Prof. Jörg Ganzenmüller - New Chair of Totalitarianism Studies

Jörg Ganzenmüller studied in Freiburg i. Br. Modern and Contemporary History, Eastern European History and Scientific Politics. He received his doctorate there in 2003 with a dissertation on besieged Leningrad during the Second World War. In 2004, he moved to Friedrich Schiller University Jena as a Research Associate, where he completed his habilitation in 2010 with a study on the integration of the Polish nobility into the Russian Tsarist Empire in the 18th/19th century. After holding the Chair of Eastern European History there from 2010 to 2014, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Ettersberg Foundation in Weimar in 2014 and Professor of European Dictatorship Comparison at the University of Jena in 2017. Since December 1, 2025, he has been Director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research and holds the Chair of Totalitarianism Research at TU Dresden.

Name: Prof. Jörg Ganzenmüller
Position/Professorship: Chair of Totalitarianism Studies and Director of the HAIT
Institute/Faculty: Institute of Arts, Humanities and Social Science

What are your core research areas and research interests?
I deal with the functioning of the dictatorships of the 20th century and how subsequent societies dealt with the dictatorial past. The focus is on National Socialism, Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the SED dictatorship, whereby I always look at these from a comparative European perspective.

What was your most interesting or exciting research project?
Looking back, the most exciting thing was working on my dissertation. In it, I examined the functional mechanisms of the Stalinist Soviet Union during the Second World War, specifically under the specific conditions in Leningrad, which was besieged by the Wehrmacht. Here I was able to work in Russian archives, whose holdings on Soviet history became accessible for the first time during this period. Here I had the impression that I was able to make previously unknown sources accessible to researchers and do real pioneering work. In addition, the working conditions in Russian archives were sometimes a bit of an adventure in themselves and you could tell many bizarre stories after your stay in the archives.

What project are you currently working on?
I am currently working on a research project that deals with the question of when and how the murder of the European Jews was dealt with in our schools, in a German-German comparison.

What should never be missing from your desk?
Chocolate, which I wisely hide in a desk drawer.

Do you have a favorite quote? If so, which one and who is it from?
"The future was better in the past." (Karl Valentin)

What was the last book you read?
Christoph Hein: The Ship of Fools

More information about you can be found at:
https://hait.tu-dresden.de/ext/institut/mitarbeiterprofil-9404/