European Spaces of Violence in the Private Sphere: A History of Intimate Partner Violence and Femicides since 1900  

The project examines the history of violence against women in Europe in the long 20th century, starting at the turn of the 20th century. It begins at a time when the increasingly differentiated media landscape led to some crimes – especially sexual crimes –being scandalised and publicised in unprecedented ways and reaches all the way through to the present, ending with the 2011 Istanbul Convention, which marked a turning point in the international recognition and punishment of violence against women. The focus is on intimate partner violence/domestic violence and murders of (ex-)partners, which activists today refer to as »femicides«. How were different forms of violence perceived? How visible and invisible were they in different places and at different times? What mechanisms of concealment, rationalisation and scandalisation can be identified? And who were the various protagonists of public discourse? For a long time, widespread domestic violence against women was ignored; well into the 20th century, it was a widely accepted part of the domestic order. Only after the Second World War, when those affected and later experts began to address the issue publicly, did this view begin to change, The project focuses on a range of European countries. The aim is to write a Europe-wide history of gender-based violence. It analyses France, Germany, Romania and Poland in their respective territorial formations. The study adopts a comparative and entangled historical approach. On the one hand, the aim is to collect and analyse new material and, on the other, to synthesise previous research to provide a longue durée, comparative European overview. This research illuminates the complex interactions between private and public life and between social norms and legislative practice. Last but not least, it aims to inscribe this form of mass violence into a comparative European history of violence.