PhD students
Dr. David Tüscher
History
Political Science
Mail:
David.Tuescher@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Education:
2007-2013: Education of History and Political Science at the RWTH Aachen University
Since 2014: PhD Student at the Institute for Diaspora Research and Genocide Studies
June 2021: Defence of PhD-Thesis
Research Interests:
• National Socialism
• Holocaust Studies
• Biography Studies
• Moral Philosophy
Thesis: “Biography and narrative self-construction of the Nazi Criminal Dr. Erich Isselhorst”
Basically the thesis deals with ego documents of the Nazi Perpetrator, Dr. Erich Isselhorst, who committed several mass crimes in leading position during World War II in Eastern Europe and France. The paper is divided into two parts. The first section is a biography study of Erich Isselhorst which is based on ego documents like memoirs, diary entries and letters, as well as official documents. This wide range of sources provides an extraordinary overview of Isselhorst´s private life and the development of his attitudes as part of the Nazi system. The second part of the thesis is focused on the retrospective sources which Isselhorst wrote during his time in jail after the end of World War II, and which he completed before his execution in February 1948. These documents illustrate the narrative self-construction of Isselhorst, but also indicate the settings he constructed after the war to rationalize and legitimate his acting during the war.
