Press Releases



Press release, 09/20/2012

From Kaiser Wilhelm to Angela Merkel. The German Question on the European Stage
The historian Andreas Rödder becomes Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor 2012/13 and talks about present and past concerns over an excessively powerful Germany

Photo: Bert Bostelmann

The German Historical Institute London, the International History Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Gerda Henkel Foundation in Düsseldorf have awarded the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship for the research sphere “Germany in Europe 1890–2000”. From 1 October 2012 Prof Andreas Rödder, Chair-holder in Modern History at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, will spend a year researching at the German Historical Institute London and teaching at the London School of Economics. His Inaugural Lecture, to be given on 7 November 2012, is entitled “From Kaiser Wilhelm to Chancellor Angela Merkel. The German Question on the European Stage”. Here Andreas Rödder will look at present concerns over Germany’s hegemony in Europe which stretches back to the late 19th century and has been revived by German re-unification and its economic repercussions.

Andreas Rödder, born 1967, studied History and German Studies in Bonn and Tübingen. He gained his doctorate in Bonn in 1995 with a dissertation on “Stresemann’s Legacy. Julius Curtius and German Foreign Policy 1929–1931“. In 2001 he completed his Habilitation at Stuttgart University with a study on "The Political Culture of the English Conservatives between Rural Tradition and the Modern Industrial Age 1846–1868". After posts at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich and Brandeis University, Boston, MA (USA), since 2005 Andreas Rödder has been Professor of Modern History at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, focussing on international history in the 19th and 20th centuries. His research interests are Victorian England and the history of Conservatism, the Weimar Republic and international politics in the inter-war period, the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as German re-unification and most recent history in an international context.

The Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship for the research sphere “Germany in Europe” has been awarded annually since 2009. Previous Visiting Professors are Prof. Ute Daniel (Braunschweig), Prof. Christoph Cornelißen (Frankfurt am Main) and Prof. Johannes Paulmann (Mainz).

Contact:
Gerda Henkel Stiftung:
Dr. Sybille Wüstemann
Tel.: +49 (0)211/936524 0
E-Mail: wuestemann@gerda-henkel-stiftung.de www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de

German Historical Institute London:
Dr. Angela Schattner
Tel.: +44 (0)20/7309 2029
E-Mail: schattner@ghil.ac.uk
www.ghil.ac.uk