Margarete Feinstein

Biography

Margarete Myers Feinstein received her Ph.D. in Modern European History with a focus on twentieth-century Germany from UC Davis. Prior to joining the LMU Jewish Studies Program, she served as an Assistant Professor of History at Susquehanna University and at Indiana University South Bend, a Research Scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, and a Senior Research Scholar at the former Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. At LMU, Professor Feinstein teaches courses on modern Jewish history, antisemitism, the Holocaust and genocide, Nazi Germany, as well as literature courses on the Holocaust and on the golem legend.

Professor Feinstein’s research focuses on the legacies of Nazism for both Germans and Jews and the use of oral histories and memoirs. Her numerous publications include two books, State Symbols: The Quest for Legitimacy in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (Brill Academic Publishers, 2002) and Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her second book received a commendation from the Fraenkel Prize Committee. Her most recent articles and book chapters include “Reconsidering Jewish Rage after the Holocaust,” in Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture, eds. Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner (2020); and “Survivor Testimonies and Interviews,” in Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust, eds. Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt, University of Wisconsin Press (2020). Her research has received support from, among others, the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Benefactors of the Jewish Club of 1933 (Los Angeles) presented her with their Heritage Award in recognition of her contributions to scholarship on Holocaust survivors.