• Alexander Petrusek
  • Alexander Petrusek
  • Current Research: Modern European History, Global and Compartive

Alexander Petrusek is a PhD candidate specializing in modern Germany and international socialism. His dissertation project, “Real Existing Ideals: East Germany and the Socialist Imaginary, 1946-1996,” examines East German political activists, from individuals within the ruling Socialist Unity Party leadership to civil organizations against party rule, and the contributions of their activism to modern German and European political history. “Real Existing Ideals” uses the concept of the imaginary - the systemic, normative ideals of a society that shape its reality - to follow the specifically socialist imaginary of East Germany, from which these activists formed and reformed their social reality.