Academic advisory board

Prof. Dr. Dan Diner (Jerusalem)
Dan Diner studied law, history and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main. He was awarded his doctorate in 1973, and earned his Habilitation in 1980. From 1983 to 1985, Diner was a professor at Odense University in Denmark, thereafter at the University of Essen. From 1988, Diner also served as a professor at the University of Tel Aviv and the director of its Institute for German History from 1994 to 1999. He has been a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem since 1999. Moreover, he served as director of the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow of the University of Leipzig from 1999 to 2014.

Prof. Dr. Annette Eberle (München/Benediktbeuern), Vice chair
Annette Eberle studied modern and contemporary history, education and sociology at the University of Augsburg, and earned her doctorate in education there. She was a research associate at the Historical Institute of the University of Leipzig. Eberle’s professional activities span the areas of youth and adult education, and media, cultural and memorial site education. She is professor of education in social work at the Katholische Stiftungshochschule Munich University of Applied Sciences (Benediktbeuern campus).

Prof. Dr. Lena Foljanty (Vienna)
Lena Folianty studied law at the University of Greifswald and at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. From 2007 to 2009 she was a fellow at the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History in Frankfurt am Main, where she also earned her doctorate at the Goethe-University in 2011. In 2012 she completed her second State examination in law and became a research associate at the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History. Since 2020 Lena Foljanty is Professor for for Globalisation and Legal Pluralism at the University of Vienna.

Prof. Dr Norbert Frei (Jena)
Norbert Frei studied contemporary history, political science and communication at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and obtained his doctorate there in 1979. He earned his Habilitation from Bielefeld University in 1995. Norbert Frei served as research associate at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich from 1979 to 1997, then chaired the department of modern and contemporary history at Ruhr University Bochum. He has been the chair of the modern and contemporary history department at Friedrich Schiller University Jena since 2005 and since 2006 head of the Jena Centre for 20th Century History.

Prof. Dr. Atina Grossmann (New York)
Atina Grossmann studied history at City College in New York City and at Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, where she earned her doctorate in 1984. From 1983 to 1988, she served as assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and then at Columbia University. Grossmann has lectured since 1996 at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, initially as associate professor in 2001 and currently as professor of modern European history.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Günther (Frankfurt am Main), chair
Klaus Günther studied philosophy and law in Frankfurt am Main. In 1983, he passed the first state law examination. From 1983 to 1996, Günther was a research associate and assistant lecturer in Frankfurt am Main, where he obtained his doctorate in 1987 and his Habilitation in 1997. Günther has been professor of theory of law, criminal law and criminal procedural law at the Institute of Criminal Justice and Philosophy of Law of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since 1998.

Dr. Jürgen Matthäus (Washington D.C.)
Jürgen Matthäus studied history and philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum, and earned his doctorate there in 1992. From 1993 to 1994, Matthäus was senior historian at the Australian Ministry of Justice in Sydney. Since 1994, Jürgen Matthäus has worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he heads the research department of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

Prof. Dr. Maren Röger (Leipzig)
Maren Röger studied cultural studies, media studies and history in Lüneburg and Wrocław. She earned her doctorate from Justus Liebig University in Giessen in 2010 and was then research associate at the DHI Warsaw as well as visiting professor at the University of Hamburg. From 2015 to 2021, Röger was assistant professor and from 2021 Professor of Transnational Interrelations: Germany and Eastern Europe at the University of Augsburg. Since 2017, she also directed the Bukovina Institute there. Since 2021, Maren Röger has been Director of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and Professor of the History of Eastern Europe/Eastern Central Europe at the University of Leipzig.

Prof. em. Dr. Joachim Rückert (Frankfurt am Main)
Joachim Rückert studied law, history, philosophy and administrative sciences in Berlin, Tübingen, Munich and Speyer. He earned his doctorate in 1972 and completed his Habilitation in 1982. From 1982 to 1993, Rückert was professor of civil law and history of law at Hannover University. He subsequently lectured at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main until his retirement, from 1998 as professor of modern legal history, history of contemporary private law, contemporary legal history, civil law and philosophy of law.

Prof. Dr Thomas Sandkühler (Berlin)
Thomas Sandkühler studied history, German and education in Bochum and Freiburg i. Br., earning his doctorate in 1994. From 1989 to 2002, Sandkühler was a research associate and assistant at Bielefeld University. He was in charge of the German research team of the independent expert committee “Switzerland – Second World War” from 1997 to 1999. Sandkühler taught secondary school from 2004 to 2009 and has been professor of history didactics at Humboldt University of Berlin since 2009.

Prof. Dr. Nicholas Stargardt (Oxford)
Nicholas Stargardt studied history at Hills Road Sixth Form College of the University of Cambridge and at King’s College in Cambridge. Upon obtaining his PhD, Stargardt became a lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London in 1993. He has been professor of modern European history at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford since 1999.

Prof. em. Dr. Peter Steinbach (Mannheim)
Peter Steinbach studied history, philosophy and political science in Marburg, and obtained his doctorate there in 1973. After completing his Habilitation in 1979, Steinbach served as a professor at the University of Passau from 1982 to 1992, and subsequently at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science of the Freie Universität Berlin until 2001 and at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) until 2007. From 2008 to 2013, he lectured at the University of Mannheim. Steinbach has been the research director of the Resistance to National Socialism exhibition in Berlin since 1983 and research director of the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin since 1989.