Directors
Maria Höhn
Marion Musser Lloyd ’32 Professor in History and International Studies
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Maria Höhn, who teaches German history at Vassar College, is an established scholar of the American military presence in Germany, and her book, GIs and Fräuleins, published in 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press, was the first book ever to address the experiences of black soldiers in Germany. A German translation of her book Amis, Cadillacs, und “Negerliebchen”: GIs im Nachkriegsdeutschland was published with Verlag Berlin-Brandenburg in 2008. That book is currently being translated into the Chinese, forthcoming with Beijing Yanziyue Culture & Art Studio in Beijing.
Together with Seungsook Moon, she has co-authored and co-edited Over There: Living with The U.S. Military Empire from World War Two to the Present, which explores the impact of U.S. military bases on gender and race relations in West Germany, South Korea, and Japan (Duke, 2010). A Korean translation of Over There was published in 2017 as 오버데어: 2차세계대전부터 현재까지 미군제국과 함께 살아온 삶 by Greenbee Press, Seoul. In 2017, the Korean edition of Over There was chosen by the South Korean Academy of Arts and Sciences as one of the outstanding scholarly books for 2017.
Höhn and Klimke also wrote a history of the experience of African-American soldiers, activists and intellectuals in Germany in the twentieth century entitled A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs, and Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). A revised and expanded version of that book, was published in German in 2016 as Ein Hauch von Freiheit? Afroamerikanische Soldaten, die US Bürgerrechtsbewegung und Deutschland (trancsript, 2016).
Höhn has served as a historical consultant and co-narrator for a number of television documentaries on the impact of the American military on Germany society, and the experience of African American GIs in that country. She advised filmmaker Maia Wechsler for Melvin and Jean: An American Story, a documentary that aired on French public TV and premiered at the NYC Documentary Film Festival in November 2012. She also collaborated with Annette Baumeister on a documentary on The Germans and the Vietnam War, which aired in May 2013 on German Public TV. Broadview TV and Smithsonian Channel produced a 90-minute documentary based inspired by “Breath of Freedom,” directed by Dag Freyer and narrated by Cuba Gooding, Jr., which aired on Smithsonian Channel and German public television (Ein Hauch von Freiheit) in 2013 and 2014.
Most recently, she served as the historical consultant for Ein Hauch von Amerika, a six-part miniseries directed by Dror Zahavi and produced by Simone Höller and Greta Gilles of FFPnewmedia for German public TV (SWR and ARD). She also advised Sigrid Faltin of White Pepper Film who produced a 45 minute-documentary that accompanies the series. Both were inspired by Höhn’s book GIs and Fräuleins; they aired on German public TV in December 2021.
Martin Klimke
Vice Provost and Associate Professor of History, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Martin Klimke is Vice Provost and Associate Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi, as well as Global Network Associate Professor of History, Faculty of Arts & Science, New York University. In addition, he is an associate at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at the University of Heidelberg. His 2005 dissertation The Other Alliance: Global Protest and Student Unrest in West Germany and the U.S., 1962-1972 was awarded the prestigious Ruprecht-Karls Prize for best doctoral thesis at Heidelberg University in 2006, which was published by Princeton University Press in January 2010. Klimke has been working extensively in the area of transnational history and social movements and has published numerous articles on processes of cultural transfer and global protest networks. He is the co-editor of the publication series Protest, Culture and Society (Berghahn Books, New York/Oxford) and, among others, 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77 (New York/London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). From 2006-2010, he was the director and coordinator of the international Marie-Curie project European Protest Movements since 1945, which is supported by the European Commission.
Klimke’s research focuses on the intersection of political and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on diplomatic and transnational history. He has published essays on the transnational dimension of the African-American civil rights movement, Black Power in Germany in the 1960/70s, and has co-edited Blacks and Germans, German Blacks: Germany and the Black Diaspora, 1450-1914 (2013/2016), which explores the changing processes of interaction and perception between people of African descent and German-speaking parts of Europe from the eleventh century to the beginning of World War I.
He is currently working on the nuclear crisis and the Cold War of the 1980s, and is writing a transnational biography of Petra Kelly, international peace activist and co-founder of the German Green Party.
Höhn and Klimke also wrote a history of the experience of African-American soldiers, activists and intellectuals in Germany in the twentieth century entitled A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs, and Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). A revised and expanded version of that book, was published in German in 2016 as Ein Hauch von Freiheit? Afroamerikanische Soldaten, die US Bürgerrechtsbewegung und Deutschland (trancsript, 2016).