have also supported professional networking with alumni since the 1970s, which contributed to their reputation as a training ground for a (counter-)elite.

In the socialist system, students at these colleges established a liberal project which sought to enable them and subsequent generations to explore how to act within a democratic system. In the 1980s, they thus became the source of discourse critical of society and of the regime, and an arena in which ​​tensions between democratization, modernization, and burgeoning nationalist currents appeared. In this process, the students may have considered themselves a counter-elite opposing the Communist party and its youth organisation. The regime, however, hoped for ideas to reform Communism and therefore was tolerant, if not supportive of the colleges.

The dissertation project aims to examine which historical legacies shape the university colleges as well as the discourses of their inhabitants and to explore how they can be located in the transformation from late socialism to post-communism in Hungary. Three thematic areas will receive particular attention: firstly, the familial community and resulting close-knit personal networks; secondly, the hybrid character combining Hungarian and international approaches to educating the elite; thirdly, the emergence of populist and “illiberal” discourse in an originally liberal environment. A closer analysis of student dissidence can thus provide us with new observations and conclusions about the political socialization of a generation that grew up under János Kádár’s relatively liberal and more consumerism-oriented regime. This may also shed light on the inconsistencies in Hungary’s development since the end of state socialism.