PHIR - Tel: 01509 222981
Loughborough University

Politics, History & International Relations

Academics

Chris Szejnmann, BA London, PhD London

Head of Department
Professor of Modern History

Email C.W.Szejnmann@lboro.ac.uk
Tel. Secretary: +44 (0)1509 222991
Fax: +44 (0)1509 223917
Office: Schofield, A228

Dept. of Politics, History and International Relations
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics.
LE11 3TU
UK

 Chris Szejnmann
Research Interests

My interests in history are multifarious but have focused on modern Germany, the phenomena of anti-Semitism and fascism, and teaching and learning methodologies, in particular e-learning and the use of film. The main questions that have engaged me are how people responded to Nazism, how they behaved during the ‘Third Reich’, and how Germans and non-Germans have come to terms with the Second World War and the Holocaust after 1945. My approach to history does not follow a specific methodology but tends to combine aspects of political history, social history, cultural history, economic history and the history of mentalities. Nazism in Central Germany (1999) demonstrates the ways in which deep-rooted local traditions determined the success or failure of Nazism among the local population in Saxony, a bastion of the German labour movement. Vom Traum zum Alptraum (2000) is the first study of Saxon society during the Weimar Republic and explores previously un-researched aspects, particularly concerning social and cultural matters during the so-called ‘Golden 1920s’.

Current Research

Currently I am working on a number of projects that expand on this research. Contesting the Rise of the Nazis for Blackwell Publishers (2011-12) will offer a comprehensive survey of the most important new research and debates as well as suggesting future directions in the field. To read an interview with me about the Rise of the Nazis, click here. My interest in the often diverse attitudes and behaviours of the population towards Nazism has made me look at the development of local and regional political cultures and mentalities to see how the Nazis fitted into different environments. This project assumes the shape of a comparative regional history of Nazism. At the moment I am co-editing with Benjamin Ziemann the special journal edition “Machtergreifung”. The Nazi  seizure of Power in 1933 for Politics, Religion & Ideology, 14 (3) (2013).

Over the years I have become interested in a number of other research areas which I hope to develop, including biography and oral history which offer more fractured, tangible and comprehensible histories compared to traditional meta-narratives, but also historiography and its fascinating juxtaposition of history and political culture. Finally, I am currently coordinating the multi-disciplinary project ‘Sport and National Identity in Post-Conflict/Fractured Societies’ with Alan Bairner and Mahfoud Amara at Loughborough University.

  

Rethinking History, Dictatorship and War

Ordinary People as Mass Murderers

How the Holocaust Looks Now

Vom Traum zum Alptraum

Nazism in Central Germany

My growing interest in the Holocaust and its legacies led to the directorship of The Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies at the University of Leicester between 2003 and 2007, the editorship (together with Olaf Jensen) of the new book series The Holocaust in Contexts with Palgrave Macmillan since 2007, and the publication of two edited books. How the Holocaust Looks Now (co-edited with Martin Davies; 2007) shows the diverse and often complex legacies of the Holocaust, whilst Ordinary People as Mass Murderers (co-edited with Olaf Jensen; 2008) offers analyses about why ‘ordinary’ people come to participate in mass murder. I organised together with Maiken Umbach the international conference ‘Space, Identity and National Socialism’ held at Loughborough University on 12 May 2010. We are currently editing the volume “Heimat, Region and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism” to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.

Recently I have been fortunate to edit Rethinking History, Dictatorships and War (2009): the volume seeks to honour Richard Overy, my former doctoral supervisor and one of the great historians of his generation. (See R. Overy’s keynote lecture on History for the 21st Century). The book focuses on three of the most important themes of historical studies: the way history is or ought to be written, and the nature of dictatorships and the nature of wars in Modern Europe.


Teaching

My appointment as Professor of Modern History at Loughborough University in 2008 with the brief to re-establish the subject history after an absence of 20 years has made me rethink the meaning, purpose and teaching of history in the rapidly changing society we live in. This has resulted in exciting e-learning initiatives, including the pioneering of Lecture Capturing (click here), SMS (Text) messaging within Learn, video presentations with Flip, and the use of History Timeline interactive History Resource at Loughborough University. The innovative use of learning technologies is an integral part of our strategy of promoting excellence and new initiatives in learning and teaching in the History subject area, which has led to collaboration with several bodies, including the UK’s History Subject Centre and JISC.

Besides teaching on various team-taught Undergraduate modules (Introduction to Academic Studies; Modern Europe: From Enlightenment to the Present; History for the 21st Century) I am currently offering the following option courses: Modern Germany: From Racial Dictatorship to Re-civilization (Year 2) and The Rise of the Nazis (Year 3). I would welcome to supervise doctoral theses on a wide range of topics relating to Modern European History. Currently I am supervising ‘The “Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst” (Sipo-SD) in German occupied Belgium and Northern France’ (Robby Van Eetvelde), and ‘The National Socialist economic “New Order” for Europe during World War II’ (Raimund Bauer).


Modern Germany on the Internet

There are thousands of internet links and resources on Modern Germany. Click here for a list that contains some of the most relevant sites. It focuses largely on the 20th Century and aims to show the great variety of sites available today. Most of the sites are in German, but there an increasing number of sites in English.

Professional Distinctions (selection)


Publications

Detailed searchable list of publications


Books

  1. Vom Traum zum Alptraum. Sachsen während der Weimarer Republik (Sächsische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung: Dresden; Kiepenheuer Verlag: Leipzig, 2000); ISBN 3-378-01045-2; 178 pp. and 34 photos.

