Interview with Joachim von Puttkamer--December 6, 2011

Interview with Joachim von Puttkamer, Professor of East European History at the Friedrich Schiller University and co-director of the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, Germany. Interview conducted in Jena, Germany on December 6, 2011.

Professor von Puttkamer is the author of a number of books and articles, including a monograph on schooling in Hungary 1867-1914 (Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn: Slowaken, Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee, 1867-1914) published in 2003, and a synthetic overview of East-Central European history and historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries (Ostmitteleuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert) in 2010.

Interview Themes

Puttkamer's path to the study of East-Central Europe and his first monograph on the regulation of factories in pre-revolutionary Russia (2:22)
How contemporary politics in Germany have influenced the study of East-Central Europe (11:10)
Strengths and weaknesses of Anglo-American, German, and East-Central European academic cultures and historiographies compared (16:42)
Relationship between those who study Western Europe and those who study East-Central Europe -- is there a "European" historiography? (25:00)
Why aren't East-Central Europeanists writing broader European histories? (32:45)
On the origins and activities of the Imre Kertész Kolleg (38:40)
How Puttkamer views his own role as a historian of this region (47:52)
The most exciting work in the field; opportunities and challenges (56:35)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/28222