Michael Zeuske

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Max Paul Zeuske (* 1952 in Halle / Saale ) is a German historian and senior professor at the Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn .

Live and act

Michael Zeuske is the son of Max Zeuske (1927–2001), a Rostock historian and professor of Latin American and Caribbean history. From 1963 he lived with his parents in Cuba for two years . His father worked there as an educational consultant. Zeuske learned Cubaspanic there and experienced the optimistic mood in Havana after the Cuban Revolution and sympathized with their ideals. Zeuske no longer called the later Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s "a kind of tropical GDR ".

After completing his vocational training as an agricultural engineer in Neuenhagen near Berlin , Zeuske studied philosophy and history at the University of Leipzig with a focus on the history of Spain and Latin America with Manfred Kossok , where he also received his doctorate in 1984. At that time he was interested in the history of Venezuela at the time of the liberation fighter Simón Bolívar . Since Venezuela was considered a non-socialist foreign country , he could only travel to Cuba for his studies. In 1991 he also completed his habilitation in Leipzig with a thesis on Simón Bolívar and the hegemony in the independence movement of Spanish America . From 1992 to 1993 he was Professor of Comparative History / Ibero-America at the University of Leipzig. In 1993 he was appointed to a chair for Iberian and Latin American history at the University of Cologne . He held this until February 2018 when he retired.

Zeuske has been a visiting fellow at universities in the USA ( Indiana , Bloomington, Yale , New Haven, Michigan , Ann Arbor) on several occasions and has carried out extensive field research on the history of slaves in Cuba and Venezuela since 1993. He is a specialist in the history of Latin America , the history of the Atlantic, the history of slaves and slave traders, and the history of Cuba , Venezuela and the Caribbean . Since 2005 Zeuske has been researching the Atlantic slave trade and people smuggling as well as slave ships ( La Amistad ) in the 19th century. Michael Zeuske was a Fellow of the Sino-German Science Forum at BeiDa Uni (Peking University) in Beijing and Macau from September to December 2015 .

Zeuske's work on the slave history of Latin America was criticized by the publicist and Latin America expert Peter Schumann with regard to his view of modern Cuba . On Deutschlandfunk, Schumann pointed out deficits in terms of paying attention to the inner-Cuban opposition . Zeuske mentioned them only marginally, despite the clarification that the Cuban revolutionary regime had relied on the violent repression of the opposition forces from the start.

In June 2020 Zeuske caused a sensation with an interview on the Black Lives Matter movement on Deutschlandfunk Kultur . Zeuske called for a critical examination of the legacy of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant , who had co-founded European racism in his anthropological writings . Jan Küveler criticized the utterance in the world under the heading "Critique of politically correct reason", alluding to Kant's writings .

Publications (selection)

  • Island of extremes. Cuba in the 20th and 21st centuries. Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2017; 3rd updated and greatly expanded edition, ISBN 978-3-85869-728-8
  • Idea and interest in the Independencia: On Simón Bolivar's heroic illusion 1815–1826. Dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1984.
  • Colony, Reform and Revolution: From the “Bourbon Century” in Spanish America to the independence of Latin America. Simón Bolívar and the formation of the Creole hegemony in the Independencia of Venezuela. Habilitation thesis, University of Leipzig, 1992.
  • Francisco de Miranda and the discovery of Europe: a biography. Lit, Hamburg & Münster 1995, ISBN 3-89473-860-X .
  • (with Max Zeuske) Cuba 1492–1902. Colonial history, wars of independence and first occupation by the USA. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag 1998, ISBN 3-931922-83-9
  • Slavery, emancipation and Atlantic world history. Essays on micro-stories, slaves, globalization and racism (= work reports of the Institute for Culture and Universal History Leipzig eV Vol. 6). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-936522-10-3
  • Black Caribbean. Slaves, Slavery Cultures, and Emancipation. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-85869-272-7 ( review ).
  • Francisco de Miranda y la modernidad en America. Fundación Mapfre Tavera / Secretaría de Cooperación Iberoaméricana, Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-8479-047-9
  • Slaves and Slavery in the Worlds of the Atlantic, 1400–1940. Outlines, beginnings, actors, fields of comparison and bibliographies (= slavery and post-emancipation. Vol. 1). Lit, Münster (et al.) 2006, ISBN 3-8258-7840-6
  • Small history of Venezuela. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-54772-0
  • From Bolívar to Chavez. The history of Venezuela. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 3-85869-313-8 ( review ).
  • Simón Bolívar, Liberator of South America. History and myth. Rotbuch, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86789-143-1 ( [1] ; reviews ).
  • Simón Bolívar. History and Myth. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2012, ISBN 978-1-55876-568-9 (extended translation).
  • Cuba in the 21st century. Revolution and reform on the island of extremes. Rotbuch, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86789-151-6 ( review ).
  • The story of the Amistad. Slave trade and people smuggling in the Atlantic in the 19th century. Philipp Reclam, Ditzingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-020267-8
  • (with García Martínez, Orlando) La sublevación esclava en la goleta Amistad: Ramón Ferrer y las redes de contrabando en el mundo Atlántico. La Habana: Ediciones UNIÓN, 2013, ISBN 978-959-308-110-8
  • Amistad. A Hidden Network of Slavers and Merchants. Translated by Rendall, Steven. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2014, ISBN 978-1-55876-593-1 (extended translation; see review: Cosner, Charlotte A., in: American Historical Review Vol. 121: 1 (February 2016), pp. 207– 208).
  • Handbook of the history of slavery. A global story from the beginning until today. De Gruyter, New York / Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-027880-4
  • Handbook of the history of slavery. A global story from the beginning until today. 2 vol., De Gruyter, New York / Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-055884-5 (heavily revised and expanded 2nd edition).
  • Slave traders, Negreros and Atlantic creoles. A world history of the slave trade in the Atlantic area. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-042672-4
  • Little history of Cuba. Beck, Munich 2016; 4th, revised and updated edition, ISBN 978-3-406-69699-2
  • Slavery. A human story. From the Stone Age to today, Stuttgart: Reclam, 2018 (translation into Spanish under the title: * Esclavitud. Un historia de la humanidad, Pamplona: Katakrak, 2018)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Zeuske in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
  2. ↑ Members and Awardees 2011 ( Memento of November 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), website of the Leibniz Society , accessed on November 16, 2012.
  3. ^ Entry on Max Zeuske in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium
  4. ↑ a b Michael Zeuske: Cuba in the 21st Century , pp. 7-15
  5. ↑ From the faculties. In: Cologne University Magazine. 4, No. 13, 2018, p. 56 ( PDF file; 7 MB ).
  6. ↑ Peter B. Schumann : The youngest chapter of Castroism. Michael Zeuske: “Cuba in the 21st century. Revolution and reform on the island of extremes ”, Rotbuch , Deutschlandfunk from July 30, 2012
  7. ↑ Anti-racist monument tower - The philosopher Immanuel Kant is also up for debate. Accessed June 16, 2020 (German).
  8. ^ Jan Küveler: Racism allegations against Kant: Critique of politically correct reason . In: THE WORLD . June 16, 2020 ( welt.de [accessed June 16, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Zeuske, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zeuske, Michael Max Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)