Georg Fertig

Principal Faculty IMPRS ANARCHIE
Professor of Economic and Social History at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

Contact
Telephone +49 (0) 345 55 24 273
georg.fertig@geschichte.uni-halle.de

Profile
I am an economic and social historian, trained in history and classical Greek literature in West Berlin, Konstanz, and Bochum. I did my PhD with Willi Paul Adams, a specialist for constitutional and intellectual history at the John F. Kennedy Institute for American Studies in Berlin, and my habilitation with Ulrich Pfister, a specialist in economic, social, and religious history in Münster. I was also a postdoc in Trier, and a guest professor in Paris.
My academic upbringing has not made me part of any particular "school", but I could describe my way of thinking by acknowledging my intellectual debts to three distinct places: the Münster empirical tradition of economic history, the Vienna school of social, economic, and family history, and the Paris school of a predominantly rural integrated social, economic and legal history. I am a historian and not an economist, but I think it is crucial for historians to understand what economists (as well as economic sociologists and economic anthropologists) are doing, and why. Also, while I do not do "turns", I do encourage students to look around.

Research Interests
I have done research in southwest Germany, Pennsylvania, the Eichsfeld, Westphalia, and Saxony, as well as more aggregate studies with a focus on Germany as a whole from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Topics include migration, land markets, demographic systems, and the poor law.

Publications
Publications list
Upcoming soon:
Georg Fertig (ed.): Social Networks, Political Institutions, and Rural Societies (= Rural History in Europe, 11), Turnhout: Brepols.

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