Since the end of the 19^thcen­tury, ‘be­hav­iour’ has become an almost self-ev­i­dent topos in an­thro­po­log­i­cal dis­courses of almost any dis­ci­pline, from phi­los­o­phy, bi­ol­ogy and so­ci­ol­ogy to eth­nol­ogy and eco­nom­ics. Con­cepts of be­hav­iour often serve as tools for pre­dict­ing the future and pre­vent­ing danger. How­ever, an analy­sis of the re­spec­tive his­tor­i­cal and medial con­di­tions for this knowl­edge of be­hav­iour as a de­scrip­tive cat­e­gory and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the living has not yet been car­ried out.

An ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion to­wards a his­tory of knowl­edge and cul­tural his­tory of be­hav­iour is con­cerned with the field of dis­course on be­hav­iour in the 1950s and 1960s. The PhD pro­ject fo­cuses on a par­a­dig­matic ‘scene of writ­ing and ob­serv­ing’ be­hav­iour, in which the dis­ci­pli­nary po­ten­tial of knowl­edge about be­hav­iour, its so­cio-po­lit­i­cal bri­sance, and its con­di­tion­al­ity through ma­te­r­ial cul­tures and media pro­ce­dures emerge in an orig­i­nal manner. The study is based on the sci­en­tific legacy of the East German be­hav­ioural bi­ol­o­gist Günter Tem­brock (1918–2011), who con­ducted be­hav­ioural stud­ies on red foxes be­tween 1948 and 1968 in the work­ing spaces and out­door en­clo­sures of the Zo­o­log­i­cal In­sti­tute on today’s site of the Nat­ural His­tory Museum in Berlin. It is de­ci­sive that, in ad­di­tion to sound record­ings, 16 mm films of the be­hav­ioural ob­ser­va­tions have been con­tin­u­ously pro­duced since 1951 and used as a basis for qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis. In ad­di­tion, Tem­brock pro­duced so called ed­u­ca­tional films for teach­ing use.

Along with an analy­sis rooted in cul­tural his­tory and media stud­ies of the ma­te­r­ial cul­ture of be­hav­ioural ex­per­i­ments on zoo an­i­mals and found an­i­mals in the in­sti­tute’s work­spaces, the pro­ject also deals with the ex­plo­sive sci­en­tific-po­lit­i­cal con­text of be­hav­ioural sci­ence in the GDR and the an­thro­po­log­i­cal con­se­quences of Tem­brock’s theses against the back­ground of so­cio-po­lit­i­cal de­bates in the SED dic­ta­tor­ship and the Cold War. More­over, the lit­tle-known his­tory of sci­en­tific film in the GDR is part of the re­search pro­ject.

The doc­toral pro­ject is based on lit­er­a­ture from bi­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, cul­tural stud­ies, his­tory of lit­er­a­ture, media and knowl­edge. In ad­di­tion, it es­sen­tially processes sources (writ­ten ma­te­r­ial, pho­tographs, films and audio doc­u­ments) from the as yet un­tapped estate of Günter Tem­brock, which is now kept in the rooms of the Nat­ural His­tory Museum Berlin. Media from the Animal Sound Archive, the Fed­eral Archive/De­part­ment FA, the archive of the DEFA Foun­da­tion and the “Archive for Film, Image and Sound” at today’s HTW Berlin (Hochschule für Tech­nik und Wirtschaft Berlin) and others are also in­cluded.

Sophia Gräfe stud­ied Media Cul­ture and Cul­tural His­tory and Theory in Weimar and Berlin. During her stud­ies she has worked as a stu­dent as­sis­tant at the chair of Media His­tory of the Sci­ences (M. Kra­jew­ski), at the chair of His­tory and Theory of Cul­tural Tech­niques (C. Vis­mann) in Weimar as well as at the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment of the Clus­ter of Ex­cel­lence Image Knowl­edge Design in Berlin.

Be­tween 2015 and 2018 she was a re­search as­sis­tant at the De­part­ment of Cul­tural His­tory and Theory (Teach­ing and Re­search Area Cul­tural Theory and Cul­tural His­tory and Theory of Aes­thet­ics, I. Därmann) at Hum­boldt Uni­ver­sity of Berlin. To­gether with H. En­gelke she does re­search in the DFG-Heisen­berg-pro­ject »Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary net­works of media knowl­edge« at Philipps-Uni­ver­sity Mar­burg since the spring of 2018.

Sophia was a member of the re­search area »Knowl­edge of Life« of the Zen­trums für Kul­tur- und Lit­er­atur­forschung (ZfL) in 2019. Since March 2018 she has been a vis­it­ing scholar at the Berlin Museum of Nat­ural His­tory. She is cur­rently work­ing on a doc­toral pro­ject on the cul­tural and knowl­edge his­tory of be­hav­iour.

As an as­sis­tant cu­ra­tor she has worked with var­i­ous media and ex­per­i­men­tal film fes­ti­vals such as the trans­me­di­ale fes­ti­val, Werkleitz fes­ti­val and In­ter­na­tionale Kurz­film­tage Ober­hausen as well as gal­leries and artist stu­dios.