Markus Bierkoch specializes in migration history and the history of nationalism in global perspective.

Education

2017

MA (History in the 19th & 20th Century with a concentration on transnational History and the History of German Nationalism), Freie Universität Berlin

2014

BA (History, North American Studies, Social & Cultural Anthropology), Freie Universität Berlin

My dissertation project is focused on German-speaking migrants and their descendants in New York City from 1898 until 1933. I seek to understand how different groups within the complex and multi-layered migrant community competed in framing German-American ethnicity.

The analysis is focused on the political commitment, economic aspirations, and social integration into US-society by historical actors and their membership in ethnic associations. The specific time frame is chosen in order to see how the migrant community reacted differently to a new period of crisis-laden international politics that was marked by nationalism and imperial expansion on both sides of the Atlantic. The repercussions of migration and the process of assimilation on the cityscape are highlighted by a social historical analysis of places of residence and the changes they experienced overtime.

The project is supported by a PhD-fellowship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Alldeutsche in den USA. Die New Yorker Ortsgruppe im frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019.