Svenja Goltermann is Professor of Modern History at the Department of History at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses primarily on the history of violence, the history of changing conceptions of suffering, vulnerability, and trauma, the history of memory cultures, and the history of knowledge. She has published widely on these subjects, including the award-winning book The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany (2017), first published in German in 2009. Her most recent monograph dealt with changing perception of victimhood (2017). She is currently working on a book-length project that explores the broadening of the understanding of violence in Western Europe since the 1960s to trace the genealogies of this recent phenomenon and to reveal its effects.

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Recording, Documenting, Identifying (1800-1914)


• 3: Efforts in International Law: The Civilization of War (1864-1977)


• 4: Wounded Bodies and the Battle for Recognition (1914-1945)


• 5: Trauma and Morality (1945-2015)


• 6: Conclusion

Victimhood has become a shorthand for any injustice suffered. Adopting a history of knowledge approach, Victims takes a fresh look at this phenomenon of classifying people as victims. It goes beyond existing narratives to provide a new and comprehensive explanation of the complex genealogy of modern concepts of victimhood.