Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann

Associate Professor


Research Interests

Late Modern Europe: Germany; Human Rights and Internationalism; Global Urban History; Conceptual History; Critical Theory

I am an historian of German, European and International History from the late 18th century to the present. I have also an ongoing interest in social, legal and political thought as well as in the theory of history.

My most recent book is an intellectual biography of Reinhart Koselleck and an exploration of his premise that twentieth-century experiences of time require a new theory of history. Currently, I am working on two research projects: a book-length essay on human rights internationalism from imperial beginnings to our global present, and a monograph on everyday life in Berlin in the 1940s, as it went from multinational capital of the Nazi Empire to shattered metropolis of the early Cold War. My previous two books traced the afterlives of Enlightenment concepts and social practices (sociability, cosmopolitanism) in the long nineteenth century and their late twentieth-century resurgence. Together with Samuel Moyn, I am the editor of the Cambridge series Human Rights in History

My writings appear simultaneously in German and English on both sides of the Atlantic and have been translated into several other languages. At Berkeley, I am affiliated with the Institute for European Studies, the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute, the Institute for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Institute for International Studies, the Department of Rhetoric, the Department of German and The Program in Critical Theory


Education

Dr. phil., Universität Bielefeld (1999, summa cum laude)

M.A. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1993)


Recent Awards and Fellowships

Guggenheim Fellow, 2017-2018

Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Institute for Advanced Studies, 2017-2018 

Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 2015-2016

Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center, 2015-2016

Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, School of History, Spring 2016 (declined)

Fellow, Shelby Cullum Davis Center, Princeton University, Fall 2015 (declined)

Senior Fellow, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), 2010-2011 


Books

Geschichte der Menschenrechte. Ein Rückblick (Berlin: Suhrkamp, forthcoming; English transl. Human Rights. A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, under contract).

Cover, Der Riss in der Zeit.

Der Riss in der Zeit. Kosellecks ungeschriebene Historik (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2023).

Co-editor and co-translator, Reinhart Koselleck, Sediments of Time. On Possible Histories (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). 

Co-editor, The Ethics of Seeing: Photography and Twentieth-Century German History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018). 

Sotsial'noe obshchenie i demokratiiaAssotsiatsii i grazhdanskoe obshchestvo v transnatsional'noi perspektive, 1750–1914 (Moskva: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2017).

Co-editor, Seeking Peace in the Wake of War: Europe, 1943-1947 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015).

Editor, Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Editor, Moralpolitik. Geschichte der Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010).

Co-editor, Demokratie im Schatten der Gewalt: Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010).

Shimin kessha to minshu shugi, 1750-1914 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2009).

Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society, 1840-1918 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007). 

Civil Society, 1750-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006).

Geselligkeit und Demokratie: Vereine und zivile Gesellschaft im transnationalen Vergleich, 1750-1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). 

Co-editor, Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel: Innenansichten des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).

Die Politik der Geselligkeit: Freimaurerlogen in der deutschen Bürgergesellschaft, 1840-1918, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler et al., (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), winner of the Hedwig Hintze Prize of the Association of German Historians.


Selected Articles, Book Chapters & Essays

"Die totale Zukunft. Charlotte Beradt und Reinhart Koselleck über Traumerfahrungen der 1930er Jahre," In Jens Elberfeld et al. (eds.), Erträumte Geschichte(n). Zur Historizität von Träumen, Visionen und Utopien (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2022), 141-162.

"Forum: The Unexpectedness of Events. GDR-Born Academics on Becoming Historians after 1989-1990. Jennifer Allen with Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Christina Morina and Patrice Poutrus", Central European History 53 (2020), 636-651.

"Repetition and Rupture. Reinhart Koselleck's Theory of History for a World in Crisis," Aeon, 1 September 2020.

“Die zerstörte Metropole. Berlin zwischen den Zeiten, 1943-1947,” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte 13 (2019), 61-78.

 “Ist die Zeit der Menschenrechte vorbei?” Die Zeit, 5 December 2018; English transl. “Are Human Rights History?Los Angeles Review of Books, 2 June 2019. 

 Co-author, “Introduction: Translating Koselleck,” In Reinhart Koselleck, Sediments of Time. On Possible Histories, ed. Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), ix-xxxi. 

“Koselleck in America,” New German Critique, 44 (2017), 167-188; Special Issue: Transatlantic Theory Transfer: Missed Encounters, ed. Anson Rabinbach and Andreas Huyssen.

"Rückblick auf die Menschenrechte," Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäische Denken 71 (2017), 5-20.

 “Haben die Menschenrechte eine Geschichte?” 7. Gerald Stourzh-Vorlesung zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte und der Demokratie, Universität Wien, 20 May 2015, ed. Thomas Angerer et al., Wien 2016.

