The Stavenhagen Guest Professorship at the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History was established in 2012/13 with funds of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), through the generosity of the Minerva Foundation.
This Guest Professorship Program is based on a mutual decision of the BMBF and the Hebrew University and financed jointly by the Richard Koebner Minerva Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The professorship was established in memory and honor of the late Lutz Stavenhagen (1940-1992), who served as Staatsminister in the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) between 1985 and 1987 and in the Feceral Chancellor’s Office (Bundeskanzleramt) from 1987 till 1991. During his terms in office Lutz Stavenhagen contributed essentially to the development of German-Israeli relationships in research and higher education. He was especially concerned with the promotion of the disciplines of German History and German and European Culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A public call of applications for the appointment as Stavenhagen Guest Professor is annually issued by the Koebner Minerva Center for German History. The Stavenhagen Guest Professorship enables outstanding scholars in the field of German History to come to Jerusalem for a period of one to three months in order to present their research to students and members of the Koebner Minerva Center and the history department of the Hebrew University. The Stavenhagen Guest Professor usually teaches one graduated seminar and gives one public lecture at the university (Stavenhagen Vorlesung). The Guest Professor is integrated during this short term visit into the academic and intellectual life of the history department.
International cooperation is an important element of the academic work of the Koebner Minerva Center for German History. The Stavenhagen Guest Professorship contributes highly to the cooperation between non-Israeli historians and the members and students of the Koebner Minerva Center. It is an important cornerstone in the international network of historians from around the world established by and developed around the Koebner Minerva Center in recent decades.
Stavenhagen Guest Professors:
2013 - Prof. Dr. Norbert Frei, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
2014 - Dr. Gideon Reuveni, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
2015 - Dr. Ulrich Wyrwa, Universität Potsdam, Germany
2016 - Prof. Dr. Habbo Knoch, Universität zu Köln, Germany
2017 - PD Dr. Sven-Oliver Müller, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
2018 - Prof. Dr. Daniel Siemens, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
2019 - PD Dr. Juliane Brauer, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin, Germany
2020 - Prof. Dr. Eckart Conze, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany (cancelled)
2023 - PD Dr. Annette Weinke, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
2024 - Prof. Christina Brüning, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany (postponed to 2026)
A new call for applications for the Stavenhagen Guest Professorship for the academic year 2024/25
will NOT be published this year due to the ongoing conflict in the region.
A resumption of the program will be announced here on the website in due course and time.