Our dear colleague Julia Obertreis, Professor of Modern and East European history at the Alexander-Friedrich-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, died far too young after a serious illness with cancer in Berlin on October 11, 2023.

Julia was born on September 28, 1969 in Solingen and went to school in Ratingen in West Germany. Still a child of the Cold War, she became fascinated by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms and the gradual opening of the Soviet Union during glasnost. She chose to study history and Russian philology at the Free University of Berlin from 1988 and at the State University of St. Petersburg from 1993 to 1994. After graduating from university in 1996, she became involved in project work at the German-Russian Exchange Association based in Berlin that supported Russian NGOs and welfare institutions.

During these exciting years of opening and transition, she travelled a lot through the Soviet Union, Russia and Central Asia. She fell in love with Leningrad/St. Petersburg—a love that inspired her research and remained, not least because of the close friends she met in Russia's gateway to the west. Also, it was the city of Viktor Tsoi, the hero of the young Russian perestroika generation whose music Julia loved to listen to so much. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, brave peterburgtsy sprayed Tsoi's face on a house wall. Julia sent me a picture of it, cheering this defiant civilian act in her beloved city of “Peter.”

Leningrad/St. Petersburg became the focus of her research interest. Anyone who travelled to Russia in the 1990s can vividly imagine that Julia's interest in housing conditions after the Bolshevik coup d´état in October 1917 came from her own living experiences during a 3-month-stay together with her friend Barbara in a room of a kommunalka in 1992. The khoziaika still kept a very Soviet eye on the communal flat and scolded the two friends for not locking the many locks on the front door properly. These lingering practices thus raised many questions for Julia about everyday Soviet life and living, ultimately leading to her dissertation that was supervised by Prof. Klaus Meyer and defended at the Free University of Berlin in 2001. Julia analyzed the transformation of the young Soviet society on the basis of housing policy from 1918 to 1937. Informed by cultural history, Julia combined social and micro history with Alltagsgeschichte (history of the everyday) to show that the Soviet regime eventually failed to educate the New Man. Not surprisingly, the German Society for East European Studies awarded Julia the Young Researchers Prize for her book in 2002, lauding the innovative approach.

Before Julia took up a position as a research assistant to Prof. Bernd Bonwetsch, the chair at Ruhr University of Bochum in 2002, she worked as a freelancer on several oral history-projects. Theories and methods of oral history became central to her work. Together with Anke Stephan, she edited a volume exploring post-socialist memory cultures based on interviews. Her work with interviews reflected her interest in people, which was just as important in her academic work as it was in her approach toward students, colleagues, and friends.

From 2004 to 2012, she was assistant professor of Modern and Eastern European History at the University of Freiburg, chaired by Prof. Dietmar Neutatz. In these years, she completed her habilitation project exploring cotton cultivation and irrigation in Central Asia during Russian and Soviet rule. A long perspective of 130 years enabled her to highlight continuities and changes from the imperial to the Soviet periods in concepts of mastering nature, local scopes of action, and expert training. Her book, Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991, published in 2017, not only explores central aspects of Soviet imperialism, environmental history, and the history of technology, but is a highly valuable contribution to the discussion of global high modernity.

In 2012, Julia Obertreis was appointed Chair of Modern and Eastern European history at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. This was a time when Julia discovered further fields of research that reflected her curiosity and openness towards new topics. She was passionate about socialist television; she started to work on water infrastructures in Central Asia and St. Petersburg, as well as on the history of smoking in Russia and the Soviet Union in global perspective.

Julia did not shirk work, on the contrary, she felt responsible for the big picture. She aimed to break up the old power structures and, as a feminist, campaigned for equal opportunities and took on numerous tasks and positions. She was an Editorial Board member of the Slavic Review and a series editor. She served as department spokeswoman, as member of the faculty council, as equal opportunities officer at her university, and was elected as the first chairwoman of the Association of Historians of Eastern Europe (Verband der Osteuropahistorikerinnen und -historiker e.V.). From 2015 to 2021, she represented the interests of the east European history discipline and engaged in political debates. Generally, Julia was a political person, a feminist fighting wholeheartedly for equal rights and diversity at the university and in everyday life. As a committed member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, she also stood up for her values in direct dialogue with people during street campaigns.

The Russian attack on Ukraine tragically coincided with her cancer diagnosis. Regardless of her personal fate, she devoted a great deal of her energy to explaining the historical origins of the war to the non-academic public, and supporting Nuremberg's twin city, Kharkiv, and assisting Ukrainian colleagues.

When Julia was on a conference program, you could be sure that you would hear not only interested questions and stimulating comments on your presentation during the coffee breaks, but that there was always something to laugh about with her. Her open, cordial, and always collegial manner made her a unique colleague. She always had an open ear for problems and concerns—both scientific and human—and was always ready to offer help and advice. Julia always treated people with kindness and human interest that went much beyond scientific questions. We have lost a highly valued and much-loved colleague and friend. We are saddened by her untimely death and will never forget her.