Since October 2024, the interdisciplinary BMBF joint research project of the funding guideline ‘Innovative Women in Focus’ has been running under the title: ‘Lost in Archives. In search of invisible women in male domains in the 18th century.’ The project is divided into three sub-projects and is based at LMU (Dr Anna Axtner-Borsutzky), Goethe University Frankfurt (Dr Marília Jöhnk) and the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich (Prof. Dr Isabelle Deflers) in the subjects of German Studies, General and Comparative Literature and History. The research focuses on the areas of literary criticism, theatre and military literature, in which women did not seem to play an active role.

Lost in Archives
This fate befell many innovative women in history, although they were well known in their time and their works were appreciated.

Through intensive archival research, the project participants want to show that the exclusion of women from many areas of public life is a construction of the 19th century. Archival practices, processes of canonisation and narratives of nation-building ensured that the names of these innovative women were forgotten, deliberately forgotten or not even included in the official record. The aim of the project is therefore to work out the mechanisms that contributed to this invisibility and to publicise the achievements of women as playwrights, literary critics and translators.

The results of the research will be publicised through a touring exhibition, a graphic novel and a podcast. The women will be analysed in relation to each other, intergenerationally and intersectionally in order to identify specifically female educational and career paths, places and practices of knowledge.