Hello, welcome to my website!
I am currently a post-doctoral researcher (akademische Rätin) at the University of Münster and a member of EVIDEM - Evidence on Democracy and Markets Lab.
My research interests lie at the intersection of quantitative economic history and political economy, with a particular focus on the rise of political extremism in 20th-century Germany.
I obtained my PhD at the Berlin School of Economics - Humboldt University Berlin - under the supervision of Nikolaus Wolf and Sulin Sardoschau. In my dissertation, I investigate how economic deprivation and party strategies, such as targeted repressive violence, contributed to the rise of the Nazi party before 1933.
You can find my CV here and get in contact at reiskemonique@gmail.com.
Research in progress
Debt Deflation and the Rise of the Nazi Party [CEPR DP No. 21487, 2026]
with Thilo Albers and Felix Kersting, R&R at Explorations in Economic History
[Latest version] [CRC DP No. 511, 2024]
Abstract
This paper examines the political consequences of debt deflation in interwar Germany. Debt deflation arises when falling prices increase the real burden of pre-existing nominal liabilities. We study this mechanism in the agricultural sector, where farmers had accumulated substantial nominal debt before 1929. In the face of collapsing agricultural prices and falling revenues, the high nominal interest burden made this debt unsustainable. To isolate the political effect of this shock, we exploit pre-crisis differences in agricultural debt and product mix across counties to construct a measure of debt deflation intensity. Our main finding is that rural debt deflation substantially increased support for the Nazi party, reflecting substitution away from agrarian and conservative parties. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure explains a fifth of one standard deviation in the Nazi party vote share rise between 1928 and 1932. The effect persists after controlling for income shortfalls, unemployment, and austerity, indicating that debt deflation drove radicalization independently of concurrent channels. A counterfactual exercise suggests that without debt deflation, the Nazi party’s national vote share would have been insufficient to prevent less extreme parties from forming a majority coalition against it, rendering rural debt deflation a plausibly necessary condition for Hitler’s rise to power.
Strategic political violence: The Nazis’ “Fight for Berlin”
Abstract
In this paper, I analyze how antidemocratic movements use violence to contain their political opposition and undermine state legitimacy by focusing on the National-Socialists in early 1930s Berlin. Based on original microgeographic data, I show that the Nazis strategically targeted Communist strongholds with street-level violence to limit local political mobilization. This strategy successfully depressed turnout at minimal cost to the NSDAP itself, while generating only limited backlash. Based on qualitative evidence, I argue that the Nazis were willing to accept these local losses in exchange for propaganda opportunities.
Voting dynamics within Berlin 1919-1933: A new microgeographic dataset
Abstract
I introduce an original microgeographic dataset on interwar election results in Berlin's historic center, representing 1.5 million of the German capital's 3.3 million voters. Whereas previous research was able to use only six data points per election for this area, my dataset, based on newly discovered archival material at the polling station level, contains roughly 1,000 observations per election. I validate the data using published statistics and describe my process of geocoding. I then discuss varying approaches to building a panel structure and derive a best-practice approach. Finally, I present a descriptive analysis of Berlin's voting dynamics between 1921 and 1933.