German History Prizes
Postgraduate Essay Prize
The German History Society (GHS) will award a prize of £500 to the winner of their annual essay competition. In addition, the essay will be considered for publication in German History.
The prize will be presented to the winner at the Annual General Meeting of the GHS in September. The Society will pay the cost of travel within the UK and Ireland for the winner attending the AGM to receive the award.
A runner-up prize of £250 will also be awarded.
The Rules
- The essay can be on any aspect of German History, including the history of German-speaking people both within and beyond Europe. Papers drawing on research in primary sources and critical, methodological or theoretical essays are equally welcome.
- Any student registered for a postgraduate degree (master’s or doctoral) at a university in the UK or the Republic of Ireland is eligible to enter the competition. All postgraduates who submitted their dissertation within twelve months of the date of submission of the essay are also eligible.
- The text of the essay (exclusive of references and bibliography) must not exceed 10,000 words.
- The essay must be submitted in English.
- Manuscripts which are already in press or have been submitted for publication in another journal are not eligible for the prize.
- Manuscripts should be submitted via email to William Mulligan by 5pm on 10 July 2020.
- Any queries or questions can be directed to William Mulligan.
The Decision
- The essays submitted will be read by a jury of four historians.
- Bearing in mind the overall criterion of publishability, the jury will evaluate the submissions in terms of their originality, depth, scope and rigour and the extent to which they make a new contribution to historical understanding, as well as qualities of style and presentation.
- The jury reserves the right not to award a prize in any particular year.
- The decision of the jury is final.
- The jury will make its decision by late August and inform the prize candidates as soon as possible after that. The winner will be publicly announced at the Annual General Meeting of the GHS in September.
- Please note that we cannot offer feedback on entries for the prize.
The winner of the 2019 Postgraduate Essay Prize offered jointly by the GHS and RHS was Dr Simon Unger (University of Oxford), for his essay "'Leaders, not Lords’: Führertum, Democracy, and Nazism in the Weimar Republic".
For the first time this year, we have also been able to award a runner-up prize. The recepient of this was Holly Fletcher (Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge) for her essay, ‘Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches’: Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation.
Undergraduate Dissertation Prize
The German History Society offers an annual prize of £300 for the best undergraduate dissertation on German History written by a student of history (single or joint honours, or in a cognate discipline) at a UK or Irish university.
The Rules
- Dissertations should be no less than 8,000 words in length and should address a theme in German history, broadly defined, covering any period from the Middle Ages to the present day.
- Candidates should be nominated by their Chair of Examiners. Submissions, in electronic format, to Laura Kounine, University of Sussex.
- One submission is permitted per exam board. Deadline: 17 August.
The Decision
- The dissertations submitted will be read by a jury of four historians.
- The jury will evaluate the submissions in terms of their originality, depth, scope and rigour and the extent to which they make a new contribution to historical understanding, as well as qualities of style and presentation.
- The jury reserves the right not to award a prize in any particular year.
- The decision of the jury is final.
- The jury will make its decision by beginning of September and inform the prize candidates as soon as possible after that. Please note that we cannot offer feedback on entries for the prize.
- Names of prize-winners will be posted on the GHS web site.
The winner of the 2018 GHS Undergraduate Prize was Thomas Sampson (Faculty of History, University of Cambridge), with his dissertation, “Anglo-Jewish Humanitarianism and the Jewish Relief Unit, 1943-50”
