German Historical Institute London Podcast

GHIL Lecture

GHIL Lecture

Modern GHIL in co-operation with the Faculty of History, University of Oxford

Modern German History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Part of the Spring Seminar lecture series 2021.

Part of the Spring Seminar lecture series 2021.

Part of the Autumn Seminar lecture series 2020.

The Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture was given by Professor Martina Kessel, on Thursday, 26 November 2020.

Part of the Summer Seminar lecture series 2020 on Feminist Histories

Part of the Summer Seminar lecture series 2020 on Feminist Histories

Part of the Summer Seminar lecture series 2020 on Feminist Histories

The 2019 Annual Lecture Cosmopolitanism in a Global Perspective was given by Professor Ulrike Freitag, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Freie Universität Berlin, on Friday, 8 November 2019.

The 2020 Annual Lecture 'The Crisis of the Meritocracy' was given by Professor Peter Mandler, Cambridge, on Friday, 6 November 2020.

With Subhadra Das, Clémentine Deliss, Tristram Hunt, and Alice Procter. Chaired by Mirjam Brusius. This event was part of the Contested Histories seminar series 2019 and took place on 25 June 2019 at the German Historical Institute London.

Talks by Eleni Christodoulou and Neeladri Bhattacharya. Chaired by Nandini Manjrekar. This event was part of the Contested Histories seminar series 2019 and took place on 18 June 2019 at the German Historical Institute London.

Talks by Rebekka von Mallinckrodt and Richard Benjamin. Commentary by Catherine Hall. Chaired by Felix Brahm. This event was part of the Contested Histories seminar series 2019 and took place on 7 May 2019 at the German Historical Institute London.

The 2018 Annual Lecture Hobbes’s Leviathan: Picturing the State was given by Professor Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary, University of London, on Friday, 9 November 2018.

Annual Lecture on Contemporary German History. The lecture was given on 24 April 2018 at the German Embassy London. In his lecture Timothy Garton Ash gives an insightful analysis of the processes of German and European unification, reflecting on the history of the European Monetary Union, the unification of Germany as a means towards a more united European continent and on how the roots of the problems we face in Europe today are connected to the historic developments in 1989 and the 1990s.

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. The lecture was given on 28 November 2017 at the German Historical Institute London. In the 'total' First World War, civilian 'enemy aliens' became targets of stringent state control and internment, frequently in the name of 'national security'. On the other hand, national and international humanitarian organisations supported these helpless victims of the war. To what extent and how did debates and conflicts about the relationship between security and humanity impact on the changing balance?

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. The lecture was given on 29 November 2016 at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The nineteenth century was incontrovertibly the ‘British century’, in which the UK seemed to dominate the globe, and when, for good or ill, ‘British history’ took place in many other parts of the world as well. At a time when global history has become so prominent, this seems an appropriate opportunity to revisit the years 1800 to 1906. The lecture was given on 21 June 2016 at the German Historical Institute London. Introduction by Andreas Gestrich.

The nineteenth century has just passed from being a memory of the living into the cultural memory of Europe. To some, it seems to have become a very distant past. This talk shows how historians have interpreted the period facing their own contemporary issues. It discusses the changing frames which bring the nineteenth century close to us, or, indeed, have turned it into a foreign country. The lecture was given on 31 May 2016 at the German Historical Institute London. Introduction by Michael Schaich.

This lecture deals with ways of narrating the history of Europe in the nineteenth century. How should we define Europe? What were its specific features in the nineteenth century? One suggestion is that nineteenth-century Europeans were obsessed with comparisons and competitions. Another idea is that they were caught in endless paradoxical demands for equality and recognition of difference. The lecture was given on 17 May 2016 at the German Historical Institute London. Introduction by Michael Schaich.

In the era of global history, is it still possible to write European history? How should it be periodized? Does it make sense to try to cover the huge variety of subjects that have formed the focus of historical research in recent decades? This talk attempts to answer these and other questions raised in the writing of volume 7 of the new Penguin History of Europe, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914, to be published this September. The lecture was given on 3 May 2016 at the German Historical Institute London. Introduction by Andreas Gestrich.

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. The lecture was given on 15 December 2015 at the German Historical Institute London.

