Matt Berg, Ph.D.
Professor
Background
Matt Berg’s teaching responsibilities include courses in modern German history, the Holocaust, conflict in the 20th century, and genocide and human rights. His research focuses on society and politics in Austria after the Second World War.
Research Interests
Social democracy and reconstruction in Vienna after World War II, 1945-1949; denazification; historical memory; labor: regime change and the experience of work in Vienna, 1918-1950.
Education
Ph.D., University of Chicago M.A., University of Chicago B.A., University of California, Los Angeles
Courses Taught
World War I and Modernity; Punishment: A History; Intro to Human Rights; The Cold War; The Holocaust; Nazi Germany; Genocide & War Crimes; Berlin: From Reich to RepublicPublications
Books
Red Vienna Revisited: Political Culture, Transitional Justice, and Everyday Life after 1945. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, forthcoming April 2027.
Narrating the City: Histories, Space, and the Everyday. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015. (Edited with Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier and Anastasia Christou.)
Sources of European History: Since 1900. Second Edition. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. (Edited with James Krukones and Marvin Perry.)
After Fascism: European Case Studies in Politics, Society, and Identity Since 1945. Hamburg-Berlin-Vienna-London: Lit Verlag, 2009. (Edited with Maria Mesner.)
Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. (Edited with Greg Eghigian.)
The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Social Justice. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000. (Editor; translated with Helen Atkins.)
Sources for 20th-Century Europe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. (Edited with James Krukones and Marvin Perry.)
Articles and Book Chapters
“Bruno Kreisky and the Socialist Party” in Bruno Kreisky’s Foreign Policy: A Reassessment, ed. Günter Bischof and Michael Burri (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2025), 205-219.
“Victims of Nazi Terror in Vienna: Legally Mandated Assistance and Social Democratic Patronage, 1945-1948.” Contemporary Austrian Studies 27 (2018): 263-76.
“Adjudicating Lodging: Denazification, Housing Requisition, and Identity in ‘Red Vienna’, 1945-1948” in Narrating the City: Histories, Space, and the Everyday, ed. Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg and Anastasia Christou (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 175-96.
“Reinventing ‘Red Vienna’ after 1945: Habitus, Patronage, and the Foundations of Municipal Social Democratic Dominance.” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 86, No. 3 (September 2014): 603-632.
“Excluding, Rehabilitating, and Re-Integrating Former Nazis in Vienna: A Social Democratic Dilemma, 1945-48” in After Fascism: European Case Studies in Politics, Society, and Identity Since 1945, ed. Matthew P. Berg and Maria Mesner (Hamburg-Berlin-Vienna-London: Lit Verlag, 2009), 61-88.
“Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Contextualizing Austria’s Gedenkjahr 2005.” German History 26 (2008) No. 1: 47-71.
“Refocusing the Critical Gaze from Sixty Years’ Distance: Austrians’ Experiences of the Nazi Past in Recent Historical Studies.” Contemporary Austrian Studies 16 (2008): 259-76.
“Arbeitspflicht in Postwar Vienna: Punishing Nazis and Expediting Reconstruction, 1945-48.” Austrian History Yearbook 37 (2006): 181-207.
“Die SPÖ und die Praxis der Entnazifizierung” in Entnazifizierung zwischen politischem Anspruch, Parteienkonkurrenz und Kaltem Krieg, ed. Maria Mesner (Vienna and Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2005), 145-85.
“Caught Between Iwan and the Weihnachtsmann: Occupation, the Marshall Plan, and Austrian Identity.” Contemporary Austrian Studies 8 (2000): 156-84.
“Schmutz, Schund and sittliche Gefährdung: The Politics of Children’s Morality Legislation in Early Postwar Austria.” German Studies Review 21 (1998): 447-67.
“Between Kulturkampf and Vergangenheitsbewältigung: The SPÖ, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Problem of Reconciliation.” Zeitgeschichte 24 (1997): 147-69.
“Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans’ Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History.” Central European History 30 (1997): 513-544.
