Richard Bessel

Richard J. Bessel (born April 29, 1948 in Springfield , Massachusetts ) is an American (?) Historian. He has held the Chair of Contemporary History at the University of York since 1998 .

Life and career

Bessel earned a bachelor's degree in history from Antioch College in 1970 . From 1977 to 1979 he was a Parkes Fellow at the University of Southampton . In 1980 he received the Dr. phil. in Modern History at the University of Oxford .

From 1979 to 1998 Bessel was a lecturer (later senior lecturer) at the Open University. In 1993 he also took over the editing of the German History journal , which he retained until 2003.

Since 1998 he has held a professorship in history at the University of York. In 2003 he spent a few months as a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History at the University of Göttingen and in 2011 a few months as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich . With research grants (fellowships) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation , he spent a few months at the TU Berlin in 1994 and at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in 2005 . From 2005 to 2008 he was chairman of the German History Society .

Bessel's research focus is the history of violence in the 20th century with a special focus on the German-speaking area.

Fonts

As an author:

• "The Rise of the NSDAP and the Myth of Nazi Propaganda", in: Wiener Library Bulletin , 33 (1980), pp. 20-29.
• Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism , Yale University Press, New Haven 1984.
• "Unemployment and Demobilization in Germany after First World War", in: Richard J Evans / Dick Geary (eds.): The German Unemployed , London / Sydney 1987, pp. 23–43.
• "1933. A failed Counter-Resolution ", in: EE Riche (Ed.): Revolution and Counterrevolution , Oxford 1991, pp. 109-227.
• Germany after the First World War , Clarendon Press, Oxford 1993.
• “The limits of the dictatorship”, in: Ders./Ralph Jessen (ed.): The limits of the dictatorship. State and Society in the GDR , Göttingen 1996 (contribution together with Ralph Jessen ).
• Nazism and War , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York 2004.
• Germany 1945. From War to Peace , Simon & Schuster, London 2009.
• “The return of the soldiers. The picture of the soldiers at the front in the Weimar Republic ”( digitized version ).

As editor:

• Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Comparisons and Contrasts. Based on the Conference Fascism in Comparative Perspective, organized in March 1993, held at St Peter's College, Oxford , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996.
• The limits of dictatorship. State and society in the GDR , Göttingen 1996 (together with Ralph Jessen).
• Patterns of Provocation: Police and Public Disorder , New York and Oxford 2000 (with Clive Emsley ).
• Life after death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s , Cambridge 2003 (together with Dirk Schumann ).

Web links

• Profile as a Fellow of the University of Freiburg