Raffael Scheck

Raffael Scheck, who was born in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), is Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of modern European history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine (USA), where he has taught since 1994. He received his Master’s Degree at the University of Zürich and his Ph.D. at Brandeis University in 1993. In 2003, he completed a Habilitation at the University of Basel. Scheck is the author of five books and more than thirty articles and chapters on German history 1871-1945. He started out with studies of right-wing politics in Germany during World War I and the Weimar Republic before focusing on French colonial prisoners of war. In 2006, Scheck published the book Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940, which also appeared in French (2007) and German (2009). The German version was selected as the fourth best non-fiction book published in German in 2009 by a group of editors and journalists. In 2011, Scheck discovered an unknown captivity report of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal (1960-80). His latest book is French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II (Cambridge University Press, December 2014). Scheck is working on a new project on the forbidden love relationships of French prisoners of war and German women during the Second World War.