Karl Müller-Bahlke

Career

Karl Müller-Bahlke has been work­ing as a research fel­low for the MIDA Project since 2025. He holds an M.A. in Labour in Soci­ety from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Göt­tin­gen, as well as a dual B.A. in Mod­ern Indi­an Stud­ies and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. At this time, his aca­d­e­m­ic work focused on labor and indus­tri­al pol­i­cy in colo­nial India, with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the sta­tis­ti­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion of work­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions. He also worked as a stu­dent assis­tant in the MIDA project dur­ing this period.

From 2022 to 2025, he served as the fed­er­al chair of SJD–Die Falken.

Research Focus

His research focus­es on Ger­man-Indi­an eco­nom­ic and labor his­to­ry in the 1950s and 1960s, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of heavy indus­try. At the cen­ter of his dis­ser­ta­tion project is the Rourkela steel plant, a coop­er­a­tion between West Ger­man indus­tri­al enter­pris­es and the Indi­an state.

The imme­di­ate post­war years occu­py an impor­tant place in the his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness of both Ger­man and Indi­an soci­ety, espe­cial­ly from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive: both the Fed­er­al Republic’s “eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle” and Nehru­vian devel­op­ment pol­i­cy con­tin­ue to shape how the found­ing years of the two states are viewed. At the same time, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments dur­ing this peri­od unfold­ed large­ly in the con­text of the ear­ly stages of both British decoloni­sa­tion and the Cold War.

The steel indus­try in par­tic­u­lar, as a strate­gic sec­tor, stood at the fore­front of polit­i­cal atten­tion. How­ev­er, nei­ther the strate­gies, inter­ests, and actions of the com­pa­nies involved, nor those of their organ­ised and unor­gan­ised work­forces and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, can be reduced to state inter­ests. The dis­ser­ta­tion project exam­ines the result­ing fields of tension.

Publications

with Naima Tiné: “„But now they sit, from the race of the Bra­mans to the Pareier, com­pli­ant­ly on the graves”: Social His­to­ry in the Let­ters of the Dan­ish-Halle Mis­sion­ar­ies.” In: Ravi Ahu­ja & Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle (eds.), A Great War in South India: Ger­man Accounts of the Anglo-Mysore Wars, 1766–1799, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 357–368.

with Naima Tiné: “Timurs Herrschaft: Marx­is­mus und antikolo­niale Kämpfe in Indi­en.” In: Cédric Wer­muth & Beat Ring­ger (eds.), MarxNo­Marx. 33 Linke zur Frage, wie das Werk von Marx heute frucht­bar gemacht wer­den kann. Zürich: Edi­tion 8, 2018, pp.125–133.