Markus Wegewitz
From 2009 to 2016, Markus Wegewitz studied History and Political Science in Halle, Jena and Amsterdam. He wrote his M.A. thesis „Die »Nacht und Nebel«-Gefangenen als geschichtspolitische Akteure in den Niederlanden, 1945–1995“ („»Nacht und Nebel« prisoners and the Politics of History in the Netherlands, 1945–1995”) during a research term in the Netherlands at the Duitsland Institute and the Institute voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies (NIOD). He worked as a research assistant at the Chair for Media and Public History of the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena and as a freelancer in the ERC-Project “Securing Europe, Fighting its Enemies, 1815–1914”. Apart from that, he is speaker of the working group for German-Dutch history. From 2017 to 2020 he has been working as a scientific assistant and a doctoral student at the Europäisches Kolleg in Jena.
Contact
Research project
In search of the “Other Germany”. Nicolaas Rost and the historical experiences of antifascism, survival and literature (working title)
This dissertation project explores the political life of the writer and survivor of the Dachau concentration camp Nicolaas Rost (1896–1967). Apart from Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and both German states, Rost worked both before and after 1945 as an intellectual intermediary and promoted the ideas of German literature. The question of how Rost’s work was linked to the debates about the European dimensions of National Socialism should be answered especially against the background of his involvement with the associations of the victims of National Socialism and the broad spectrum of his activities in educational work.
However, the project is not to be understood as a typical biography, but as a problem-oriented contextualisation. The various forms of national politics of history, the network of German exile literature, and the development of the forms and narratives of remembering Nazi crimes are to be taken into consideration in equal measure.
As a project with strong links to literary studies and exile research, this dissertation can call on a broad spectrum of sources. Rost’s work as a journalist, his translations, independent publications and correspondence have all left their mark in many European archives.
Reasearch interests
European contemporary history
Politics of history
Organisations of the survivors of National Socialism
Concentration camps
Occupied societies in the Second World War
Select publications
Verschleppt bei Nacht und Nebel. Widerstand und Öffentlichkeit in der politischen Justiz des Nationalsozialismus [Taken at Night in Fog. Resistance. The Resistance and the Public in the Politicised Justice of National Socialism] , in: Erinnern! Aufgabe, Chance, Herausforderung 1 (2014), pp. 48–60.
Der kulturlose Kontinent. Von der Persistenz eines deutschen Ressentiments [The Continent without Culture. About the Persistence of a German Ressentiment] , in: Studentische Fachzeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft Jena 1.1 (2015), pp. 11–18.
Tagungsbericht: Probing the Limits of Categorization. The ‚Bystander‘ in Holocaust History, Amsterdam, 24.09.2015 – 26.09.2015“, in: H-Soz-Kult (12.11.2015)