Curriculum Vitae

from 1975

Study of history, German languages and literature, and education in Oldenburg and Paris

1986

Dissertation in the fields of history didactics and psychoanalysis, entitled “‘Triviales’ Geschichtsverständnis und verstehender Geschichtsunterricht”

1986–1989

Research assistant at “Zentrum für wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung” at the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität, Oldenburg

from 1990

Research project: “Vergegenständlichte Erinnerung - Denkmale auf den Geländen ehemaliger nationalsozialistischer Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager”. Stays in Poland, France, Israel and the U.S. for research purposes.

1992–1993

“Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut of the Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen”

1993–1994

Research assistant in the Department of Recent and Contemporary History at the Historisches Institut of the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena

since 1994

Director of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Reorganization of both memorials according to comprehensive new concepts

since 2000

Member of the German State Ministry of Culture and the Media experts’ commission on the implementation of the federal memorial concept

2002–2006

Honorary professor of “history and the public sphere”, Universität Jena

since 2007

Professor of “history in the media and the public sphere”, Universität Jena

Selected publications

(ed. with Immanuel Baumann) “... mitten im deutschen Volke.” Buchenwald, Weimar und die nationalsozialistische Volksgemeinschaft, Göttingen 2008.

(ed. with Norbert Frei) Verbrechen erinnern. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Holocaust und Völkermord, Munich 2002.

(ed. with Ingrid Scheurmann) Józef Szajna: Kunst und Theater, Göttingen 2002.

(ed. with Jürgen M. Pietsch and Thomas A. Seidel on behalf of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and of the board of trustees Schloß Ettersburg/Weimar e.V.) Das Buchenwalder Mahnmal von 1958, 2 vol., Spröda 1997.

Exhibitions

Curator of numerous historical and art exhibitions.

Function and responsibilities

Project director