Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch

Fellow during the summer term 2021

Frank Bösch is a historian working on European history in a global perspective. He director of the Center for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam and Professor of European 20th Century History at the University
of Potsdam. His more recent publications include “Media and Historical Change. Germany in International Perspective, 1400 to the Present, Oxford/New York 2015, and a monograph on global crises and events of the
late 1970s (Zeitenwende 1979. Als die Welt von heute begann, Munich 2019), which was two months on the list of bestselling non-fictional books in Germany.

At the Munich Centre of Global History, he will work on his new book project on interactions of West Germans with non-democratic states. This project asks how the federal government, businesses, journalist, human
rights activist and civil society interacted politically and economically with South European and non-European dictatorships past 1945. The influence of the international public, diplomacy and NGOs is also considered. This book analyses the compromise-building practices, the methods used by states to distance themselves from one another, and the positions adopted with respect to international sanction regimes.

The extent to which West German actors developed pragmatic partnerships or human rights campaigns is investigated with respect to different types of authoritarian rule. I focus on right-wing military dictatorships (like Greece, Chile, South Korea, Iran), but also consider a socialist republic with references to Islam (Libya) and a socialist country like China.