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The Friedrich Schiller University of Jena
Jena, Germany Nestled into a valley surrounded by vineyard-covered hills and a beautiful countryside, Jena is a charming city of approximately 100,000 inhabitants. Jena is also a bustling and important city full of tradition as well as modern industry. This nearly five-hundred year old university has a venerable tradition of being one of Germany’s best institutions of higher learning in many subjects, from history and philosophy to chemistry and physics. Its Jenoptic is one of the leading high-tech companies of Germany and Central Europe which a recent article in the New York Times (April 13, 2007) claims is helping lead to a “renaissance” in German business and commerce. Jena is also blessed by its favorable geographical setting: the city of Weimar lies only fifteen miles away and contains some of Germany’s most important cultural jewels in its numerous museums, libraries, theaters, and homes of distinguished Germans such as Goethe, Schiller, and numerous others. Within about an hour’s driving or train distance from Jena lie a number of distinguished and historical cities such as Leipzig, Halle, Gera and Erfurt, and the powerful centers of Berlin and Dresden are reachable by car or train travel in just over two hours. Finally Jena, situated in the center of the German state of Thuringia, is only a relatively short distance from the Czech Republic, and the city itself as well as the surrounding Thuringian Forest provide wonderful opportunities for walking and hiking in the summer and a variety of winter sports in colder weather. Historical Institute Website http://www.histinst.uni-jena.de/ Historical Institute Faculty Institute Director
Prof. Dr. Norbert Frei,
Professor of Contemporary History Institute Faculty Prof. Dr. Hans-Werner Hahn, Professor of Modern History (19th and 20th Centuries) Prof. Dr. Werner Greiling, Professor of Modern History (18th and 19th Centuries) Prof. Dr. Jürgen John, Professor of Modern Middle German Regional History Prof. Dr. Thomas Kroll, Professor of Western European History Prof. Dr. Jörg Nagler, Professor of Modern North American History Jörg Nagler is full professor of North American History University at the University of Jena. He studied history, American studies, political science and philosophy at the University of Kiel, Indiana University and Brown University and received his Ph.D. in New History with the emphasis of North American history at the University of Kiel in 1984, where he also finished his Habilitation in 1996. He has been a Senior Fellow at the History Department, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver in 2005/06, the Director of the Historical Institute, Schiller University Jena (2005- 2007), director of the John F. Kennedy Institute in Kiel (1992-1996), a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, College Park (1991/1992), and a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. (1987-1992). Prof. Dr. Joachim von Puttkamer, Professor of Eastern European History Prof. Dr. Georg Schmidt, Professor of Early Modern History
Prof.
Dr. Helmut G. Walther, Professor of Medieval History Prof. Dr. Matthias Werner, Professor of Thuringian State History and the Medieval History of Friedrich Schiller University
Prof. em. Dr.
Lutz Niethammer, Professor emeritus of Contemporary History |
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Professor Eric A. Johnson, Director
Center for Transnational and Comparative History, 242B Powers Hall,
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Founded as an academic
institution in 1548 by Prince Elector Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous of
Saxony, Jena first reached university status in 1557 and today continues to be
one of Germany’s most distinguished universities with circa 20,000 students and
more than 2,000 lecturers and researchers. Already by the eighteenth century
Jena had become the home of many leading German intellectuals. Taking its
current name from one of Germany’s most famous writers, Friedrich Schiller,
professor of history at Jena for ten years between 1789 and 1799, the university
was also the home in that period to several of Germany’s world famous
philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Josef Schelling,
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In the nineteenth century Jena continued to
gain in fame after the eventual father of Communism, Karl Marx, took his Ph.D.
there in 1842. But by the end of the nineteenth century, the university started
to put down roots as a renowned center of science and industry, specifically
because of the leadership and research of physicists and chemists such as Carl
Zeiss, Erst Abbe, and Otto Schott. Today the university continues to build its
name in many areas and features a history department boasting world famous
scholars in several fields ranging from ancient history and intellectual history
in the early modern era to the tragic experiences suffered under the Third Reich
and Communist eras. With the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture, Buchenwald
concentration camp, the site of one of Napoleon’s leading battles, and numerous
libraries, archives, and places of historic importance in the immediate
vicinity, Jena offers wonderful opportunities to live and work in a setting that
centuries of students, scholars, and thinkers of all kinds have considered
idyllic.