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Bernd Weisbrod, Retired Professor of Modern European History at the University of Göttingen (Germany), has been appointed as the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor in èצӰ��’s Department of Germany Studies.

During his stay in èצӰ�� Professor Weisbrod will continue to work on two of his most recent projects regarding the history of political violence and the history of generations.  He has most recently founded and conducted a Göttingen graduate school on "Generations in modern history" which looks in detail at problems of generation building and cultures of belonging in time. In particular it seems a matter of contention in German historiography whether the kind of traumatic experience in war and dictatorship does actually help to explain – ever since Karl Mannheim’s classical definition of “generation” - the strong German bias to read generational dynamics into historical change. Building on his contribution to an Oxford conference on European generations Professor Weisbrod will, while in èצӰ��, work on the publication of a joint conference with the German Historical Institute in Washington on “History by Generations” which will also take into account the American debate about demographic generations. The conference proceedings will be published in English by Wallstein in Göttingen in 2012.

The second focus of attention will be on the symbolic form of politics by violence. This is an issue which Professor Weisbrod has treated in several publications especially with regard to “male fundamentalism” in much of Germany’s inter-war political culture. He has also considered “the religious languages of violence” in the wake of the modern debate on terrorism for a joint conference with the Max Planck Institute of history in Göttingen. Most recently he contributed to a research group on “The Control of Violence” at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Bielefeld the papers of which were published by Springer (New York) in 2011. In comparing the assassinations of Walther Rathenau and Hanns-Martin Schleyer he re-considered the symbolic aspects of political terrorism over time as part of the new performative turn in cultural studies. It will be his intention to bring these two aspects of his work together in testing the ground for a new theory of “violent generations”. Professor Weisbrod will offer two courses for èצӰ�� students during the next spring quarter: one on “Performance Politics: Political violence and the challenge of Fascism in Europe”, and the other on “Experience and Memory: Generation building in German post-war and post-dictatorial transitions”.

This is the second of four Visiting Professorships that èצӰ�� offer in collaboration with the Gerda Henkel Foundation through 2013-14, concentrating on various questions of contemporary German culture and history. Each visitor will be fully integrated into the academic and intellectual life of the department. In addition, the Visiting Professor will deliver one formal lecture, open to the public, and offer at least two seminars.