  2. Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in 'Red' Saxony (Berghahn Publishers: Oxford and New York, 1999); ISBN 1-57181-942-8; xxiv + 312 pp.


Edited books

  1. Editor, Rethinking History, Dictatorship and War. New Approaches and Interpretations (Continuum Books: London, 2009), ISBN , 978 0 82644 323 6, xvi & pp. 272;

  2. with Olaf Jensen), Ordinary People as Mass  Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2008), ISBN 978-0-230-55209-9, xviii & pp. 228

  3. (with M.L. Davies), How the Holocaust Looks Now. International Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, November 2006); ISBN 0230001475; 312 pp.


Articles and chapters

  1. 'Regional History, Nazism and the Holocaust', in Claus-Christian W.
    Szejnmann (ed.), Rethinking History, Dictatorship and War. New Approaches and Interpretations (Continuum Books: London, 2009), ISBN , 978 0 82644 323 6, pp. 55-67

  2. ‘Großbritannien’, in Wolfgang Benz (eds.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Band 1. Länder und Regionen (K.G. Saur: Munich, 2008), ISBN 978-3-598-24071-3, pp. 127-133.

  3. 'Perpetrators of the Holocaust: A Historiography', in Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (eds.), Ordinary People as Mass  Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2008), ISBN 978-0-230-55209-9, pp. 25-54

  4. 'Die Bedeutung der Regionalgeschichte für die Erforschung des Nationalsozialismus und des Holocausts', in O. Hartung and K. Köhr (eds), Geschichte und Geschichtsvermittlung. Festschrift für Karl Heinrich Pohl (Verlag für Regionalgeschichte: Bielefeld, 2008); ISBN 978-3-89534-743-6, pp. 85-103

  5. 'Introduction: How the Holocaust Looks Now' (with M.L. Davies), in M.L. Davies and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (eds), How the Holocaust Looks Now. International Perspectivese, (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, October, 2006); ISBN 0230001475, pp. xxii-xxxix

  6. 'Arbeitermilieus in Südwestdeutschland in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalsozialismus' in Peter I. Trummer and Konrad Pflug (eds), Die Brüder Stauffenberg und der Deutsche Widerstand, (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg: Stuttgart, 2006), pp. 51-64

  7. 'German Unification and the Involuntary Marginalisation of Eastern Germans', German as a Foreign Language, 3 (2004), pp. 101-116 (available as a PDF file under the GFL website)

  8. 'We can only understand the Nazis if we are aware of Germany's heterogeneity', New Perspectives on Modern History, 10 (1) (2004), pp. 23-27

  9. 'Verwässerung oder Systemstabilisierung? Nationalsozialismus in Regionen des Deutschen Reichs', Neue Politische Literatur, 48 (2) (2003), pp. 208-250

  10. 'Theoretisch-methodische Chancen und Probleme regionalgeschichtlicher Forschungen zur NS-Zeit', in M. Ruck and K.H. Pohl (eds), Regionen im Nationalsozialismus [IZRD-Schriftenreihe, Band 10] (Verlag für Regionalgeschichte: Bielefeld, 2003); ISBN 3-89534-490-7, pp. 43-57

  11. '"An Helligkeit ragt in Europa vor allem mei' Sachsenland vor". Prime Minister Biedenkopf and the Myth of Saxon Identity', in Frank Finlay and Stuart Taberner (eds), Recasting German Identity (Camden House: London, November 2002); ISBN 1571132449; pp. 161-176.

  12. 'Landesgeschichte versus Regionalgeschichte? Konflikte, Gefahren und Möglichkeiten am Beispiel Sachsens im 20. Jahrhundert', in Reimer Witt (ed.), Im Spannungsfeld zwischen Landes- und Regionalgeschichte: Sieben Vorträge eines Regionalsymposiums im Landesarchiv Schleswig-Holstein (Publikationen des Landesarchiv Schleswig, Vol. 74: Schleswig, 2001); ISBN 3-931292-64-9, pp. 13-26.

  13. 'The Success of Nazism in Saxony and Germany: The Landscape of Left and Right', in J. Retallack (ed.), Saxony in German History. Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830-1933 (University of Michigan Press: Michigan, 2000); ISBN 0472111043, pp. 356-72.

  14. 'Sächsische Unternehmer und die Weimarer Republik. Zur Rolle der sächsischen Unternehmer in der Zeit der Weltwirtschaftskrise und des Aufstiegs des Nationalsozialismus', in U. Heß and M. Schäfer (eds.), Unternehmer in Sachsen. Aufstieg - Krise - Untergang - Neubeginn (Leipziger Universitätsverlag: Leipzig, 1998), ISBN 3-933240-21-2, pp. 165-179.

  15. 'The missing pieces are "coming home": Nazism in the new Bundesländer', German History, 15 (3) (1997), pp. 395-410.

  16. 'The Rise of the Nazi Party in the Working Classes Milieu of Saxony', in Conan Fischer (ed.), The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany (Berghahn Publishers: Oxford and Providence, 1996; ISBN 1-57181-915-0), pp. 189-216.

  17. 'Conference Report: Internationales Symposium: Nationalsozialismus und Region'. A Conference organized by the Institut für Bayerische Geschichte and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte from 26 to 28 October 1993 in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich', German History, 12 (3) (1994), pp. 395-398.