Marion Detjen

Marion Detjen attended the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, and then studied European history and German literature and linguistics in Berlin and Munich, where she received her MA and passed her first state exam. She worked for several years as a freelance curator, teacher, writer, and activist, before receiving her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on rescue helpers after the building of the Berlin Wall. 2009 - 2014 Marion worked and taught at Humboldt University Berlin, 2015 - 2107 on a DFG-position at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Center for Contemporary History) in Potsdam. She has been teaching migration history and global history as well as “research creation” courses that combine historical research and art production at Bard College Berlin since 2016, and is director of Bard College Berlin's „Program for International Education and Social Change“ (PIESC). She is currently writing a book on the German-American publisher in exile Helen Wolff and her most favorite author Uwe Johnson. Her interests include German and GDR post-war history, migration history, global history, constitutional history, the history of Berlin, of publishing, gender, and the relationship between the private and the public. Marion is a regular contributor to the column „10nach8“ at ZEIT-Online as part of its editorial team, and she is a co-founder and board member of "Wir machen das," a coalition of action focused on the migration crisis, where she recently set up “Helen Wolff grants” to support female writers at risk in Afghanistan and other regions of crisis. 

Publications

Monographs:

• Helen Wolff, Hintergrund für Liebe. Das Buch eines Sommers, edited and with an essay by Marion Detjen, Bonn (Weidle Verlag) 2020.
• Die Deutschen und das Grundgesetz. Geschichte und Grenzen unserer Verfassung, together with Max Steinbeis and Stephan Detjen, Munich (Pantheon) 2009, Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Band 763.
• Ein Loch in der Mauer. Die Geschichte der Fluchthilfe im geteilten Deutschland 1961-1989, Munich (Siedler Verlag) 2005.
• „Zum Staatsfeind ernannt". Widerstand, Resistenz und Verweigerung gegen das NS-Regime in München, ed. by the City of Munich, Munich (Buchendorfer Verlag) 1998.

 
Essays/Articles/Book chapters since 2020:

• "What Kind of Science Is This? On the documenta fifteen ‘Expert Panel'", e-flux, September 23, 2022.
• "Was ist das ‚Volk‘? Anmerkungen zu einem Kernbegriff im Grundgesetz nach dem Beginn des russischen Angriffskrieges auf die Ukraine", in: Die Politische Meinung, Nr. 574, May/June 2022, p. 32-37.
• "The Germans’ ‚Refugee‘: Concepts and Images of the ‚Refugee‘ in Germany’s Twisted History Between Acceptance and Denial as a Country of Immigration and Refuge", in: Erol Balkan and Zumray Kutlu-Tonak (Eds.), Refugees on the Move. Crisis and Response in Turkey and Europe, Oxford & New York (Berghahn Books) 2022, pp. 209-238.
• "Patriotismus", in: David Ranan (Ed.), Sprach Gewalt: Missbrauchte Wörter undandere politische Kampfbegriffe, Bonn (Dietz Verlag) 2021, pp. 42-52.
• "'At my death, burn or throw away unread!‘ Zum Hintergrund des Hintergrunds", in: Helen Wolff, Hintergrund für Liebe. Das Buch eines Sommers, edited and with an essay by Marion Detjen, Bonn (Weidle Verlag) 2020, pp. 119-215.
• "'Wir schaffen das‘ oder ‚revolutionäres Bewusstsein‘? Überlegungen zur Willkommenskultur 2015", in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte,  30-32/2020, pp. 20-26.

Contact
Dr. Marion Detjen
History
Email: m.detjen[at]berlin.bard.edu