The 2015 Annual Lecture 'Are There Different Cultures of Decision-Making in History?' was given by Professor Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, University of Münster, on Friday, 13 November 2015.

This lecture was given by Dr Inge Weber-Newth, London Metropolitan University, on Wednesday, 9 September 2015 to mark the public opening of the exhibition "Things We Keep" at the German Historical Institute London.

This Keynote Lecture to the German History Scociety Annual Conference 2015 was given by Professor Dan Diner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on Thursday, 3 September 2015.

Panel Discussion (11 December 2014) at the German Historical Institute London. Max Weber (* 21 April 1864, † 14 June 1920) is one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history. Many of his academic works are modern classics. Even 100 years after his death, his books are still read, edited, translated and interpreted. In recent years a number of biographies have shed new light on Weber’s life and work. In commemoration of Max Weber’s 150th anniversary, the German Historical Institute hosted a discussion with three Weber experts, British historians David d’Avray and Peter Ghosh and German historian Joachim Radkau, on Max Weber’s work and its relation to historical writing. Chair: Andreas Gestrich

The 2014 Annual Lecture 'Empire and the Turn to Collectivism in British Social Policy, c.1860-1914' was given by Professor Miles Taylor, University of York, on Friday, 7 November 2014.

Roundtable Debate (18 June 2014) at the German Historical Institute London in cooperation with University College London and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The emphasis of this roundtable discussion is on continuing areas of uncertainty in the historical account of the outbreak of war: it shows how key decisions are still ‘unexplained’, allowing a variety of interpretations. This roundtable of internationally-renowned scholars asks what we still do not know about the causes of the First World War.

10th Annual Lecture on Contemporary German History, given on 25 November 2013 at the German historical Institute London

The 2013 Annual Lecture 'The Moral Economy of Trust: Modern Trajectories' was given by Professor Ute Frevert, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, on Friday, 8 November 2013.

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. Coffee, one of the most important global commodities since the late 19th century, has connected very different physical, social and symbolic worlds. The project Dorothee Wierling will present and discuss in her talk, focuses on one group of actors, those engaged in the overseas trade of the unfinished product: the coffee merchants as agents of globalisation. The talk will explore the economic, social and political frameworks in which those merchants acted and, in doing so, hopes to come up not only with a case study on the interaction of the global and the local, but also with the social and cultural history of an elite, which went through significant changes during the "age of extremes". The lecture was given on 22 October 2013 at the German Historical Institute London.

The newest buzzword for globalization is cosmopolitanism. As with many such reuses of older concepts, cosmopolitanism has a complex history, specifically in the German-speaking lands. It is this history and its relationship to the history of German Jewry from the Enlightenment to the Holocaust that will be examined — in a global and perhaps even cosmopolitan manner. (This paper was given on 2 October 2013 at the German Historical Institute London.)

Generally speaking, the British left has been on the side of the disadvantaged and the oppressed. For this reason, socialists, radicals and liberals have instinctively rallied to the cause of newcomers in an increasingly multicultural society. But circumstances have changed and the waters now are muddied. This lecture will explore the reasons why it is difficult for the left today, given its origins and orientations, to deal with Muslim and Jewish difference when that difference is asserted by Jews and Muslims themselves. (This paper was given on 16 May 2013 at the German Historical Institute London as part of the European Leo Baeck Lecture Series London, 2013.)

From 1940 to 1945 the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to fall under Nazi occupation. German anti-Jewish decrees became part of the Islands’ legal structures. Local police and government officials identified and registered the few remaining Jews. Jewish property was Aryanized and Jews were deported, all with the knowing involvement of government officials who remained officially loyal to the British Crown. This lecture examines both the legal and moral failures and the ambiguities which surrounded this little known part of British Jewish history. (This paper was given on 7 March 2013 at the German Historical Institute London as part of the European Leo Baeck Lecture Series London, 2013.)

The 2012 Annual Lecture ‘Jetzt judenfrei.’ Writing Tourism in Nazi-Occupied Poland. was given by Professor Jane Caplan, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, on Friday, 9 November 2012.