“Human Rights and History,” Past and Present 232 (2016), 279-310;
          Spanish transl. “Derechos humanos e historia,” Revista Latinoamericana de Derecho Internacional 6 (2017), 1-37;
          Portuguese transl. Revista Tempo e Argumento (forthcoming).

“Ins Freie Fallen: Das Kriegsende 1945 als Ursprung der Gegenwart,” Die Zeit, 29 April 2015.

“Germans Into Allies: Writing a Diary in 1945,” In Olivier Wieviorka et al., Seeking Peace in the Wake of War: Europe, 1943-1947 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press/Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015), 63-90.

“Einleitung,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38 (2012), pp. 539-44; Special Issue: Neue Menschenrechtsgeschichte, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann.

“Introduction: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Reloaded?,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 7 (2012), 78-86; Special Issue: “Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Reloaded? Writing the Conceptual History of the Twentieth Century,” ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Kathrin Kollmeier. 

 “Gazing at Ruins: German Defeat as Visual Experience,” Journal of Modern European History, 9 (2011), 328-50; Special Issue: “Post-Catastrophic Cities,” ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Martin Kohlrausch;
          reprinted In The Ethics of Seeing: Photography and Twentieth-Century German History, ed. Jennifer V. Evans et al. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 138-156.

Co-author, “Introduction: Post-Catastrophic Cities,” Journal of Modern European History, 9 (2011), 308-13; Special Issue: “Postcatastrophic Cities,” ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Martin Kohlrausch.

“Germany is No More: Defeat, Occupation, and the Postwar Order,” In Oxford Handbook of Modern German History, ed. Helmut Walser Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 597-618.

“Zur Anthropologie geschichtlicher Erfahrungen bei Reinhart Koselleck und Hannah Arendt,” In Begriffene Geschichte. Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. Hans Joas and Peter Vogt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2010), 171-204;
          Spanish transl.: In Conceptos que hacen historia. En torno a Reinhart Koselleck. ed. Felipe Torres (Santiago de Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica, forthcoming).

“Introduction: Genealogies of Human Rights,” In Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1-26.

“Besiegte, Besatzer, Beobachter: Das Kriegsende im Tagebuch,” in Demokratie im Schatten der Gewalt: Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg, ed. Daniel Fulda et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), 25-55.

“Einführung: Zur Genealogie der Menschenrechte,” In Moralpolitik. Geschichte der Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Göttingen: Wallstein 2010), 7-37.

“Koselleck, Arendt, and the Anthropology of Historical Experiences,” History and Theory 49 (May 2010), 212-236.

“Was die Zukunft birgt: Über Reinhart Kosellecks Historik,” Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 63 (2009), 546-50.

“Response: Colonial Civil Society,” De Negentiende Eeuw 32 (2008), 143-47  [Special Issue: Review Symposium of Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Civil Society, 1750-1914].

“Zwischen Krieg und Frieden: Über demokratische Besatzung,” Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 61 (2007), 973-77.

“Democracy and Associations in the Long Nineteenth-Century: Toward a Transnational Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003), 269-99.

“Tocquevilles Demokratie in Amerika und die gesellige Gesellschaft seiner Zeit,” In Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn: Historische Semantiken politischer Leitbegriffe, ed. Herfried Münkler et al. (Berlin: Akademie, 2001), 303-25. 

“Civility, Male Friendship and Masonic Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Gender & History 13 (2001), 224-48.

“Nationalism and the Quest for Moral Universalism: German Freemasonry, 1860-1914,” In The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to World War I, ed. Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 254-79.

“Bürger zweier Welten? Juden und Freimaurer im 19. Jahrhundert,” Bürger, Juden, Deutsche: Zur Geschichte von Vielfalt und Grenzen in Deutschland, 1780-1933 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 97-119.

“Brothers or Strangers? Jews and Freemasons in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” German History 18 (2000), 143-61.

Co-author, “Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel: Zum Problem individueller Lebensführung im 19. Jahrhundert,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 23 (1997), 333-59.

“La politica dei miti,” in La storia infinita: Contributi in tema di nazione e nazionalismo in Europa, ed. Vito Gironda (Rome: Antonio Russo Editore, 1996), 87-97.

“Mythos und Geschichte: Leipziger Gedenkfeiern der Völkerschlacht im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” In Nation und Emotion: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich, 19.-20. Jahrhundert, ed. Etienne François et. al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 111-32.

“Sakraler Monumentalismus um 1900: Das Leipziger Völkerschlachtdenkmal,” In Der Politische Totenkult: Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne, ed. Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann (Munich: Fink, 1994), 105-31.


Recent Reviews

Holly Case, The Age of Questions, Journal of Modern History 92 (2020), 918-920.

François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, American Historical Review 121 (2016), 535-536.

Niklas Olsen, History in the Plural. An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 70 (2015), 506-508.

Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946-1949, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 67 (2012), 1185-1187.

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman

Contact

3215 Dwinelle Hall

slhoffmann@berkeley.edu

Office Hours