THE GERMAN ELECTIONS 2021 AND THE END OF THE MERKEL ERA: WHAT´S NEXT?

Konrad Jarausch

Konrad H. Jarausch is the Lurcy Professor of European Civilization in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Jarausch 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. Some notable publications include: Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2015), Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front (Princeton University Press, 2011), “Das stille Sterben…”: Feldpostbriefe von Konrad Jarausch aus Polen und Russland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008), Gebrochene Wissenschaftskulturen: Universität und Politik im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), and Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton University Press, 2002). Professor Jarausch is co-founder of the UNC Center for European Studies as well as the Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF).

Christiane Lemke

Christiane Lemke is Professor of Political Science and Director of International Relations and European Studies at the Institute of Political Science at Leibniz University Hannover. Professor Lemke has been very involved in Center for European Studies teaching, research, and conferences for many years. She has been teaching in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Transatlantic Masters (TAM) program for over a decade and has been a recurring DAAD Visiting Scholar to UNC since 1988. In addition to her current position, Christiane Lemke, from 2010-14, held the Max Weber Chair at New York University. Professor Lemke received her Ph.D. from the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Free University in Berlin and went on to earn her Habilitation Venia legendi in Political Science from the same institution. Professor Lemke has been a visiting scholar at a number of US institutions over the years as she has maintained her permanent faculty positions in Germany. She has taught courses at UNC-Chapel Hill, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Suffolk University. In addition, while on a leave from the University of Hannover from 2006 to 2007, Professor Lemke served as the Director of State Parliament, Lower Saxony. Professor Lemke’s academic areas of expertise include: European Politics, Democracy and Governance in the EU, Transatlantic Relations, Comparative Politics and Political Theory, and American Politics. She is the author/editor of numerous books and articles, including: Internationale Beziehungen: Grundkonzepte, Theorien und Problemfelder, 4th ed. (International Relations: Concepts, Theories, and Key Issues, 2018); Germany Today. Politics and Policies in a Changing World, 2018; Europäische Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik (European Foreign and Security Policy, 2010), Menschenrechte und Migration (Human Rights and Migration, 2009).

Dominic Nyhuis

Dominic Nyhuis is Visiting DAAD Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Nyhuis received his PhD from the University of Mannheim for a project on the link between district preferences and candidate communication in German elections. His research on European and German politics focuses on party politics, legislatures, and subnational politics. With a background in quantitative methods, he is particularly interested in how the digital transformation changes research practices in the social sciences. To this end, he has worked on the automated collection of large-scale web data, as well as tools for the analysis of text and video data. Professor Nyhuis currently teaches undergraduate European Studies and Political Science majors as well as students in the TransAtlantic Masters Program.

Markus Teglas

Markus Teglas serves since August 2021 as Minister Counselor in the Political Department at the German Embassy in Washington, DC. His responsibilities include transatlantic relations and U.S. domestic policy. Prior to that, he was Chief of Staff for the Minister of State for Europe in the Federal Foreign Office. He joined the Federal Foreign Service in 2013. From 2008 to 2013 he worked as Chief of Staff in the German Bundestag.

Markus Teglas holds a M.A. degree in European Studies (M.E.S.) from the Viadrina-University in Frankfurt/Oder and a M.A. degree in Philosophy and Musicology from the Free University Berlin. He has also worked as editor in various German publishing houses.

Helga A. Welsh

Helga A. Welsh is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. Her publications have focused on the history and politics of the former East Germany, German unification, transitional justice, the reform of higher education in Germany, and democratization processes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has published a book on denazification in the former East Germany and co-edited a book on German unification. Her most recent book (co-authored with Christiane Lemke) is Germany Today. German Politics and Policies in a Changing World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018). Her articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Politics, European Journal of Education, Europe-Asia Studies, German Politics, German Politics and Society, and West European politics. She is one of the editors of “German History in Documents and Images,” a project administered by the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. She served as co-editor of German Politics from 2014-2018.