Mario Keßler

Keßler was born on 4 May 1955, in Jena. He attended school in Jena between 1962 and 1974 and then, between 1974 and 1979, studied History and Germanistics in Jena and Leipzig. His doctorate, also from Leipzig, followed in 1982. His dissertation topic was "The Comintern and the Arabic East 1919-1929". Between 1982 and 1987, he held a position in the Africa and Middle East department at the University of Leipzig. In 1987 he moved to Berlin, taking up an academic research position. His habilitation, this time from the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, followed in 1990. This time his dissertation dealt with "Socialism and Zionism: the international labour movement and political Zionism 1897-1933". Work on the habilitation involved lengthy study visits to Moscow and Warsaw.^[1]

Keßler has held an extraordinary professorship at the University of Potsdam, where he was also a member of the Centre for Contemporary History, since 2005.^[1] After his retirement on March 1, 2021 he was appointed Senior Fellow at the Centre.

Since 1991, Keßler has spent periods of teaching as a guest professor at various international universities including the City College of New York, Columbus State University (Georgia), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Sciences Po, Rutgers University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Yeshiva University. Keßler was an invited researcher at German Historical Institute, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, King's College London and the University of Minnesota.^[1]

Keßler's particular professional interests include Zionism, antisemitism and the German labour movement, with a particular interest on research of communist movements in the twentieth century. He is now preparing a biography of Paul Merker, an East German politician who excited the mistrust of Walter Ulbricht in the 1950s and became a victim of Stalinist persecution.^[1] In 2011, Keßler was a co-signatory of an open letter organised by Wolfgang Weber, addressed to the publisher Ulla Berkéwicz at Suhrkamp Verlag. The signatories urged against the publication of a German translation of a Trotsky biography by the English historian Robert Service. The book by Service had already been available in English for nearly two years and the German scholars, expressing their shared view forcefully, endorsed the critical assessment of the socialist historian David North. They complained of factual inaccuracies, misrepresentation of sources and failure to meet normal academic standards.^[2] There was also a strong sense that Stalin's twenty-year campaign to discredit his political rival had been swallowed uncritically by Service.^[3] Suhrkamp Publishing House nevertheless printed the German version of the book.

Keßler is member of the international advisory boards of the International Conference of Labour and Social History, the International Rosa Luxemburg Society and of Arbeit - Bewegung - Geschichte. He is also a member of the Historical Commission of The Left Party (Die Linke).