Harold Marcuse (born November 15, 1957 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is an American

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

of modern and contemporary German history and public history. He teaches at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

.Pat Dowell
"German Filmmaker Tackles the Holocaust in 'Ninth Day' "
National Public Radio (June 1, 2005). Retrieved January 24, 2011 He is the grandson of philosopher

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

Education

Marcuse majored in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

( B.A. 1979,

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

) in

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settlers as a town under its ...

. He earned an M.A. in

art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...

from the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

in 1987, with a thesis about a 1949 memorial dedicated "to the Victims of National Socialist Persecution and the Resistance Struggle". In 1985, Marcuse co-produced a

photographic Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

exhibition on monuments and memorials commemorating events of the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

periods. In 1986, he entered the Ph.D program at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Ann Arbor Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie. Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...

, to write a dissertation about the post-1945 history of the (former)

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

that examined the legacies of Dachau. Marcuse says that since the end of World War II, much art, literature and public debate in Germany have revolved around the issues of resistance, collaboration and complicity with the Third Reich.

Career

Marcuse began teaching history at UC Santa Barbara in 1992. His study of the different ways Germans memorialized events under Hitler's rule led him to research the broader question of what people get out of learning about historical events. He examines the ways historical events have been portrayed over time, and the meanings various groups of people have derived from those events and portrayals. Marcuse was instrumental in connecting a student, Collette Waddell, with a Polish

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

survivor, Nina Morecki, which led to a book about the Holocaust that discussed not just the era, but how survivors pursued their lives afterward. Marcuse has stated that his interest in history education also resulted in him becoming active in the reform of UC Santa Barbara's General Education requirements between 1997 and 2004. He is also interested in the use of

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

, such as videorecording and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

in history education; the use of oral history in social studies teaching; and questions of public conceptions of history, often referred to as "collective memory." He serves as webmaster of the Marcuse family's website.

Personal

Marcuse and his first wife (m. 1987–2010) had two children, Aaron (born 1988) and Miriam (born 1993). On the family website, Marcuse states that he and his first wife separated in 2001 and divorced in 2010. He married again in 2012. He is the grandson of German

critical theorist A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from socia ...

and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

as well as a son of Herbert's son Peter Marcuse. In 2012, Marcuse stated that his interests were "history education and public exposure to history (monuments, museums, school curricula, films, ...)." This in turn led him to study the effects of the

No Child Left Behind Act The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based educati ...

on his local school system from 2004 to 2008. Since 2002 he has worked to reform the

General Education Curriculum.

Books and selected publications

*Harold Marcuse, Frank Schimmelfennig and Jochen Spielmann (1985). ''Steine des Anstosses: Nationalsozialismus und Zweiter Weltkrieg in Denkmalen, 1945-1985.'' Museum for the History of Hamburg. *Harold Marcuse (1990). "Das ehemalige Konzentrationslager Dachau: Der mühevolle Weg zur Gedenkstätte, 1945-1968," in: ''Dachauer Hefte'' 6(1990), 182-205. *Harold Marcuse (1993). "Die Museale Darstellung des Holocaust an Orten der ehemaligen Konzentrationslager in der Bundesrepublik, 1945-1990." In: ''Erinnerung: Zur Gegenwart des Holocaust in Deutschland West und Deutschland Ost'' (Frankfurt: Haag and Herchen), 79-98. *Harold Marcuse (1998). "The Revival of Holocaust Awareness in West Germany, Israel, and the United States." In: Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, Detlef Junker (eds.), 1968: The World Transformed (New York: Cambridge University Press), 421-38. *Harold Marcuse (1999). "Dachau: The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Memorials," in: Peter Hayes (ed.), ''Lessons and Legacies III: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial'' (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999), 138-168, 278-287. *Harold Marcuse (2000). "Experiencing the Jewish Holocaust in Los Angeles: The Beit Hashoah--Museum of Tolerance," on-line journal ''Other Voices'', 2:1(2000). * *"Die vernachlässigten Massengräber: Der Skandal um dem Leitenberg, 1949-50," ''Dachauer Hefte'' 19(2003), 3-23. *"Memories of the World War II and the Holocaust in Europe," in: Gordon Martel (ed.), ''A Companion to Europe, 1900-1945'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 487–503. *"Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre," ''American Historical Review'', 115:1(Feb. 2010), pp. 53–89. *"The Afterlife of the Camps," in: Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.), ''Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories'' (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 186–211. *"Memorializing Persecuted Jews in Dachau and Other West German Concentration Camp Memorial Sites," in: William Niven and Chloe Paver (eds.), ''Memorialization in Germany since 1945'' (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 192-204. *"Nicht Rekonstruieren, sondern Rezeptionsspuren sichtbar werden lassen: Thesen zur Gestaltung der Überreste des Kräutergartens," in: Gabriele Hammermann and Dirk Riedel (eds.), ''Sanierung – Rekonstruktion – Neugestaltung: Zum Umgang mit historischen Bauten in Gedenkstätten'' (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), 50-64. *"The Origin and Reception of Martin Niemöller's Quotation 'First They Came for the Communists...'," Yard sign in North Carolina, First came for immigrantsin: Michael Berenbaum et al (eds.), ''Remembering for the Future: Armenia, Auschwitz, and Beyond'' (Paragon, 2016), 173-199. *"The Political Without the Personal," cholars Forum: Thomas Weber's ''Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi''In: ''Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust'' 32:2(2018), 130-137.

References

External links