Friederike Bruehoefener
Ph.D. Student
fbruehoe@email.unc.edu
Major Field: Modern European and Gender history
Other Fields:
Advisor: Karen Hagemann
Bio: Friederike Bruehoefener is a Doctoral Student
in the Department of History at UNC. She finished her BA at the
University Bielefeld, Germany in 2005. After spending a year as an
exchange student in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins
University, she finished her MA at the University Bielefeld in 2007.
The title of the MA thesis was “‘Angst vor dem Atom’ – Emotionalität
und Gesellschaft im Spiegel bundesdeutscher Zeitungen zwischen 1976 und
1986“.
Research Interests: Her current research focuses on
the West German military and its soldiers. Her dissertation “Men,
Military and Society – Concepts of Military Masculinity between 1949
and 1989” is going to analyze notions of military masculinity as well
as their change within the West German discourse concerning the
function and self-image of the Bundeswehr. Between 1949 and 1989 the
constitution of the military and its soldiers were repeatedly on the
public agenda. Military personnel, members of the political parties and
the German Bundestag as well as various actors of civil society such as
youth groups, unions, the press, the Churches and charity organizations
repeatedly disputed if and how military standards could be brought into
alliance with the values of the newly established democratic Federal
Republic. Thus, the dissertation first asks which images of military
masculinity did political and military actors as well as circles of
civil society propagate and to what extent did these images change over
time? Second, how did numerous opponents negotiate the function and
self-conception of the Bundeswehr as well as its relation to society
and politics? Consequently, in a third step, the doctoral thesis
investigates the ways in which the different actors and counterparties
tried to bring their ideas and opinions into the discussion.