Dr. Jens Kolata

Jens Kolata has been a Research Assistant at the Fritz Bauer Institute since 2019. He is working on a research project entitled »Forensic Sanatorium Patients under National Socialism«.

He studied modern and contemporary history and sociology at the Universities of Tübingen and Groningen. From 2009 to 2015, he worked as a Research Assistant in the study group »University of Tübingen under National Socialism« at the Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Tübingen. He then held a position as Research Assistant at the Geschichtswerkstatt Tübingen e.V. (Tübingen History Workshops). In 2017/18, he served as managing director of the non-profit association Lern- und Dokumentationszentrum zum Nationalsozialismus e.V. Tübingen (Education and Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism). From 2019 to 2022, he was working on a research project on »Social Hygiene and Health Policy in Frankfurt am Main from 1920 to 1960« at the Fritz Bauer Institute. In 2023, he received his doctorate from the University of Cologne with a thesis on eugenics debates in the medical professional press in Germany from 1911 to 1976. In 2024/25, he was a Research Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (VWI) in Vienna.

Research Interests

• History of eugenics and criminal biology in Germany
• History of medicine under National Socialism
• History of Nazi persecution of socially marginalised individuals
• History of Nazi forced labour

Current Research Project

• Forensic Sanatorium Patients under National Socialism

Selected publications

• (Ed., together with Frédéric Bonnesoeur, Philipp Dinkelaker, Sarah Kleinmann, Anja Reuss), Besatzung, Vernichtung, Zwangsarbeit. Beiträge des 20. Workshops zur Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Berlin 2017.
• (Ed., together with Richard Kühl, Henning Tümmers, Urban Wiesing), In Fleischhackers Händen. Wissenschaft, Politik und das 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 2015.
• Zwischen sozialistischer und nationalsozialistischer Eugenik. Friedrich Karl Scheumann und die Eheberatungsstelle Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, in: Ludger Hermanns, Albrecht Hirschmüller (Eds.), Vom Sammeln, Bedenken und Deuten in Geschichte, Kunst und Psychoanalyse. Gerhard Fichtner zu Ehren, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Beiheft Nr. 25, Stuttgart 2013, pp. 61–82.

List of publications

Publications (pdf-file)