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Book Talk: “The Burden German of History” by Konrad Jarausch
April 18 @ 5:30 pm
On April 18, 2024, join the CES community for a book talk with esteemed author and historian Konrad Jarausch on his latest work, The Burden of German History: A Transatlantic Life.
The event will feature a presentation from the author and a Q&A with graduate and undergraduate moderators. Refreshments to follow. This event is CLE credit-eligible.
About the Book
As one of the leading historians of Modern Europe and an internationally acclaimed scholar for the past five decades, Konrad H. Jarausch presents a sustained academic reflection on the post-war German effort to cope with the guilt of the Holocaust amongst a generation of scholars too young to have been perpetrators. Ranging from his war-time childhood to Americanization as a foreign student, from his development as a professional historian to his directorship of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung and concluding with his mentorship of dozens of PhDs, The Burden of Germany History reflects on the emergence of a self-critical historiography of a twentieth-century Germany that was wrestling with the responsibility for war and genocide. This partly professional and partly personal autobiography explores a wide range of topics including the development of German historiography and its methodological debates, the interdisciplinary teaching efforts in German studies, and the role of scholarly organizations and institutions.
Konrad Jarausch
Konrad H. Jarausch is Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at UNC-Chapel Hill and has written or edited about forty books in modern German and European history. Starting with Hitler’s seizure of power and the First World War, his research interests have moved to the social history of German students and professions German unification in 1989/90, with historiography under the Communist GDR, the nature of the East German dictatorship, as well as the debate about historians and the Third Reich. More recently, he has been concerned with the problem of interpreting twentieth-century German history in general, the learning processes after 1945, the issue of cultural democratization, and the relationship between Honecker and Breshnew.
Moderator
Priscilla Layne is Director of UNC’s Center for European Studies and Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and President of the American Association of Teachers of German. Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She recently translated Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel, 1000 Serpentinen Angst, which will be out in June. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism and a critical guide to Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun.
Moderator
Till Knobloch is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and spentthe academic year 2022/23 in Berlin as a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. His research interests focus on International History, Modern German and European History, Hitler, the Third Reich, and theSecond World War, as well as Causes and Outbreaks of Wars. His dissertation, “The ‘Manufactured Crisis’: The Outbreak of World War II in Europe,” examines the diplomatic crisis at the eve of the Second World War from an international perspective with a particular emphasis on Polish sources.
Eloise Herdegen is a first-year EURO major with an interest in diplomacy, international affairs, and European integration.