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. The lecture follows the twisted story of Germany in Europe since the late 19th century. In particular it analyses the connection between German reunification and the decision to introduce the Euro in order to highlight the current "German question" from a historical perspective.

This round table discussion (13 October 2011) was a special event accompanying the international conference "The Fischer Controversy 50 Years On" which took place 13-15 October 2011 at the German Historical Institute London. The panelists discuss the insiders view on Fritz Fischer’s seminal work "Griff nach der Weltmacht" (Bid for World Power) which was published 50 years ago.

Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship Lecture. The notorious speech of the German Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, February 1943 in the Sportpalast has been studied by historians a good many times. In this lecture it is analyzed in a slightly different way: as an example which illustrates problems Goebbels had with the media logic of the "Third Reich".

Keynote opening lecture given on 8 September 2011 as part of the German History Society Annual General Meeting 2011 (8-10 September 2011).

This Plenary Forum was a special event accompanying the "Third European Congress in World and Global History" at the London School of Economics, 14-17 April 2011. Hosted by the German Historical Institute London and kindly supported by Campus Verlag, Princeton University Press and Cambridge University Press the Plenary Forum on 'Empires and Colonies' took place Friday, 15 April, 6.30-8.30 pm. Three outstanding scholars in the field - Frederick Cooper (New York University), John Darwin (University of Oxford), and Regina Grafe (Northwestern University) - discuss various, possibly contradicting approaches to imperial and colonial history, chaired by Peer Vries (University of Vienna).

'The German Foreign Office and Nazism: Image and Reality after 1945' was the title of this year's 8th Annual Lecture on Contemporary German History, given by Professor Peter Hayes of Northwestern University, Illinois, on 31 March. Professor Hayes was a member of the Independent Historians' Commission appointed by the Ausw„rtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office of Germany) to investigate its own history. The result was a comprehensive study entitled 'The Foreign Office and the Past: German Diplomacy during the Third Reich and the Federal Republic' which became a German bestseller after its publication in 2010. As Professor Hayes pointed out, German history did not end in May 1945. He lucidly depicted the careers of diplomats before and after 1945 and discussed their ambivalent role in the Third Reich and subsequently in setting up a new diplomatic service in the Federal Republic. The lecture was followed by comments from Professor Neil Gregor, from the University of Southampton, who then chaired a questions and answers session providing over 130 guests the opportunity to ask further questions.

The subject of this debate was the contested field of Public History, its strengths, shortcomings, and developments, and the place of history in public life in general. Academic and public historians are increasingly involved in public debates seeking to reach broader audiences and to shape public consciousness through the understanding of the past. Undoubtedly the popularity of history in public life has created political, economic, and cultural opportunities. But it also generated competition and barriers between the professional and the public historians. The GHIL has invited four speakers from Britain and Germany: Franziska Augstein is a journalist for the Sx81ddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) and has written on nineteenth-century Britain; Kathleen Burk (UCL) specialises on the twentieth century, in particular Anglo-American relations; Justin Champion is head of department at Royal Holloway, University of London, and works on early modern British and European history; Peter Mandler (Cambridge) concentrates on British cultural, intellectual, and social history since c.1800.

Keynote lecture given on 25 March 2010 as part of the international conference "German Society in the Nazi Era: Volksgemeinschaft between Ideological Projection and Social Practice", 25-27 March 2010 at the German Historical Institute London

On Thursday, 11 March 2010, the 7th Annual Lecture on Contemporary German History took place at the German Ambassador's Residence, in co-operation with the German Historical Institute London. This year, Richard J. Evans FBA, Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and one of the most eminent British experts on German history spoke about "British and Germans: Perceptions and Misperceptions since the Second World War". Professor Evan's fascinating account of the way Germany and the Germans have been portrayed in Britain over the past 65 years was peppered with many examples from political debates and the press. More than 120 guests were reminded of many perceptions - and even more misperceptions - of the Germans, which have sometimes reflected deep-rooted beliefs, and at other times have been the reaction to current political developments in Europe and beyond.

The 2009 Annual Lecture "The 1970s in Europe: A Period of Promise or Disillusionment?" was given by Professor Hartmut Kaelble, Humboldt University of Berlin, on Friday, 13 November 2009.