Thomas Kunze

Thomas Kunze (2014)

Thomas Kunze (born February 23, 1963 in Leipzig ) is a German contemporary historian and author .

Life

Kunze studied history, German and pedagogy in Jena and Leipzig . He was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD.

After the peaceful revolution in the GDR , from 1990 to 1995, Thomas Kunze was head of the immigration office and the office for municipal supervision in the Leipzig district. From 1995 to 2001 he worked as a guest teacher in Romania . Kunze has been working for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation as an expert on Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia since 2002 . From 2002 to 2005 and from 2010 to 2019 he was the foundation's representative in Central Asia (based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan), from 2005 to 2007 he headed the foundation's Russia office, and from 2007 to 2010 the Europe / North America department of the foundation's headquarters and since 2019 he has been the representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in the Russian Federation for the second time. Since 2004 he has held honorary professorships at the Presidential Academy in Tashkent and the Al-Chorezmi State University in Urganch ( Uzbekistan ). He is considered a proponent of stronger German-Russian cooperation. Kunze is a member of the CDU .

Kunze published a large number of books and articles on the development of the states of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is the author of the first biography about the Romanian head of state and party leader Nicolae Ceaușescu , which has been translated into Romanian and Polish and is considered a standard work on the history of communism in Romania. In 2001 the biography of former head of state appeared: The last years of Erich Honecker . ( Leipziger Volkszeitung ): "a masterpiece of recent German historiography". In 2008 the monograph "Russia's Underworlds" was published. In 2010 the volume "Ostalgie international" was published (edited together with Thomas Vogel ). In the anthology “Twenty-one. Dangers of the Century - Chances of the Century “he invited well-known authors from different regions of the world to reflect on possible developments in the 21st century from a variety of perspectives such as security, energy, demography and geopolitics . In 2013 he published a book on the subject of “Personality Cults in the 20th and 21st Centuries”. In the book "The End of the Empire. What Was Made Out of the Former Soviet Republics", which has been published in several updated editions, Thomas Kunze (together with Thomas Vogel ) describes and describes the developments in the former Soviet republics from their independence in the 1990s to the present day. The monograph "Central Asia. Portrait of a Region" followed in 2019.

Awards

2011: Saxon Constitutional Medal
2019: Honorary Citizen of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Works

(with Ute Walbe-Kunze) Romania. Travel Guide. Goldstadt, Pforzheim 1999, ISBN 3-89550-034-8 , 2nd, revised edition 2002.
(with Ute Walbe-Kunze) Istanbul and excursions in the area. Goldstadt, Pforzheim 1999, ISBN 3-89550-217-0 ; 2nd edition 2002.
Nicolae Ceauşescu: A biography. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-211-5 ; 3rd, updated edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-562-1 . Romanian license edition: Nicolae Ceauşescu. O biography , editura Vremea, Bucuresti, 2002, ISBN 973-645-025-2 , Polish license edition: Ceauşescu. Piekło na Ziemi , Prószy´nski i S-ka, Warszawa, 2016, ISBN 978-83-8069-430-9 .
Former head of state Erich Honecker's last years. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86153-247-6 ; 2nd, updated edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-698-7 .
Honecker's escape. Film (ARD / MDR) by Thomas Grimm , Thomas Kunze (collaboration with script), 2002.
(with Ute Walbe-Kunze) Hungary: City guide Budapest, Lake Balaton, traveling through Hungary. Geology and geography, climate and travel time, historical overview. Goldstadt, Pforzheim 2007, ISBN 978-3-89550-035-0 .
Russia's underworlds. A journey through time through secret bunkers and forgotten tunnels. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-490-7 .
Secret Bunkers - Forgotten Tunnels. Russia's underworlds. Weltbildverlag, 2010 ISBN 978-3-8289-0919-9 .
(Ed. with Thomas Vogel ) Ostalgie international. Memories of the GDR from Nicaragua to Vietnam. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-600-0 .
(Ed. with Wolfgang Maier) Twenty-one: Danger of the Century - Chances of the Century. Finckenstein & Salmuth, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-934882-21-8 .
(with Thomas Vogel) From the Soviet Union to independence: A journey through the 15 former Soviet republics. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86153-644-4 . Published under license from the Federal Agency for Civic Education (2011), ISBN 978-3-8389-0216-6
(Ed. with Thomas Vogel) Oh you, dear leader. Personality cult in the 20th and 21st centuries. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-734-2 . Russian-language license edition: "Отцы всех народов", Altyn Print, Bishkek, 2014, ISBN 978-9967-08-483-4 , Turkish-language license edition: Ey Sevgili Liderim, Paloma, Istanbul, 2016, ISBN 978-605-9200-10-3 .
Ceaușescu Nicolae , in: Groenewold / Ignor / Koch (ed.), Lexicon of Political Criminal Processes (last accessed on March 7, 2018.)
(with Thomas Vogel) The end of the empire. What happened to the former Soviet republics. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-86153-644-4 . Published under license from the Federal Agency for Civic Education (2016), ISBN 978-3-8389-0676-8
Central Asia . Portrait of a region. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin 2018. ISBN 978-3-86153-995-7 .
Honecker's last trip. The tug-of-war over the former head of state of GDR Film (MDR) by Thomas Grimm and Thomas Kunze, 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Proces, archive. Romanian
^ Press comments on Kunze's biography of Ceausescu
↑ The head of state who was a fool by Udo Scheer . The world of January 5, 2002
↑ The book "Twenty One" by Salmuth & Finckenstein
↑ The President of the State Parliament has awarded the Constitutional Medal, press release 51/2011 of May 28, 2011 ( Memento of June 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

personal data
SURNAME	Kunze, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German historian and author
DATE OF BIRTH	February 23, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH	Leipzig

[1] Proces, archive. Romanian

[2] Press comments on Kunze's biography of Ceausescu

[3] The head of state who was a fool by Udo Scheer . The world of January 5, 2002

[4] The book "Twenty One" by Salmuth & Finckenstein

[5] The President of the State Parliament has awarded the Constitutional Medal, press release 51/2011 of May 28, 2011 ( Memento of June 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )