Mr. Jacob S. Eder

Professional Background

Jacob S. Eder is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Pennsylvania and an associate member of the graduate school of the Jena Center 20th Century History, Germany. He received his first M.A. in history from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he held a Fulbright Scholarship, and a second M.A. in modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his undergraduate studies in modern and contemporary history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. For his Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship, Mr. Eder conducted research for his project, “Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and Holocaust Memory in the United States.”

Mr. Eder is the author of “Holocaust-Erinnerung als deutsch-amerikanische Konfliktgeschichte. Die bundesdeutschen Reaktion auf das United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. ” [Holocaust Memory as a German-American Conflict History: German Reactions to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC] in Universalisierung des Holocaust? Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in internationaler Perspektive (2008). He is currently working on an article about West German cultural diplomacy in the United States, which will be published in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte in 2012. Mr. Eder is the recipient of numerous academic grants and fellowships, including the Benjamin Franklin Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania, the Doctoral Fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Doctoral Fellowship of the German Historical Institute, the Doctoral Fellowship of the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research, the Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and a Dorot Foundation Summer Graduate Research Assistantship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has presented his research at a variety of conferences and seminars in Germany and the United States. Mr. Eder is a native speaker of German with language skills in English, French and Latin.

Fellowship Research

During his time at the Center, Mr. Eder conducted research on German cultural diplomacy in the United States and its relevance for the formation of transnational Holocaust memory. His research focused on this topic from three angles: the exponentially growing interest of American society in the Holocaust and its impact on German-American relations since the late 1970s, efforts in the United States on the part of the Federal Republic to (re-)claim the power of interpretation over the history of the Holocaust, and the reception of such policies in the United States by governmental or private institutions and individuals. To complete his research, Mr. Eder utilized the Museum’s extensive archival collection, including the records of Brewster S. Chamberlin, Jeshajahu Weinberg, Elie Wiesel, the Institutional Oral History Project and other sources held in the institutional archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Mr. Eder was in residence at the Mandel Center from March 1 to May 30, 2011.