Georg Simmerls research fuses Cultural and Political Theory with Economic History. In his dissertation on the economic crisis of the 1870s in Imperial Germany, he gives a twist to the established historiographical narrative – that this crisis was a first crisis of liberalism – by analysing the public debate among its contemporaries in detail. Georg is currently preparing a book manuscript based on this dissertation he submitted in Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt University Berlin (supervisors: Joseph Vogl and Herfried Münkler). Before joining SCRIPTS as a postdoctoral researcher, he was a research fellow at Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and at HU Berlin and a visiting research fellow at Princeton University.

Resarch Interests

• Cultural Political Economy
• Cultural and Political Theory
• History of Economic Crises
• German History
• Conceptual History of Liberalism
• Pragmatics of Public Debates
• Practices of Critique

Current Research Projects at SCRIPTS

In his research project at SCRIPTS, Georg Simmerl investigates how the notion of a "crisis of liberalism" emerged in the course of the 19th century and how it has been diagnosed since then. His working hypotheses are that

1) Practices of critique are constitutive for diagnosing such a crisis (as is the case for the concept of liberalism itself, which was coined as a derogatory term)

2) The practices of critique that have historically been used to diagnose a "crisis of liberalism" invariably took liberal ideals as their standard of measurement.

The investigation of the emergence of this notion in the 19th century will focus on the German and English-speaking world. Its vanishing point, however, is the historical analysis of liberalism's crises Michel Foucault sketched in his lectures at the Collége de France in 1978/79. The final aim of this research project is to show, that in these lectures, even the pioneer of discourse analysis had to succumb to the discursive rules diagnosing a crisis of liberalism entails. These rules set the terms of debate about this kind of crisis firmly within liberalism.

Journal Articles

Simmerl, Georg 2019: Liberale gegen Liberale. Unpopuläres über den (deutschen) Populismus, Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 73(844): 65-76.

Simmerl, Georg/Zürn, Michael 2016: Internationale Autorität. Zwei Perspektiven, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 23(1): 39-71.

Simmerl, Georg 2012: Europäische Schuldenkrise als Demokratiekrise. Zur diskursiven Interaktion zwischen Politik und Finanzmarkt, Berliner Debatte Initial 2012(3): 108-125.

Other publications

Simmerl, Georg 2021: Die hässlichen Seiten der Belle Époque. Review of Aufbruch in die Moderne. Reform und Massenpolitisierung im Kaiserreich, by Hedwig Richters. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11.

Simmerl, Georg 2021: Gottgewollter Wettbewerb. Review of Die politische Theorie des Neoliberalismus, by Thomas Biebricher. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.

Simmerl, Georg 2020: Review of Transatlantic Speculations. Globalization and the Panics of 1873, by Hannah C. Davies. HSozKult.

Simmerl, Georg 2020: Gefangen im Liberalismus. Review of Die unregierbare Gesellschaft, by Grégoire Chamayou. Soziopolis.

Simmerl, Georg 2019: Koselleck, Schmitt, and German Liberalization. Review of Von Carl Schmitt zu Hannah Arendt? Heidelberger Entstehungsspuren und bundesrepublikanische, by Sebastian Huhnholz. Interpretation. A Journal of Political Philosophy 46(1): 155 – 160.

Simmerl, Georg/Vogl, Joseph 2017: Prognostik und Desaster, Pop. Kultur und Kritik (10): 22 – 27.

Simmerl, Georg 2016: Foucault, ein Neoliberaler?!. Theorieblog, 16 March 2016.

Simmerl, Georg/Vogl, Joseph 2015: Griechenland und die Vernunft des gegenwärtigen Finanzregimes, Pop. Kultur und Kritik (7): 16 – 22.