Astrid M. Eckert

Astrid M. Eckert, Assistant Professor, (M.A., University of Michigan, 1995; M.A. Free University Berlin, 1998; Ph.D. Free University Berlin, 2003); modern German history. Author of Kampf um die Akten. Die Westalliierten und die Rückgabe von deutschem Archivgut nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (2004). [Battle for the Files: The Western Allies and the Return of Captured German Archives after World War II], awarded the 2004 Friedrich Meinecke Dissertation Prize of Free University’s history department, and the biennial Hedwig Hintze Dissertation Award of the German Historical Association 2004; Co-editor of Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Eine Debatte [The Holocaust and West German Historians: A Debate], eds., Astrid M. Eckert and Vera Ziegeldorf (2004); editor of Institutions of Public Memory: The Legacies of German and American Politicians (Washington, D. C.: German Historical Institute/Sheridan Press, 2007).

Modern German history promises quite an adventure wherever one chooses to look. Among the various historical moments that deserve undivided scholarly attention, I have always been particularly interested in the period after 1945. I like to study what I call “post-dictatorial stress disorder” in its various manifestations: How did the Germans in West and East Germany deal with their murderous past on a political, judicial, social and cultural level? Where and how does the Nazi past come back into play in popular and learned discourse, in politics, or in cultural production?

In my doctoral dissertation, I wrote about the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany, its quest for sovereignty and its confrontation with the Nazi past. I did so by looking at the fate of the captured German archives after World War II. The “battle for the files” was as much a race between the Allies for the prime trophies of intelligence as it was a battle with the West German government. I described the demand for the return of the documents as part of West Germany’s defiant quest for sovereignty from Allied occupation and interference. In a more general sense, I recounted the “biography” of the documentary sources, which are still used to the present day to write modern German history. I hope that my work contributes to a greater understanding of the cultural construction of archives, which are neither neutral, nor objective entities in the process of historical inquiry. Behind the negotiations for the files during the 1950s stood the question of who would control the writing of German history and ultimately define German identity in the second half of the 20th century. I am currently working on the English edition of my dissertation, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

I am also developing a new project which deals with the history of the intra-German border. This border divided West and East Germany until 1989 and was always more than simply a geographical boundary. Originally imposed as a demarcation line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones in 1945, it became increasingly impermeable as the former Allies drifted apart, until it was finally fortified to a degree that attempts to cross it turned into life-threatening endeavors. In the Cold War context, the border became the metaphorical Iron Curtain where West and East collided. From its inception, it was loaded with political and cultural meaning. On a less metaphorical level, the intra-German border became a tourist attraction. I begin my exploration of the border by studying the hitherto overlooked phenomenon of Western tourism to this border which, I argue, contributed significantly to the political and cultural production of the Iron Curtain.

Curriculum Vitae