Élise Mazurié
PhD Student
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Graduiertenkolleg 2571
Milchstrasse 3
79098 Freiburg im Breisgau
CV
| Since November 2021 | PhD student and Research Associate at the DFG Graduate School 2571 Empires at the University of Freiburg in cotutelle with the EHESS under the joint supervision of Prof. Jörn Leonhard (Chair of Contemporary History) and Prof. Alessandro Stanziani (CRH) |
| 09/2020 - 10/2021 | Preparatory Year for PhD (A.P.D) EHESS Paris under the supervision of Prof. Alessandro Stanziani (CRH) |
| 11/2019-09/2020 | Second M.A. year at the EHESS Paris Heidelberg under the supervision of Prof. Nancy Green (CRH) |
| 10/2018 – 10/2019 | First M.A. year at the Karl-Ruprechts-University of Heidelberg under the supervision of Prof. Edgar Wolfrum (Chair of Contemporary History). |
| 09/2017 – 06/2018 | Exchange year at the European Studies Department of Trinity College |
| 09/2015 - 05/2017 | B.A. in Political Science, Sciences Po Paris, French-German European Campus |
Scholarships
| 2018-2019 | DAAD Grant (German Academic Exchange Service) Grant for students of all academic disciplines. Participation to three training seminars during the year in Paris, Bonn and Heidelberg |
| 2018-2019 | UFA-DFH Grant (French-German University) Complementary mobility scholarship |
PhD Project
Occupying Germany, representing France ? (Ex-Colonized soldiers in the French Army in the French Zone of Occupation (FZO) in Germany, 1945-mid sixties
This dissertation project deals with the Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian soldiers who were stationed in the French Occupation Zone in Germany from 1945 to 1955. Based on administrative, military as well as private archives from France, Germany as well as the home countries of those soldiers, it will be attempted to follow the experiences of those soldiers during their stationing period in Germany, through contextualising the latter within their broader personal life stories as well as within the contemporary histories of all the concerned countries, but also in the immediate contexts of the Cold War and the decolonisation processes. Interactions within the army with metropole and settler soldiers, as well as with the German local population, and mutual perceptions will be given particular attention. The issue regarding the impact of the stationing of those soldiers as representing France in occupied Germany on their identity, more particularly their political identity, and their relationship to citizenship as well as to the practices linked to it, will be central to this project.
From this perspective, it will also be analysed how the transposition of the relation between metropole and colony in a third occupied land potentially could have led to hierarchies’ reversals within the triangular relationship between colonized soldiers, the French Army and the German population, and what were the consequences of this transposition on each group.
Through the study of the German population’s reaction to the soldiers’ presence and to interactions, its relationship to its own colonial history as well as to the recent history of national socialism are graspable. Thus, a peculiar attention will be given to historical comparisons, notably with the precedence case of the Rhineland occupation after World War One.
Memberships
- GROC (Groupe de Recherches sur les Ordres Coloniaux) since 2022
- CIERA (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches sur l’Allemagne) since 2020
- OSRN (Occupation Studies Research Network, Maastricht University) since 2021
Presentations
- “Reutlingen [had] on the whole nothing to complain about” Expectations, Perceptions, and Memories surrounding the Presence of French Soldiers of Colonial Origin in local Garrisons in southwestern Germany (1945–1960’s) Workshop « Besetzter Alltag : Neue Perspektiven auf die westalliierte Besatzungen (1945-1955) », EHESS, Paris (19.-20.01.2023)
- « Ricochets de la mémoire. Analyse croisée de la participation de soldats colonisés aux occupations alliées de l'Allemagne après la Première et la Seconde Guerres mondiales. Étude de cas : Le dossier de demande de réparation envoyé par Mohammed Ben Omar aux autorités allemandes (1958-1961), déserteur marocain de l’armée française, dossier 481 30 451 GLA Karlsruhe », Journée doctorale du CRH EHESS, Paris (08.06.2022)
- « Sortir de la guerre, entrer en occupation. Soldats colonisés de l’armée française dans une garnison de Forêt Noire : interactions, perceptions, mémoires » Séminaire « Mondes militaires et Seconde Guerre Mondiale » CHSP in Sciences Po Paris/ Service Historique de la Défense in Vincennes (12.05.2022)
- “A universal feminism? The Swiss delegation at a French feminist Congress in Colonial Algeria, Constantine 1932”, Workshop Re-examining Empires from the Margins: Towards a New Imperial History of Europe, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (22.10.2021)
- “’[A] Vision of Africa on the Rhine’? State Visits by Monarchs of the French Protectorates and the Reaffirming of the Empire in the premises of the Occupation of Germany as a capitalization on symbolic and memorial diplomacy”, Workshop “Getting it Published”, French Colonial History Society (28.05.2021)
- “’Insolent to our [European] ears’: Moroccan tirailleurs' military band in post-Nazi Germany between French imperialist exhibitionism and intercultural spaces, 1957-1958.”, CALLIOPE International Conference, University of Helsinki (10.05.2021)
- “Réclamation du scandale à soi et victimisation comme moyens de silenciation. Le rôle du révisionnisme (colonial) dans la perception des soldats colonisés français par la population allemande à la sortie de la 2nde Guerre Mondiale.”, XXVIIIe Colloque International Interdisciplinaire de l’AÉDDHUM, Université de Montréal (30.03.2021)
- “Representing France in occupied Germany - the paradoxical situation of French colonial soldiers”, Balzan Summer Seminar „Memory in the city“, Exzellenzcluster “Kulturelle Grundlagen der Integration”, University of Constance (24.08.2019)
