Falk Pingel

Dr. phil., received his doctorate from the University of Bielefeld, where he taught as an assistant professor from 1976 to 1983, and again from 1997 to 2000. He was a senior research fellow from 1983, the deputy director of the Georg Eckert Institute from 1993 until his retirement in 2009 (he was the Institute's acting director from October 2005 to September 2006). His particular fields of research are modern German and European history, particularly the Nazi era, as well as contents and methods of international textbook comparison.

In 1999, 2000 and 2006, he held a guest professorship at the Foreign Language University and at the East China Normal University in Shanghai. In 2003, he established as the Director of Education of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina the new education department for the coordination of the education reform.

Falk Pingel brings his expertise to the curriculum and textbook commissions of ministries, international organisations such as UNESCO and OSCE, as well as NGOs at home and abroad. He is a member of the Education Committee to the German Commission for UNESCO and a member of the advisory board to the project "Forced labour 1939-1949. Memories and history. A digital archive for education and science" (Berlin Free University, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Foundation EVZ). He is the spokesman of the Committee on National Socialism and the Holocaust: Remembrance and Present (www.erinnern.at). He represented the Georg Eckert Institute in the Council of Europe’s project The image of the Other in History Teaching and in the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (www.holocausttaskforce.org). He is a member of the web-based Committee on Research into the History of Education (studi e risorse per la storia dell' educazione) (www.historied.net) and a Peer Reviewer of the newly founded Italian journal on History Didactics "Mundus. Rivista di didattica della storia".

At the Georg Eckert Institute Dr. Pingel was the head of the research area "Images of the Self and of the Other: Muslim Societies in Europe". He was committed to the Institute's activities for the development of innovative, comparative teaching materials in Israel and Palestine, as well as to the reform of history teaching in South Eastern Europe, in particular in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Selected publications

Books

• Ed.: Contested Past, Disputed Present. Curricula and Teaching in Israeli and Palestinian Schools, Hanover 2003

• Eds.: Ruth Firer/Sami Adwan: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in History and Civics Textbooks of Both Nations, Hanover 2004

• A cura di: Insegnare l'Europa. Concettti e rappresentazioni nei libri di testo europei, Torino 2003

• Ed. (with Eduard Fuchs et al.): Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus, Wien 2002 (English edition: Teaching the Holocaust and National Socialism, Beiträge zur historischen Sozialkunde, Special Issue 2001)

• The European home: representations of 20^th century Europe in history textbooks, Council of Europe, Strasbourg 2000 (French edition: La maison européenne: représentations de l’Europe du 20^e siècle dans les manuels d’histoire, Strasbourg 2000; Turkish edition: Avrupa evi ders kitaplarni 20. yüzyil avrupa’si, Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfi, Istanbul 2003)

• UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision, Hannover 1999 (French edition: Guide UNESCO pour l'analyse et la révision des manuels scolaires, UNESCO [Paris] 1999; Croatian edition: Vodic za istrazivanje i reviziju udzbenika, Zagreb 2000; Albanian edition: Udhezime te Unesco-s per analizen dhe permiresimin e teksteve, UNESCO [Tirana] 2001; Turkish edition: Ders kitaplarni arastirma ve düzeltme rehberi, Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfi, Istanbul 2003; Serbian edition: Priručnik Uneska za proučavanje i revisijou udžbenika 2005)
  

• Ed.: Macht Europa Schule? Die Darstellung Europas in Schulbüchern der Europäischen Gemeinschaft, Frankfurt/M. 1995 (ital. Ausg.: L’immagine dell’Europa nei manuali scolastici di Germania, Francia, Spagna, Gran Bretagna e Italia, Torino 1994)

• Ed. (with B. Mütter et al.): Geschichtsbuch 4. Die Menschen und ihre Geschichte in Darstellungen und Dokumenten, Cornelsen: Berlin 1988 (new edition 1996 and following)

• Ed. (with C. Kleßmann): Gegner des Nationalsozialismus. Wissenschaftler und Widerstands­kämpfer auf der Suche nach historischer Wirklichkeit, Frankfurt 1980

• Häftlinge unter SS-Herrschaft. Widerstand, Selbstbehauptung und Vernichtung im Konzentrati­onslager, Hamburg 1978

Essays

• A selection of his essays was published in: Grenzgänger. Aufsätze von Falk Pingel, Georg-Eckert-Institut (ed.), Göttingen 2009

• From Evasion to a Crucial Tool of Moral and Political Education: Teaching National Socialism and the Holocaust in Germany, in: Stuart J. Foster/Keith A. Crawford: What Shall We Tell the Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks, Greenwich/Conn. 2006, 131-153

• Einigung auf ein Minimum an Gemeinsamkeit. Schulbuchrevision in Bosnien und Herzegowina, in: GWU (2006) No 9, 519-533

• Reform or Conform: German reunification and its consequences for history schoolbooks and curricula, in: Jason Nicholls (ed.): School History Textbooks across Cultures: international debates and perspectives, Oxford 2006, 61-82

• L’Europa – Integrazione e tradizione, in: Giuseppe Bosca e Claudia Mantovani (a cura di): La storia contemporanea tra scuola e università, Soveria Manelli 2004, 311-326

• Individuelle Leidenswege und kollektive Nationalgeschichte. Nachwirkungen nationalsozialisti­scher Verfolgung in unter­schiedlichen sozialen und politischen Kontexten, in: H. Stoffels (ed.): Terrorlandschaften der Seele. Beiträge zur Theorie und Therapie von Extremtraumatisierungen, Regensburg 1994, 215-36

• Die NS-Psychiatrie im Spiegel des historischen Bewußtseins und sozialpolitischen Denkens in der Bundesrepublik, in: F.-W. Kersting et al. (ed.): Nach Hadamar. Zum Verhältnis von Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn 1993, 174-201

• „Geschichtsbücher zwischen Kaiserreich und Gegenwart“, and (with E. Hinrichs) „Georg Eckert (1912-1974) und die internationale Schulbuchforschung“, both in: Geschichtsunterricht und Geschichts­didaktik vom Kaiserreich bis zur Gegenwart. Festschrift des Verbandes der Geschichts­lehrer Deutschlands zum 75jährigen Bestehen, Verband d. Geschichtslehrer, P. Leidinger (ed.), Stuttgart 1988, 242-60 and 334-49