Dr Achim Saupe (PI)

• Coordinator of the Leibniz Research Network Historical Authenticity Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF)
• Email: saupe@zzf-potsdam.de

Dr Achim Saupe is an historian from the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam (ZZF) and specialises in competing discourses of history, heritage and historical authenticity within civil societies. He has written about the idea of historians as detectives in the theory of historiography and the representation of history and historians in detective fiction, in particular about the Nazi Past. He has broadly published on methodological questions of history and historiography, i.e. narratology and the desire for “historical authenticity”, on the theory of testimony in 19th century German historiography, on the history of security and safety in the 20^th century, and the challenges for conceptual history in the digital age. He is currently working on the idea of the authentic in popular culture, cultural heritage and the humanities. He is the academic coordinator of the Leibniz Research Alliance Historical Authenticity and the principle investigator of the ZZF Potsdam HERA project team.