CityLog
Visiting the Jena Center, May 2, 2007
The Jena Center for the History of the Twentieth Century at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena was established with a generous gift by Drs. Christiane and Nicolaus-Juergen Weickart. The money was pledged to the university when Norbert Frei took up his chair as professor of twentieth century history. Professor Frei was a John F. Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University in 1985-86.
Jena has been a center of study since the sixteenth century and its reputation as an internationally renowned university developed in the nineteenth century. The city also served famously as the headquarters of Zeiss Optical. With the end of the GDR, Jena has remained a thriving university town, attracting students from all over Germany. The university is home to 20,000 students, with about fifteen percent coming from the former West. The university places an emphasis on international collaboration, and the Jena Center's regular hosting of a guest professor from abroad is an example of that international initiative. The Center integrates a number of teaching and institutional features that make it stand out in Germany. Established in 2006, the program of the Jena Center is anchored by the institute of history at the Friedrich Schiller University. In addition, every semester, a distinguished scholar is invited to the center, and offers a series of broad, reflective essays on the themes of twentieth century history. Saul Friedlaender was the guest professor in the Winter semester of 2006-2007. And Fritz Stern took up that position in the summer semester. The Jena Center also has a graduate student program, one that provides structured course work for young scholars. Most of the students in the graduate program of the Jena Center have offices in the same building, facilitating exchange and informal discussions about method and research, and making doctoral study a more collegial endeavor than commonly experienced at German universities.
The Jena Center, in its inaugural year, has focused on the philosophy of history, and on the theoretical problems of writing about the previous century with its unexampled destruction and violence. Topics such as collective memory, the German Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, and German-Jewish dialogue, are high on the agenda of the Jena Center. The institute views history writing not only as a disciplinary endeavor, but also as an act of social responsibility. The faculty has special expertise in the Holocaust, the transition from the Nazi times to the postwar period, and the 1960s era. The Center published a documentation of its opening conference entitled, "What does it mean to study the history of the twentieth century, and to what end?" The collected volume, edited by Norbert Frei, with contributions from a large number of eminent scholars, poses fascinating questions about the lessons of the previous century, and the social role of the historian in bringing the past to light. For more on the volume click here. In the fall term of 2007, Friedrich Schiller University Jena will offer the new interdisciplinary masters course "History and Politics of the 20th Century". The course is open to students from Germany and abroad who have completed their first academic degree. Click here for more information on this new program.