Thomas Kühne (born 13 March 1958, in Cologne) is a German historian. He holds the Strassler Chair for the Study of Holocaust History and is the Director of the 'Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies' at
Clark University, Massachusetts. His research and teaching focuses on genocides and wars in modern European history, especially on Holocaust perpetrators and bystanders; he also engages in the studies of both masculinity and body aesthetics.
Biography
Thomas Kühne was trained in Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen in 1992. He held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Konstanz, Bielefeld, Tübingen, and Weingarten before transferring to the U.S. in 2003. He has been at Clark University since 2004.
His awards include the German Bundestag Prize in the Study of Parliamentary Affairs (1995), two sabbatical grants from the
German Research Foundation DFG (1998, 2001), and most notably, fellowships from the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2010) and the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...
in Princeton (2003, 2010).
At
Clark University, he has been engaged in developing the Holocaust History and Genocide Studies doctoral program run by the 'Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies'. He initiated and convened in 2009 and 2012 the first two events of the series ''International Graduate Conferences on Holocaust and Genocide Studies'', a forum for doctoral students around the world.
In his research, Kühne has covered three fields: political culture of Imperial Germany; male bonding and mass violence in the twentieth-century; and body aesthetics in global history.
Political culture of Imperial Germany
Thomas Kühne's early work inquired into the political culture of Prussia, the hegemonic federal state of
Imperial Germany
The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...
(1867-1918). His dissertation, published in 1994 as ''Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preussen 1867-1914''
'Three-Class Voting System and Electoral Culture in Prussia, 1867-1914''and praised as a milestone in party and election history, elucidates why the Prussian three-class electoral law in
Wilhelmine Germany, which even in its time was condemned as socially unjust, could survive for half a century, despite all signs pointing to mass politicization. As the book shows, the three-class electoral law built on and reinforced age-old political traditions, producing a quiescent political culture that was widely appreciated in the Prussian countryside still in 1900.
Collective identity and the Holocaust
In the mid-1990s, Kühne's research foci shifted to the history of war, genocide and masculinities in the 20th Century. Taking up strands of previously established Anglophone scholarship, his volume on men's history in modern Germany (''Männergeschichte-Geschlechtergeschichte'', 1996) established this field in Central Europe and stimulated a broad range of innovative studies since then. Covering the period from 1918 to 1995, the monograph ''Kameradschaf''t (2006) asks how the myth of comradeship prefigured and shaped the war experience of Hitler's soldiers and war memory in Germany through the end of the century.
Kühne's first English book goes further in encompassing the entire German society rather than only the soldiers.
Belonging and Genocide. Hitler's Community, 1918-1945' (Yale University Press, 2010) shows how the longing for community, the practice of togetherness, and the ethos of comradeship became the basis of mass murder- how an advanced civilian society became a genocidal society. The argument of the book-that "the Holocaust provided Germans with a particular sense of national belonging, " and that "the German nation found itself by committing the Holocaust"- has yielded endorsement as well as critic.
Body aesthetics in modern global history
In his current research, Kühne has also contributed to the history of body aesthetics. His co-edited volume ''Globalizing Beauty. Body Aesthetics in the 20th Century'' (2013) links issues of self and society, body culture and visual culture, regional particularities and globalization and provides an interdisciplinary prolegomena to future inquiries in how and why modern societies struggle for beauty.
Selected works
In German
* Kühne, Thomas (1994). ''Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preußen 1867-1914''. ''Landtagswahlen zwischen korporativer Tradition und politischem Massenmarkt'', Düsseldorf: Droste.
* Kühne, Thomas (1994).
Handbuch der Wahlen zum Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus 1867-1918 Wahlergebnisse, Wahlbündnisse und Wahlkandidaten'', Düsseldorff: Droste, 1994
* Kühne, Thomas (1996).
', Frankfurt: Campus.
* Kühne, Thomas; Ziemann, Benjamin (2000). ''Was ist Militärgeschichte?'' Paderborn: Schöningh.
* Kühne, Thomas (2006).
Kameradschaft. Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
In English
* Kühne, Thomas (2010).
Belonging and Genocide. Hitler's Community, 1918-1945'. New Haven:
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...
.
* Berghoff, Hartmut; Kühne, Thomas (2013):
Globalizing Beauty. Body Aesthetics in the 20th Century'. Houndmills:
Palgrave-Macmillan.
* Kühne, Thomas (2017). ''The Rise and Fall of Comradeship: Hitler's Soldiers, Male Bonding and Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century''.
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
.
External links
http://www.thomaskuehne.net (Personal webpage)
* webpage at Clark University
www2.clarku.edu* webpage at th
Guggenheim Foundation* Selected articles
References
https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/45032/bonker-kühne-kameradschaft-die-soldaten-des-nationalsozialistischen
Dennis E. Showalter, ''Holocaust and Genocide Studies'', 26:1 (2012), pp. 141–143; Mark Roseman, ''Social History'', 36:3, 2011, pp. 372–374; Frank Bajohr, ''German History'', 30:1, 2012, pp. 120–126; Jürgen Matthaeus, ''The American Historical Review'', 117:2 (2012), pp. 626–627; Jochen Böhler, H-Net, 22 March 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhne, Thomas
Clark University faculty
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
University of Tübingen alumni
Living people
20th-century German historians
1958 births
21st-century American historians