Friday, March 11th, 2011 The German Foreign Office and the Nazi Past

Description

Last fall, the findings of an Independent Historical Commission on the History of the German Foreign Office during the Third Reich and in the early Federal Republic — established by then Foreign Secretary Joschka Fischer in 2005 — were published. The book, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit. Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik, was widely perceived and stirred a public debate, not least because some members of the commission suggested that the Foreign Office was a criminal organization.

Norbert Frei, 2010/11 Theodor Heuss Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research (New York), was a member of the commission. He will present main results of the research and discuss their relevance for Germany’s ongoing reflection about the Nazi past.

Norbert Frei received his doctoral degree from the University of Munich in 1979 where he was a member of the research staff of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte until 1997. In 1985/1986 he was a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University, in 1995/1996 Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, in 2004 Fellow at the Kulturwissenschaft¬liches Institut in Essen, in 2008/09 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. From 1997 to 2004 he held a Chair for Modern History at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, since 2005 he teaches in the same function at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. He is the director of the Jena Center 20th Century History. His books include National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945, Blackwell 1993; Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, Columbia University Press 2002; 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen, C.H. Beck 2005; 1968: Jugendrevolte und globaler Protest, dtv 2008.