Obituary:
Wulf Kansteiner, 1964-2025.

Professor of History, Wulf Kansteiner, passed away on August 8th. With Professor Kansteiner's death, the Faculty of ARTS at Aarhus University has lost a strong researcher with international impact, an inspiring lecturer, a popular and committed teacher, and a dear colleague.

As a German, Wulf Kansteiner grew up in Dortmund. After his Abitur in 1983, he began studying history and German literature at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He traveled to the United States at an early age, where he received a BA and an MA in history at UCLA and a PhD at the same university in 1997. Here he specialized in Holocaust history as a student of Saul Friedländer. He was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 1997-98, then Kent State University 1998-1999. He was a postdoc at The Ohio State University in 1999-2000 and at the same time was given permanent employment, first as an assistant professor of history and Jewish studies at Binghamton University in 1999 and from 2006 as an associate professor at the same place. In addition, Wulf Kansteiner served for five semesters between 2006 and 2013 as a visiting professor at the Zentrum für Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, where he worked with Norbert Frei.

Wulf started a family in the United States with his German wife Sonja. In 2014, the family chose to return to Europe when Wulf was employed as an associate professor of history at Aarhus University. To friends in the United States, Wulf expressed that the country was no longer the country he had fallen in love with when he came there as a 20-year-old. In 2015, he was appointed professor with special responsibilities and in 2023 he became a full professor of history at Aarhus University.

Wulf continued to be internationally recognized and sought-after as a Holocaust historian until his death, but European post-war history, the use of history and collective memory were also central fields of research in his work. With the book In Pursuit of German Memory (2006), he marked his particular focus on the central role of the media in the collective construction of the past. As a memory scholar, he has influenced this field from its dawning beginnings to the present day, where it is a strong and interdisciplinary science with established professional journals and annual conferences. His importance in this development can hardly be overestimated. In 2006, he was one of the initiators of the establishment of the discipline's flagship, the journal Memory Studies, in whose editorial board he continued until his death, and in the period 2022-2025 he was a member of the presidium of  the Memory Studies Association after having served on the board for many years.

His long list of publications documents him as an ambitious and hard-working academic, and his texts testify to an unorthodox and razor-sharp analyst who time and again finds alternative angles and new perspectives on established material. His 2002 article "Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies" thus broke new ground in the study of memory and has been cited thousands of times in the academic literature. Also at conferences and colloquia, he proved to be an excellent lecturer and a uniquely sharp debater who, with both humour and wit, was always able to influence a professional discussion positively. Original and sometimes provocative, but always with warmth and an open mind.

At Aarhus University, Wulf generously used his large international network to support local activities and fight to turn research around the world. He participated together with Hans Lauge Hansen in the Horizon 2020 project UNREST (2015-18) and demonstrated his curiosity for new methodological challenges and insights in the Velux project "SoundTrak: Sound of War – The Memory of World War II in Taiwan, East Germany, and Denmark, 1945-2015), in collaboration with Andreas Steen (2019-25). Among other things, he edited the work Agonistic Memory and the Legacy of 20th Century Wars in Europe, together with Stefan Berger (2021), a book they completed during Corona. At the time of his death, he was engaged in editing The Oxford Handbook of History and Memory in collaboration with Christina Morina. In the period 2017-23, he was chairman of the board of the faculty research programme Uses of the Past, and from 2023 until his death he was a member of the steering committee of the research centre UPAST, the Memory and Heritage Centre. As part of this work, he has helped to attract many international guests to AU, including Saul Friedländer, Aleida Assmann and Ann Rigney.

Wulf's – and Sonja's – lives in both the United States and Denmark were characterized by the fact that they were academic migrants among other academic migrants. They were both more than willing to help new international colleagues, and generously shared their knowledge of what was relevant to an international career – including the non-academic aspects. The same perspective characterized Wulf's academic work with international views on German history, a perspective that seemed as provocative as it was inspiring.

As a teacher, Wulf was well-liked by the students, who appreciated his enthusiasm, his willingness to help them tackle politically difficult topics, and his commitment to their thoughts. His courses on the history of memory were an important and recurring feature in the teaching of history at all levels, a fact that has left a decisive mark on the department's profile. His commitment to teaching was also expressed in his efforts to teach in Danish. Already at Binghamton, his courses on the Holocaust attracted hundreds of students and he received an award as an excellent teacher here in 2006. He was head of the research programme at Binghamton and continued to inspire PhD students at AU, both as a local supervisor and as a participant in the international research training programme in memory studies, Mnemonics.

Among Wulf's collaborators and colleagues across the faculty, his death leaves a very large void. His always good humour, his loving and laughing nature, his sharp wit and his academic integrity will be greatly missed. Glory be to his memory.

Wulf Kansteiner was 61 years old and leaves behind a wife and two children.

Memorial ceremony on Saturday 13 September.