The Engaged Historian

Stefan Berger has directed the Institute for Social Movements at the Ruhr University Bochum and served as the Chairman of the History of the Ruhr Foundation since 2011. Since 2016 he has been Honorary Professor at Cardiff University in the UK. Previously he held the position of Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester.

List of Illustrations



Introduction: Historical Writing and Civic Engagement: A Symbiotic Relationship

Stefan Berger



Chapter 1. Engagement: Metahistorical Considerations on a Disputed Attitude in Historical Studies

Jörn Rüsen



Chapter 2. The Ideal of Justice and Its Significance for Historians as Engaged Intellectuals

Martin Wiklund



Chapter 3. Committed Writing: History and Narrative Communication Revisited

Kalle Pihlainen



Chapter 4. The Historian-King: Political Leaders, Historical Consciousness and Wise Government

Antoon de Baets



Chapter 5. Historians with a Cause: Refugees’ Memory and Historical Practices in Interwar Greece

Emilia Salvanou



Chapter 6. The Making of the Zhanguo Ce Clique: The Politicization of History Knowledge in Wartime China

Xin Fan



Chapter 7. The Historicization of World War II in Greece After the Civil War: Looking Back on the Public Debate over a Lecture by British Historian C. M. Woodhouse

Manos Avgeridis



Chapter 8. Historians as Dissidents: Intellectual ‘Eros’ in Action

Nina Witoszek



Chapter 9. The Social Movement History as a social movement in and of itself

Michihiro Okamoto



Chapter 10. Professional Historical Writing and Human Rights Engagement in the Twenty-First Century: Innovative Approaches and their Dilemmas

Nina Schneider



Chapter 11. Using the Past: The Brazilian Cinema between Censorship and Representation

Meize Lucas



Chapter 12. Historians and the Trauma of the Past: The Destruction of Security Files on Citizens in Greece, 1989

Vangelis Karamanolakis



Chapter 13. Historians and/in the New Media

Effi Gazi



Chapter 14. Street History: Coming to Terms with the Past in Occupy Movements

Antonis Liakos



Afterword: The Historian as an Engaged Intellectual: Historical Writing and Social Criticism – A Personal Retrospective

Georg G. Iggers



Index