WINNIPEG, MB – Germany’s prominent historian, Dr. Alexander von Plato, is joining The University of Winnipeg as a Diefenbaker Fellow. He is the 2012 recipient of Canada Council for the Arts’ prestigious John G. Diefenbaker Award. Dr. von Plato will join the University’s history department for one year where he will teach, complete research, and assist in setting up UWinnipeg’s new Oral History Centre. He will also share his work beyond the academic community via public lectures across North America.
This is the second time UWinnipeg has garnered the Diefenbaker Award, making it one of just four universities to host a Diefenbaker Fellow more than once.
“Dr. von Plato’s fellowship will be key to establishing our institution as an international leader in oral history,” said Dr. Alexander Freund, Associate Professor of History, Chair in German-Canadian Studies, and Co-director of the Oral History Centre. “With his established record in oral history and his exciting new research project about Canada’s role in Germany’s reunification, Dr. von Plato will make an important contribution as teacher and scholar to our university.”
“It is a pleasure and an honour for me to come to The University of Winnipeg as a Diefenbaker Fellow”, said Dr. von Plato. “This is a very interesting project: looking behind the curtain of official declarations of the Two Plus Four Agreement (Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany)with a country which was not a ‘member’ of the negotiations, but contributed to the process. I look forward to it, as well as to working with my Canadian colleagues, students, and friends.”
Dr. Alexander von Plato Bio
Dr. von Plato is known for his oral history approach to research, which involves extensive interviews with both eyewitnesses and key players of a specific period. He is the founder and long-time director of the Oral History Centre at the Open University Hagen, and the German oral history journal BIOS. He is also a founder and former secretary and vice president of the International Oral History Association. Dr. von Plato taught at the universities of Essen, Hagen, and Vienna. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a member of the Historical Commission of Dresden which evaluated historical documents about the bombing of Dresden in February 1945.
Dr. von Plato’s book, The Unification of Germany – A World Political Power Game; Bush, Kohn, Gorbachev and the Internal Moscow Protocols, is in its third printing and is standard reading for journalists, educators and students. It draws on minutes from Gorbachev talks with high-ranking politicians, and interviews with politicians such as George H. Bush, James Baker, and Condoleezza Rice. Similarly, his book Hitler’s Slaves (2010) is an important study of forced labor during the Second World War.
In 2009, Dr. Alexander Freund interviewed Dr. von Plato about his historical and political awakening during the 1960s, and his career in oral history.
John G. Diefenbaker Award
The John G. Diefenbaker Award is funded by an endowment given to the Canada Council for the Arts by the Government of Canada. The endowment, announced by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney during his visit to Germany in the spring of 1991, honours the memory of former Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker. This annual award enables a distinguished German scholar to spend up to 12 months in Canada, which may include brief periods in the United States.
