Martin Sabrow is a director of the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and a professor of modern history at Berlin’s Humboldt University. He studied German Literature and Linguistics, History and Political Science in Kiel and Marburg. In 1993, he completed his doctorate at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau. His dissertation discussed political assassinations in the early years of Weimar Republic, with a particular emphasis on Walther Rathenau’s assassination in 1922. In 2000, Dr. Sabrow received his postdoctoral qualification at the Freie Universität Berlin with an analysis of the nature and role of historiography in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1969. Between 1982 and 1993, Dr. Sabrow was an established secondary-school teacher at the Walther Rathenau-Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. From 1993 onwards, he was a research fellow and successively a departmental director at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, before in 2004 he was appointed director of the institute. Furthermore, he served as the chairman of the Federal Commission for the “Future of Coming to Terms with the SED-dictatorship in Public Memory Culture” in 2005 and 2006. He has taught at universities on a national and international level, such as the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Braunschweig, and the Universities of London and Bologna.

Political-cultural history of the 20th century • Research on dictatorships • History of historiography and culture of remembrance