Link from the show:
About my guest:
I was always passionate about history. My elementary school teacher told my parents: "He will study history" - and she was right! I studied Modern and Medieval history, Italian and German literature at the Heinrich Heine Universität Duesseldorf and the Universita degli Studi di Napoli. I wrote my PhD thesis on the Prussian Minister of War and German Chief of Staff, General Erich v. Falkenhayn (1861-1922), one of Imperial Germany's key protagonists during the First World War. The PhD was funded by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and my thesis was supervised by Wolfgang J. Mommsen.
After finishing my PhD and after a year as councellor in the German parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) I got funding for a major research project on international relations before 1914. The project run in close cooperation with Wolfgang Mommsen and was granted by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Cologne. The outcome was a large monograph entitled "The Triple Alliance and European Great Power Politics, 1881-1915" and several articles. I finished the project as a Feodor-Lynen scholar (a two years grant by the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Foundation) in Vienna, cooperating with Prof. Helmut Rumpler. I was awarded my "Habilitation" at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf in 1999 and got there in 2003 a honorary professorship.
I taught from 1999 to 2002 at the University of Duesseldorf. At the same time I won another major research grant by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation for research on Wilhelm II as Supreme Warlord during the First World War. The result - a 1100 pages edition of new sources - was published in 2005 by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Science.
I was offered in August 2002 a DAAD Professorship of Modern German History at Emory University in Atlanta which I gladly accepted. Among other things I organised a large international conference in 2004 on the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 which was opened by President Jimmy Carter.
I left Atlanta in summer 2006 after accepting my current position at the University of Leeds. I organized several conferences in Leeds and created and am responsible for our Master program in "War and Strategy" which is running since 2016.
On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War