Since 2025, the Else Frenkel-Brunswik Institute at the Research Centre Global Dynamics at the University of Leipzig has been regularly offering the Leipzig Ernst Bloch Fellowship.

Bloch in Leipzig

Leipzig is a place where the break with East Germany’s past and the unresolved issues surrounding it have become particularly evident. This ambivalence is epitomized by one of Leipzig’s most prominent citizens of the 1940s and 1950s: Ernst Bloch (1885–1977). Upon his return from exile in the U.S., he had consciously decided to work in East Germany. His utopian spirit burned for the legacy of Karl Marx. He quickly became the philosophical figurehead of the GDR. But GDR Marxism was far too narrow for his comprehensive program to mobilize all the untapped human potential of Western and Near Eastern culture for a grand alliance of humanity with nature. Committed on the one hand to the socialist party’s claim to leadership, yet unwilling on the other to be constrained by its narrowness, Bloch inevitably came into conflict with it—and in 1961, during the construction of the Berlin Wall, he did not return to Leipzig from a trip to the West.

 

About the Else Frenkel-Brunswik Institute

The Else Frenkel-Brunswik Institute (EFBI) takes a broad research approach to contemporary authoritarianism. It not only creates profiles of current far-right attitudes and their distribution across different populations, but also examines why deep-seated authoritarian behaviors and needs persist and take on new forms in a supposedly democratic environment.

 

The fellowship

The fellowship aims to broaden this range of research and to incorporate into the institute’s work the unresolved authoritarian and unfulfilled utopian legacy of real socialism, which clashed so dramatically in the figure of Bloch. By re-examining and updating Bloch’s work, particularly his Leipzig phase, the primarily empirically oriented studies of the EFBI are to be provided with a foundation of basic research in the humanities, which will further strengthen the institute’s dialogue with the Saxon public, civil society, and politics. It is evident that central Blochian categories can unlock considerable potential for reflection—such as the »Kälte- und Wärmestrom«, the »gleichzeitige Ungleichzeitigkeit«, the »Naturallianz«, or his specific grounding in Judaism—at the focal points of German-German discussions (such as social cohesion, resentment, homeland, Monday demonstrations, and brown coal mining regions). However, this merely hints at the field of tension within which the fellows’ hoped-for contributions are to move freely.

The fellowship is aimed primarily at applicants at postdoctoral level or above. The following are provided (funded by EFBI): a subsistence allowance of €1,500; a travel allowance of €500; a comfortable, spacious guest flat (including use of the underground garage) and a workspace at the EFBI.

The following are expected: full-time attendance throughout the duration of the fellowship; a workshop on the research topic within the wider institute framework; and a public lecture on the research topic. The EFBI’s publication channels are available for the fellowship’s outputs.

 

Application

Please submit your application, including the standard supporting documents and a research proposal of no more than five pages, by 1 July 2026 as a single PDF file to: efbi@uni-leipzig.de.

 

Contact

Tilman Meckel
Science Communication Officer

+49 341 97-37892
tilman.meckel@uni-leipzig.de

 

 

Past Fellows

 

2026, 1.6.–15.7.
Dr. Lukas Meisner, Berlin

From Capitalist Realism to Nihilism? Towards a Political Economy of Anti-Utopia

 

2025, 1.11.–15.12.
Chiara De Cosmo, PhD, Bologna

„Ungleichzeitigkeiten“ und Linksrhetorik: Zur politischen Bestimmung von Blochs Begriff