To some extent, the German perspective on Russia and Ukraine is still shaped by the tradition of Germany's colonial past and its alliance with Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
At that time the Prussian/German view of Eastern Europe was determined by the logic of imperial policy. The treatment of the Polish question in 1848 and 1863 in Prussian foreign policy and in German public opinion was typical in that sense. The legacy of these perspectives on Russia and East Central Europe is still apparent today, especially
among right- and left-wing German publicists.
Martin Schulze Wessel studied East European history and Slavic literature in Munich, Moscow, and Berlin. He became professor of East European history at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich (LMU), in 2003. Since 2004 he has been chairman of the Collegium Carolinum, a research institute on the history of Bohemia and Moravia. He also serves as spokesperson of the International Postgraduate Program on "Religious Cultures in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe," jointly established by LMU and Charles University, Prague, and of the "East and Southeast European Studies" Graduate School. He has chaired the German Historical Association since 2012.
He is the author of a study of the Russian perception of the Polish question in Prussian and German policy, Russlands Blick auf Preußen. Die polnische Frage in der Diplomatie und politischen Öffentlichkeit des Zarenreichs und Sowjetstaats, 1697-1947 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995), and of a comparative study of the parish clergy as opinion leaders in
the process of religious change in the revolutions of the Habsburg and Russian empires: Religion und politischer Dissens. Der römischkatholische und russisch-orthodoxe Klerus als Träger religiösen Wandels in den böhmischen Ländern bzw. im Russischen Reich, 1848-1922 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011). His main research fields are the history of religion
and the history of collective memory in Russia and East Central Europe. He is co-editor of the journals Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Bohemia, and Geschichte und Gesellschaft.
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