Date and Time
March 7, 2008
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Oliver Rathkolb - Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of European History and Public Spheres: Culture, Democracy and Media; Professor of the Institute for Contemporary History, University of Vienna (2005-2007)

Oliver Rathkolb is the director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and the Public Sphere, and professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna.

Professor Rathkolb is the co-founder of a scientific quarterly, "Medien und Zeit" (Media and Time), focusing on interdisciplinary questions of contemporary history and communications/media history, and is managing editor of "Zeitgeschichte" (Contemporary History). Since 1980, Professor Rathkolb has regularly presented papers at conferences and universities in the U.S. and Europe, including the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, American Political Science Association, German Studies Association, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He has published more than 100 articles on Austrian, European contemporary political, and cultural history, as well as international affairs and business history.

This presentation will analyze the most important changes in historical political terms that have taken place in the Austrian debate on the causes and consequences of the National Socialist takeover of power in 1938. At the same time, the results, which take into account recent research on communicative and cultural memory, will be enriched and widened in scope through a consideration of how the Anschluss is perceived by the international community of historians.