Lukas Meissel is a historian and post doc research fellow at The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a post-doctoral grant from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris. His post-doc project is called “Photographic Testimonies. An Integrated Visual History of Survival and Resistance”. He wrote his PhD thesis about SS photography in concentration camps at the University of Haifa, Israel, and earned BA and MA degrees in history and contemporary history at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Prior to his studies in Israel, he worked as an archivist in the Jewish Community of Vienna and in various Holocaust studies and education projects. He received fellowships and grants in Israel, the USA, Germany, Austria and France, as well as the Herbert-Steiner-Anerkennungspreis 2015 and the Theodor-Körner-Preis 2021 awards. His research, lectures and teaching focus on Holocaust and Genocide studies/education, visual history, US-Israeli-Austrian relations, and antisemitism. He has published articles in international peer-reviewed journals, an award-winning monograph about perpetrator photography in the Mauthausen concentration camp and edited volumes about Holocaust studies and education.

Selected publications:

Monographs

PhD thesis (publication in preparation)
Beyond the Perpetrators’ Gaze. An Integrated Visual History of Nazi Concentration Camps, p. 401.

Mauthausen im Bild. Fotografien der Lager-SS. Entstehung – Motive – Deutungen (Vienna: edition Mauthausen, 2019), p. 132.
[Mauthausen in Images. Photographs of the Camp-SS. Origin - Motives – Interpretations]

Peer-reviewed articles

Capturing Bolshevism: SS Photographs of Soviet POWs at Concentration Camps. A Case Study, in: S:I.M.O.N. SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION, vol. 9/2022/No.1, 58-70.

The Innocent Perpetrators: The Portrayal of ‘German Victimhood’ in: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter (Generation War) (2013), in: The Journal of Holocaust Research, formerly Dapim, 36:2-3, 2022, 146-163.

Igraszki z symboliką Zagłady. Seria gier komputerowych „Wolfenstein” jako studium przypadku cyfrowych reprezentacji Zagłady, in: Studia i Materialy / Holocaust Studies and Materials vol 17, 2021, 329-357 (with Johannes Breit)
[Playing with Holocaust symbols. The video game franchise Wolfenstein as a case study for digital Holocaust representations.]

The Visual Memory of Mauthausen, in: Contemporary Austrian Studies, vol. 30/2021, A Visual History of Austria (Günter Bischof, ed., Martin Kofler, Hans Petschar, guest ed.), 161-181.

Not “How Was It Possible,” but “Who Made It Possible”: The Topic of Perpetrators in Holocaust Education in Austria, in: Wendy Lower, Lauren Faulkner Rossi (ed.), Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust XII. New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 406-428.

Peer-reviewed journal volume

zeitgeschichte, volume 49, issue 2 (2022), Fotoalben als Quellen der Zeitgeschichte (ed. with Vida Bakondy, Eva Tropper, Adina Seeger),
therein: SS-Fotoalben als visuelle Leistungsnachweise und Legitimationsberichte, 185-207.
[Volume: Photo Albums as Historical Sources in Contemporary History, article: SS photo albums as visual performance records and legitimizing reports]

Edited volumes

Aufregende Forschung. Zeitgeschichtliche Interventionen von Hans Safrian (Vienna: new academic press, 2022) (with Jutta Fuchshuber).
[Unsettling Research. Contemporary Historical Interventions by Hans Safrian]

Orientierungen, Irritationen. Studienfahrten an Erinnerungsorte der NS-Verbrechen (Vienna: LIT, 2021) (ed. by Verein GEDENKDIENST with Till Hilmar, Olivia Kaiser, Lena Krainz, Laurin Neidhart and Magdalena Rest).
[Orientations, Irritations. Study Trips to Places of Remembrance for National Socialist Crimes]