WARTBURG’S KLEINFELD LECTURE TO FEATURE WWII HISTORIAN

WARTBURG COLLEGE MARKETING & COMMUNICATION OFFICE

Edward Westermann, a Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, will be the featured speaker at Wartburg College’s annual Kleinfeld Lecture in German History, Culture and Politics at 4:45 p.m. Monday, Nov. 28.

Westermann’s lecture, “Celebrating the Final Solution? Wannsee and the Intoxication of Mass Murder,” will draw upon his recent publication, “Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany.” The event, in Wartburg’s Whitehouse Business Center 214, is free and open to the public.

A prolific author on the Holocaust and military history, Westermann has received numerous fellowships, including ones from Fulbright, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the German Academic Exchange Service. More recently, he served on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission.

“If you look around the world, at the amount of racial injustice occurring and the assaults upon democracy, the events of the Wannsee Conference, which occurred nearly 80 years ago, are still relevant today,” said Daniel Walther, Wartburg’s Gerald R. Kleinfeld Endowed Chair in German History. “This lecture gives us the opportunity to look at today’s world through the lens of history and in doing so presents us with the chance to better understand the world we inhabit and to make positive changes.”

Westermann’s talk is part of the college’s Germany on Campus series of events, an initiative exploring aspects of Germany’s past, present and future. Wartburg’s focus is on the Wannsee Conference, where the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was determined. The initiative is funded by the German government through the German Information Center.

The annual Kleinfeld Lecture in German History, Culture and Politics is part of an endowed series made possible by a contribution from the German Studies Association.