Thomas Maissen


Thomas Maissen is a professor of modern history at Heidelberg University and co-director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context". As of September 2013 he is detached as director of the German Historical Institute in Paris.

Career

Born to a Finnish mother and a Swiss father, Maissen studied history, Latin and philosophy in Basel, Rome, and Geneva. He completed his dissertation in 1993 under the guidance of the Swiss historian Hans Rudolf Guggisberg. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant professor at the Chair for Early Modern History at the University of Potsdam. From 1996 to 1999, he received fellowships for his habilitation from the Swiss National Science Foundation and other funds and habilitated in 2002 at the University of Zurich with his work Die Geburt der Republic. Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft. From 2002 to 2004, he was associate professor at the University of Lucerne. In addition, from 1996 onwards, he has worked for eight years as editor for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung where he was responsible for the "Historical Analysis". Since 2004, Maissen is full professor for early modern history at Heidelberg University.
In 2006, Maissen became a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg. In addition, he was the founder and speaker of the Heidelberg Graduate School for Humanities and Social Sciences from 2007 to 2012. From 2008 to 2013, Maissen was the coordinator of the joint master programm degree at the Heidelberg University and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In 2008, Maissen became one of the founding members and principal investigators of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context". From 2009 to 2013, he served as a member of the steering committee and eventually, in 2013, as a co-director of the cluster. In 2009, he was a visiting professor at the EHESS and in 2010 he was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. Moreover, form 2009 to 2011, he was a fellow of the research seminar "Legitimität und Religion" at the Centre for Religion, Economy and Politics, which is a joint undertaking by the universities of Basel, Lausanne, Lucerne, and Zurich and the Collegium Helveticum. From 2012 to 2013, he was a fellow of the Marsilius-Kolleg at Heidelberg University.
In September 2013, he became the first non-German director of the German Historical Institute in Paris. Under his leadership, the GHIP widened its geographic focus and initiated a cooperation with the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar through the creation of the research group “La bureaucratisation des sociétés africaines” in 2015.

Research

Maissen works on the history of historiography, the history of political ideas and constitutional history, especially republicanism, mentalities, collective identities, and representations. Furthermore, he is interested in concepts of history, Swiss history, and the history of education. In his dissertation, Maissen investigated how Italians of the Renaissance interpreted the French past His habilitation dealt with "The Birth of the Republic. Concept of the State and Representation in the Early Modern Period of the Swiss Confederation". In his book “Schweizer Heldengeschichten“, he confronted political discourses of right wing Swiss politicians Christoph Blocher and Ueli Maurer with the current state of historical research. This study catalyzed a vivid debate in the media and was described as the “Swiss Historikerstreit”.

Publications

Monographs

Maissen has published the following monographs:
Weblinks