Hubertus Knabe

For more than 40 years, historian Hubertus Knabe has worked and published on the GDR and communism. His oeuvre includes more than a dozen books and over two hundred essays and newspaper articles.

After his parents fled the GDR, Knabe was born in Unna in 1959. He studied history and German at the University of Bremen and received his doctorate in 1991 from the Department of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin. From 1983 to 1985, he was press spokesman for the Green parliamentary group in Bremen's state parliament. After further professional positions, he became head of research at the Stasi Records Authority in 1992. In 2000, he was appointed founding director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, which he headed for 18 years. Since 2020, Knabe has been researching at the Chair of Modern History at the University of Würzburg. He was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his work in 2009. He is a member of the Contemporary History Advisory Board of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

The historian has published a number of fundamental works on German post-war history, a.o. "Die unterwanderte Republik. Stasi im Westen" (The Infiltrated Republic, Stasi in the West), "Der diskrete Charme der DDR. Stasi und Westmedien" (The Discreet Charm of the GDR. Stasi and Western Media), "17. Juni 1953. Ein deutscher Aufstand" (17 June 1953. A German Uprising), "Tag der Befreiung? Das Kriegsende in Ostdeutschland" (Day of Liberation? The End of Wold War II in East Germany), "Die Täter sind unter uns. Über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur" (The Perpetrators are Among Us. On Whitewashing the SED Dictatorship), "Honeckers Erben. Die Wahrheit über die Linke" (Honecker's Heirs. The Truth about the Party The Left). Knabe also regularly writes analyses for newspapers such as Die Welt, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, FAZ or Berliner Morgenpost.