December 17, 2009

By Emily Matras '12

Michael Meng

Visiting Professor of History Michael Meng was recently awarded the prestigious Fritz Stern Prize, given annually by the German Historical Institute to recognize the best dissertation in the country on German history or the history of Germans.

Meng's dissertation, titled "Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Sites in Postwar Germany and Poland," explores how Germans, Poles, and Jews dealt with Jewish sites in five cities-Warsaw, Wroclaw, Berlin, Essen, and Potsdam-from 1945 to the present.

The dissertation explores urban space, memory, tourism, nostalgia, and post-war Jewish life in Central Europe. "When I began my research, I asked, ‘What happened to these spaces, and how did Germans, Poles, and Jews encounter these spaces?'" said Meng. His research, which he conducted in each of the five cities, bought him to an unexpected conclusion.

"When I started, I thought Germans, Poles, and Jews would deal with these spaces in clearly distinct ways," explained Meng. "However, I found striking similarities across two different national contexts and political systems. In the 1950s and '60s, many of these sites were torn down, but by the '70's and '80s a sudden interest in preserving the few still standing started to emerge. Although there were important differences city by city, this shift took place across national and political borders."

Meng was nominated for the award by his dissertation adviser at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Winning the award was a great start to his first semester at Davidson. "I was pretty excited when I found out," said Meng. "As the major award in German history, winning this was a nice honor indeed."

Meng is currently concentrating on "pushing the arguments" of his dissertation to turn it into a book, so he can reach a broader audience. If the German Historical Institute's praise of the dissertation is any indication, such a book will be well received by German scholars.

According to the Laudatio provided by the German Historical Institute, "This beautifully written, empirically rich, and often brilliant work will make an immediate and lasting impact on such disparate fields as West and East German history, Polish history, Jewish history, the history of anti-Semitism, urban history, and Cold War history."

But Meng hopes his dissertation work will also help his students here at Davidson. "I try to incorporate my work into my teaching as much as I can," said Meng. "I look at German history from the perspective of Eastern Europe, and so I encourage my students to think of how Europe is constructed in terms of east and west. Also, in the later chapters of my dissertation, I explore cosmopolitanism, a concept that I'm going to incorporate into my classes next semester."

Meng first became interested in Germany history his sophomore year at Boston College after he read a book by the namesake of his recent prize, Fritz Stern himself. After his undergraduate years at Boston College, Meng used a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Europe. While there, said Meng, "I happened upon this plaque in memory of a Jewish site in Potsdam, and that's what got me interested in my dissertation topic."

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,800 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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