Norbert Frei studied modern history, political science, and communications at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. From 1979 to 1997 he was a research assistant at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, before becoming a tenured professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Ruhr University in Bochum. Since 2005 he has held this position at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, and since 2006 has served as the director of the Jena Center 20th Century History. He has been a visiting professor and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, as well as at Harvard and Princeton, in New York und in Jerusalem.
The Germans and Nazism (publication series at C.H. Beck publishing house)
Jena Psychiatry in the Twentieth Century (funded by the Ernst Abbe Foundation)
“Human Rights in the Twentieth Century” working group (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation)
German history in the twentieth century; long term research focus on the history of human rights, media and corporate history, the history of political ideas, the history of the Jews in Germany, as well as the relationship between contemporary history and collective memory
Monographs
Der Führerstaat. Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft 1933 bis 1945 [The Führer State: Nazi Rule, 1933 to 1945], Munich 1987 (new edition 2013).
Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit [The Politics of Dealing with the Past: The Early Years of the Federal Republic and the Nazi Past], Munich 1996 (new edition 2012).
1968. Jugendrevolte und globaler Protest [1968: Youth Revolts and Global Protest], Munich 2008.
1945 und wir. Das Dritte Reich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen [1945 and Us: The Third Reich in the Consciousness of Germans], Munich 2005.
(with Eckart Conze, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann) Das Amt und die Vergangenheit. Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik [The Foreign Office and Its History: German Diplomats in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic], Munich 2010.
As an editor
(with Annette Weinke) Toward a New Moral World Order? Menschenrechtspolitik und Völkerrecht seit 1945 [Toward a New Moral World Order? Human Rights Policies and International Law Since 1945], Göttingen 2013.
(with José Brunner and Constantin Goschler) Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung. Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel [The Practice of Wiedergutmachung: The History, Experience and Effects of Reparations in Germany and Israel], Göttingen 2009.
Recent essays
Das Epochenjahr, in: Lothar Schirmer (ed.): 1945. Ikonen eines Jahres, Munich 2015, pp. 7-20.
Fritz Bauer oder: Wann wird ein Held zum Helden?, in: Stefan Gerber/Werner Greiling/Tobias Kaiser/Klaus Ries (eds.): Zwischen Stadt, Staat und Nation. Bürgertum in Deutschland (Festschrift für Hans-Werner Hahn), Göttingen 2014, pp. 274-279.
Kollektivschuldthese und Vergangenheitspolitik. Thomas Mann im politischen Horizont der Nachkriegsdeutschen, in: Thomas Mann Jahrbuch 27 (2014), pp. 9-16.
German Zeitgeschichte and Generation, or How to Explain the Belated Career of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, in: Social Research 81 (2014), vol. 3, pp. 569-582.
Die Aufklärer und die Überlebenden, in: Zeitgenossenschaft. Zum Auschwitz-Prozess 1964. Martin Warnke. Vorgestellt von Pablo Schneider und Barbara Welzel, Zurich 2014, pp. 55-64.