“Thomas Lindenberger: a real mensch”
Author: Prof. Dr. Belinda Davis
In der Sonderreihe „Mehr als Eigensinn – Das Schaffen von Thomas Lindenberger“ werden zu Ehren Thomas Lindenbergers, der zum 1. Oktober 2024 in den Ruhestand eintrat, Texte seiner Weggefährtinnen und Weggefährten publiziert. Mit diesen Beiträgen werden persönliche Erinnerungen an und mit Thomas Lindenberger freigelegt und damit ein Einblick in sein umfassendes und vielfältiges Schaffen gegeben.
In her contribution, Belinda Davis recalls moments out of her 36-year friendship with Thomas Lindenberger, an historian who truly lives and acts on the values and ethics bound up in his scholarship.

Thomas and I first met in the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam in summer 1989 – a portentious moment historically, though of course we did not know it at the time. We both made the arduous daily trek from Westberlin, about 1.5 hours each way, as I recall. (It actually took much longer for a while after the Wall fell, as bus drivers brought East and West Berliners in both directions, into areas for which they had no maps!) We first met when, as I returned from a lunch break, I found Thomas peering at the many volumes of WWI-era political police Stimmungsberichte that adorned my place in the archive reading room. He asked me quite pointedly what I was working on, that I was looking at these sources: reports on poor Berliners who spent much of their lives on the streets, Berliners whom authorities viewed as highly dangerous even before the outbreak of daily shortage-related unrest. We discovered that the dissertations on which we were respectively working reflected many common interests, including how people lead their lives in public space and how this creates sources of tension with government authorities. Our perspectives had much to do in turn with seeking understanding of Alltag, of official violence, of “average Berliners’” experience, of the latter’s Eigensinn, which permitted no easy subjugation – though such terms themselves were something I understood first through Thomas. I remember well how his first book, the 1995 Straβenpolitik1, was a thrilling as well as highly influential read for me: I felt like my head broke wide open when I read it, with its masterful evocation of the politics of everyday life, and of the continued quite physical official violence that dominated in Wilhelmine Berlin.
But there was more! When I entered graduate school in the late 1980s, I had wanted to write on the West German/West Berlin “68ers”; it is hard to imagine at this point, but, then, I was told that such a dissertation topic was strategically unwise, in terms of getting a job. Nonetheless: here was someone in the person of Thomas who had himself been an exciting part of that broader Szene, from a young age. His participation in the Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt and like activities fascinated me, and further encouraged in me what I had hoped to find in becoming an historian: means to become a scholar-activist. Here once again, Thomas probably has no idea how much he inspired me!
As we kept up regular contact, Thomas was kind enough to invite me for a 2006 summer fellowship at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF), a thrilling experience as I then worked on a new project, indeed now taking up contemporary history, a time period concerning which Thomas had, by that time, already made enormous strides. His 2003 Habilitationsschrift demonstrated afresh his pioneering methodological work, revealing in turn an absolutely novel and terrifically nuanced interpretation of the relation between “the state” in the GDR and its “ordinary” citizens, through examination of the Volkspolizei2. Their individual, human interactions with both their official superiors and with the citizens they oversaw revealed a far more complex picture of the GDR and how it functioned, a model followed since that point in the best of the scholarship on the functioning of authoritarianism – and indeed of “totalitarianism.” But his work at ZZF represented qualities well beyond scholarly brilliance. The time I spent there allowed me to see up close some of the work behind all the conferences Thomas organized and anthologies he co-edited, as a ZZF “Project” and “Team Leader.” His collegiality and ability to bring the best out of his colleagues marked each of his many achievements also in this period. It was for this reason among others that I was no less than ecstatic when Thomas, along with Michael Wildt, invited me to co-edit with themwhat became “Alltag – Erfahrung – Eigensinn: Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen”3, the 2008 “non-Festschrift” for Alf Lüdtke,focused on Alf’s own brilliant methodological achievements and conceptualizations that Thomas, Michael, and I, along with innumerable others, so admired and sought to advance.
Fortunately for me, our meetings in person were not limited to those in Germany alone.I had the opportunity to bring Thomas to my own home institution, Rutgers University, where I remember very well the thrilled response of faculty and grad students there, when he lectured there the first time on the functioning of GDR state and society, and the second time, after he had taken on directorship of the HAIT, on a rethinking of totalitarianism.Thomas also helped me see the importance of film (as well as firefighters!) for history – in addition to so much else! He has also made regular, incisive comments on my own scholarship in progress, based on his scholarly acumen and also his personal experience.
And, indeed, none of this inspiration arose in a vacuum: as I learned in large part from Thomas, the personal matters. Inspiration emerged too in the form of the consistent and generous friendship Thomas has demonstrated, now over the course of more than three decades, along with his position as a model of integrity and commitment to making a difference. Thomas invited me to many long and wonderful dinners, including at his rather extraordinary house in Ferch, Brandenburg, where he also invited me to stay several times. Children’s birthday parties have been a common theme of our friendship, as I still think of with pleasure. Thomas and his then quite young son Lucas celebrated my own son’s first birthday party, in Berlin; somehow he joined in too at two of my daughter’s birthday parties in the U.S.! I mention this not only as a sign of his friendship, but also as an opportunity to recall Thomas’s stalwart willingness to drive a car full of six-year-olds to a party venue. This was at a time (who can even still imagine?) when neither of us used cell phones, and, somehow, my crazy driving evaded his ability to follow me. I don’t remember how we ever found one another eventually on a busy New Jersey highway, but I still recall how not worried I was that Thomas, with his car full of other people’s children, would somehow make it all right – and indeed that was, miraculously, just what he did!
All of this is to say how honored I have been to have such a superb colleague and friend, for so very many years. I know how much he has valued his time at HAIT; now, he looks forward to spending much time too with his beautiful grandchild – along with many new projects. Thomas Lindenberger: you are, in the Yiddish sense, a real mensch. I look forward to continuing our friendship as well as colleagueship for many years to come!
Zitiervorschlag: Belinda Davis, „’Thomas Lindenberger: a real mensch’”. In: Denken ohne Geländer. Der Blog des Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung e.V. vom 06.02.2025: https://haitblog.hypotheses.org/6654.
Beitragsbild:
Bild 1: Campus Verlag
- Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik. Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen Ordnung in Berlin 1900 bis 1914, Bonn 1994. [↩]
- Thomas Lindenberger, Volkspolizei. Herrschaftspraxis und öffentliche Ordnung im SED-Staat 1952–1968, Köln 2003. [↩]
- Belinda Davis/Thomas Lindenberger/Michael Wildt, Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn. Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen, Frankfurt am Main 2008. [↩]
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
haitblog (6. Februar 2025). “Thomas Lindenberger: a real mensch”. Denken ohne Geländer. Abgerufen am 22. März 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/139jd