Rate My Professor Harold Marcuse

Harold Marcuse is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), specializing in modern German history and public history. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 1992, following an M.A. in History of Art from the Universität Hamburg in 1986 and a B.A. in Physics, magna cum laude, from Wesleyan University in 1979. Marcuse began his career at UCSB as Assistant Professor of Modern German History in 1992, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998, and retired from active service in June 2025. He continues to teach select undergraduate lecture courses on topics such as the Nazi Holocaust and German history through recall teaching. His research examines the legacies of the Nazi era, including Holocaust memorials, the history of Dachau concentration camp, collective memory, and the reception and interpretation of iconic events in twentieth-century German history, such as Kristallnacht and conceptions of Hitler's biography.

Marcuse's seminal work, Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), earned the Hans Rosenberg Prize from the Conference Group for Central European History for the best book published in 2000-2001. He has published numerous articles in prestigious journals and edited volumes, including "Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre" in the American Historical Review (2010), "Memorializing Persecuted Jews in Dachau and Other West German Concentration Camp Memorial Sites" (2010), and "The Origin and Reception of Martin Niemöller's Quotation 'First They Came for the Communists...'" (2016). In the 1980s, while studying in Germany, he co-produced the traveling exhibition "Stones of Contention," comparing memorials for Holocaust victims and World War II dead, exhibited in over twenty cities. Marcuse has received awards such as the UC President's Fellowship for Research in the Humanities (2004-05) and the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation Faculty Exchange Fellowship (1997). He has served in significant administrative roles, including chairing UCSB's Campuswide General Education Reform Committee (2001-2003) and various departmental committees. His contributions extend to graduate seminars on museums, collective memory, digital history, and public history theory.