News (last updated January 9, 2021)
(see also page with archived old news; visitor statistics & guestbook at bottom)

• August 2021: I will be teaching Hist 223AB in W'22 & S'22; and Hist 2c and 500 in S'22.
• Jan. 9, 2021: Just posted to my Niemoeller Quotation page, and on Facebook and Twitter--feel free to share:
  "First they came for the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, and I did nothing. then they came to Charlottesville, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Michigan statehouse, and I looked away. When they came for Congress my party had already lost the Senate, so I could safely say something."

This is a restatement of German pastor Martin Niemoeller's famous mea culpa statement in the late 1940s and early 1950s to suit our time.
I ask: Will having them cower under their desks and get frog-marched to a secure location, like the schoolchildren they refuse to protect from mass shooters, be a lesson to them that sticks?
Oh, I forgot to add Mother's husband Mike Pence, bravest, cravenest of them all.
Background photo by Andrew Harnik, AP.

• July 9, 2020: After a website domain reorganization (from www.history.ucsb.edu/ to marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/ as the base URL) I've done a number of search-replaces to try to fix broken links to images and pdf. If you find a broken link to something you want to see, try editing the URL manually--and if you would, let me know so I can fix it.
  Also, I've made some important updates to my Niemoeller Quotation Page ("First they came for the Communists, ...") with new material I've found and received.
• Apr. 1, 2020: Spring 2020 VIRTUAL Office Hours Tue 11-12:15pm & by appt.
  I'm co-teaching a new "Engaging Humanities" course, INT 137RP "Reinventions of the Past in Germany and Japan," with Prof. Rambelli (Religious Studies) this term. Due to the Covid isolation my W4-5pm section and our Thu 11-12:15 Roundtable lecture will be conducted via zoom, with recordings posted/linked on the course Gauchospace website. We are also creating a more permanent, publicly accessible website to archive this course.
• Sept. 5, 2018: Added to my Publications and Hitler Project pages: my review essay discussing Thomas Weber's 2017 Hitler biography, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (New York: Basic, 2017), 422 pages. . (8 page pdf of author's last version)
  • I was one of three authors who wrote essays on the book for the Israeli journal Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, for their June 2018 issue. The author's response to our essays was published as well (Dapim June 2018 TOC)
• Sept. 3, 2018: Added to my Niemöller Quotation page:
  I often receive requests for evaluation or comment on uses of the quotation. For instance, in Durham, North Carolina the initiative FirstTheImmigrants.org created a website and bumper sticker/yard sign templates to mobilize people to speak out against the Trump administration's anti-immigration policies. My involvement was to advise them on the history of the saying (that is, what version to consider original) and their rationale for modifying it for our current context to start with immigrants. See their page on the "Bystanders Credo" for details.
• Feb. 1, 2018: Added to Publications page an article summarizing my most-read and most-cited research::
  • "The Origin and Reception of Martin Niemöller's Quotation 'First They Came for the Communists...'," in: Michael Berenbaum et al (eds.), Remembering for the Future: Armenia, Auschwitz, and Beyond (Paragon, 2016), 173-199. (18 page pdf; non-ocr version--2Mb instead of 12Mb)

• Currency Conversion page
  Historical dollars-to-Marks conversion tables and inflation calculators
• Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site Project page
  (concentration camp memorial site: links and documents)
• German History Links page
  (links to scholarly resources; this is my browser home screen)
• Günther Anders page (German philosopher, 1902-1992)
• Herbert Marcuse Official website (German-American philosopher & my grandfather, 1898-1979); massive updates to Publications and Books About pages, 6/15/05
• Hitler in History Project
  The topic of my current research.
• Holocaust Oral History Project website
  (the story of a Holocaust survivor, with student-prepared "how-to" pages)
• Leonhard Roth page (priest imprisoned in Dachau, lived 1904-1960)
• Martin Niemöller Quotation page (origin of "First they came for the Communists ...") (updated Feb. 2007 with a pre-1955 source) (major update planned 2007)
• Reception History: Definition and Quotations page
  (this is my approach to history)(update Aug. 2005)
• White Rose/George Wittenstein page about the anti-Nazi student resistance group, in particular about the involvement of retired local (Santa Barbara) heart surgeon George Wittenstein.
  
• 
  The UCSB mnogo engine supposedly has more up-to-date indexing; otherwise the google site search is superior for returning important pages:

Research Narrative (back to top)

Carl Spitzweg, "Scholar," 1865

I would call the kind of history I do "reception history" (definition and quotations about it).
In April 2003 the UCLA Daily Bruin did a story on UC professors conducting research on Holocaust-related topics. It contains a short summary about my research. (Also syndicated nationally in PBS's Washington Week [2/2013: from web archive].)

• Holocaust education in Germany, and the United StatesUses and effectiveness of technology in history educationHolocaust museums, memorials, and memorial sites Popular conceptions of the Nazi era in Germany, 1933-present New social movements in West Germany (esp. 1950s and 1960s) Oppositional movements in East Germany Dealing with the legacy of Stalinism in former East Germany (e.g. Abwicklung, Stasi, continuity of elites)
• The role of formative historical experiences in creating "age cohorts" with commonalities of outlook

• Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 601 pages, 88 maps and illustrations.
• US $5-75 at amazon.com (much cheaper used),
  £22.36 from amazon.co.uk
  publisher's desk copy policy
• Selected reviews (full texts of most reviews are on my Dachau page):
  • review by Nicholas Stargardt in the Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 7, 2002
  • review by Galina Vromen in Ha'aretz, Nov. 8, 2001
  • review by Istvan Deak in The New Republic, Nov. 5, 2001
  • review by Wolfgang Benz in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 18, 2001
  • more reviews available on my Dachau page
• "West German Strategies of Commemoration," in: Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies 3:2(1987). original text, published article w/ ill. p. 1, p. 2

  Carl Spitzweg (artist from Dachau) "Book Worm", 1850

  "Das ehemalige Konzentrationslager Dachau: Der mühevolle Weg zur Gedenkstätte, 1945-1968," in: Dachauer Hefte 6(1990), 182-205 [reprinted Munich: dtv, 1994]. text without notes

  "The Revival of Holocaust Awareness in West Germany, Israel, and the United States" in: Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, Detlef Junker (eds.), 1968: The World Transformed (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 421-38. text without notes, text with notes (scanned/OCR copy by a course at Univ. of Erfurt, Spr. 2002, available on archive.org), publisher's web page, used in a Spring 2003 course The World Transformed ? – The 1960s from an International Perspective at Rutgers Univ.

  "Dachau: The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Memorials," in: Peter Hayes (ed.), Lessons and Legacies III: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999), 138-168, 278-287. text without notes; used in an "Art and the Holocaust" course at Depaul Univ., Fall 2000

• "Experiencing the Jewish Holocaust in Los Angeles: The Beit Hashoah--Museum of Tolerance," on-line journal Other Voices 2:1(2000).

Personal background (back to top)

• my CV is the standard roadmap of my academic life.
• I put together a page of notes about myself that conference panel chairs can use to introduce me before public presentation. (updated 6/09)
• in Jan. 2005 I made a "personal page" at www.marcuse.org

• In case you logged on to find out, the leftist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was my grandfather.
  For more information about him, see:
  • a short biography I drafted for a presentation in 1997, or
  • Official Herbert Marcuse website I maintain about him at my family's marcuse.org web site.  
  See also my son Aaron's homepage and my page of links to other pages he's made UCSB West Campus Point faculty housing homepage (where I live)
  Jessica Consignment store website