Christian Ostermann
Director , Cold War International History Project
Director, History and Public Policy Program

Director, European Studies, East European Studies

Director, European Studies

Director, European Studies, Southeast Europe Project

Director, North Korea International Documentation Project

Phone: 202/691-4176
Email: christian.ostermann@wilsoncenter.org

Affiliation Director, Cold War International History Project Expertise Cold War history; contemporary Germany; the uses of history for public policy; transparency issues; archives Experience Fellow, National Security Archive; diplomatic historian; editor, Cold War International History Project Bulletin; author
Major Publications | Biography | Education | Honors

Major Publications

• "New Evidence on North Korea," editor, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 14/15 (Spring 2004)
  
• "The End of the Cold War," editor, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001/2002)
  
• Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval behind the Iron Curtain, with a preface by Charles Maier (Budapest/New York: CEU Press, 2001)
  
• "In Bonns Schatten: Die Beziehungen zwischen Washington und Ost-Berlin," Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges, ed. Detlef Junker (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), pp. 152-162
  
• "‘Little Room for Maneuver:‘ Das Verhältnis der USA zur DDR," Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges, ed. Detlef Junker (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), pp. 271-280
  
• "Die USA und die DDR, 1949-1989," Die DDR und der Westen, 1949-1989: Translationale Beziehungen, ed. Ulrich Pfeil (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2001), pp. 196-183
  
• "L’Etats-Unis et la RDA (1949-1989)," La République Démocratique Allemande et L’Occident (Paris: PIA, 2000), pp. 169-188
  
• "‘Die beste Chance für ein Rollback‘? Amerikanische Politik und der 17. Juni 1953," 1953--Krisenjahr des Kalten Krieges in Europa, ed. Christoph Kle8mann and Bernd St`ver (Munich: Böhlau, 1999), pp. 115-139
  
• "Das Ende der Rollback’-Politik: Eisenhower, die amerikanische Osteuropapolitik und der Ungarn-Aufstand von 1956" Das Internationale Krisenjahr 1956: Polen, Ungarn, Suez, ed. For the Military Historical Institute by Winfried Heinemann and Norbert Wiggershaus (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 515-532
  
• "The USA and the 17 June 1953 in the GDR"(in Russian) Voprosi Istorii (Moscow) 11/12 (1999), pp. 49-66
  
• "Cold War Flashpoints" Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No 11 (Winter 1998)
  
• "Geheimdienstliche Aktionen der Vereingten Staaten im Vorfeld eines europäischen Krieges," ‘Sorry guys, no gold.’ Die amerikanischen Waffendepots in _sterreich, ed. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien (Wien, 1998), pp. 44-52
  
• "This Is Not A Politburo, But A Madhouse: The Post-Stalin Succession Struggle, Soviet Deutschlandpolitik and the SED: New Evidence from Russian, German and Hungarian Archives," CWIHP Bulletin 10 (March 1998), pp. 61-110
  
• "Leadership in Transition," co-editor, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No 10 (March 1998)
  
• "Die USA und der Aufstand vom 17. Juni 1953," Deutschland Archiv 30:3 (May/June 1997), pp. 350-368
  
• "Kelet-nemetorszag es a Magyar forradalom [The East German Leadership and the Hungarian Revolution]" Evkonyv 1996/97 [Yearbook of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution], (Budapest: 1956-os Intezet), pp. 175-185
  
• "Im Schatten der Bundesrepublik: Die DDR im Kalkül der amerikanischen Außenpolitik" Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Klaus Larres/Torsten Oppelland, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997)
  
• "East Germany and the Horn Crisis: Documents on SED Afrikapolitik," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8/9 (Winter 1996/7), 47-102;
  
• "Amerikanische Propaganda gegen die DDR," Politikpropaganda in Deutschland, ed. Rainer Gries (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996)
  
• "Operationalizing Roll-back: NSC 158," The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 26:3 (September 1996), 1-7
  
• "Subversive Aktionen gegen die DDR: Die amerikanische Reaktion auf den 17. Juni 1953," Jahrbuch für Historischen Kommunismusforschung, ed. Hermann Weber et al., (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1996), 266-271
  
• "‘Keeping the Pot Simmering': The United States and the East German Uprising of 1953," German Studies Review 19 (February 1996), 61-89
  
• "New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute, 1969-1971: East German Documents on the Border Conflict, 1969,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 6/7 (February 1996), 186-93
  
• "New Evidence of the East German Uprising of 1953," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (Spring 1995), 10-21,57
  
• The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 11, 1994)
  
• M.d.R. Die Reichstagsabgeordneten der Weimarer Republik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Politische Verfolgung, Emigration und Ausbürgerung, 1933-1945, co-authored with Martin Schumacher (3. ed.) and (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1994)

Biography
Download the full text version of Christian Ostermann's bio in MS Word.

Christian Friedrich Ostermann is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), an international clearinghouse for cold war research, and editor of the CWIHP Bulletin. Before joining CWIHP in January 1997 as associate director, he worked as a research fellow at the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and repository based at George Washington University. He is a co-editor, Cold War History (London) and a Senior Research Fellow, National Security Archive (George Washington University). He also served as a Lecturer in History and International Affairs at George Washington University and Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown University. He has been a consultant on several historical documentaries, including CNN/Jeremi Isaacs Productions’ "COLD WAR" (1998). Prior to coming to Washington, he studied in Bonn, Cologne and Hamburg and was a research fellow at the Commission for the History of Parliament and Political Parties, Bonn (Germany).

In 1996, Christian Ostermann won the DAAD Article Award of the German Studies Association for “Best Article in German Studies (History), 1994-1996.” He is also a recipient of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations’ Stuart L. Bernath Grant as well as the W. Stull Holt Fellowship, and has received fellowships from the Institute for the Study of World Politics, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service and the German Historical Institute in Washington. In 1999 he spent five months as a Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

Under his leadership, the Cold War International History Project has significantly expanded its worldwide network of partners and constituents through outreach to scholars and institutions in the Middle East and South East and East Asia, Africa and Latin America, to high-school teachers and students, and to museum and public history experts. In particular, Mr. Ostermann designed and organized a series of path-breaking critical oral history conferences on the Helsinki Conference, the 1979-1989 War in Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq War, the Congo Crisis of 1960-61 involving archival documents, veterans of diplomacy and policymaking and experts from all sides. In addition, he has been a leading advocate of declassification of and access to Cold War era archival records on all sides of the conflict.

Besides editing the CWIHP Bulletin, the most recent issue of which encompassed more than 450 pages of edited and translated documents, his major publications include "Keeping the Pot Simmering: 'The United States and the East German Uprising of 1953'" (1996 DAAD Article Award of the German Studies Association) and Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval Behind the Iron Curtain (Central European University Press, 2001), which recently won a Honorable Mention in the competition for the 2005 Arthur S. Link-Warren F. Kuehl Prize for Documentary Editing. The Link-Kuehl Prize Committee described the book as “a brilliant documentary that draws upon multi-archival sources to place the first major upheaval in the Soviet bloc in its broadest context. (…) This is Cold War documentary history from both sides of the Iron Curtain at its best.”

Education
Ph.D., University of Cologne, Germany; M.A., Modern and Medieval History, University of Cologne; History and Political Science, Miami University; Modern and Medieval History, University of Bonn

Honors
Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations
2005 Arthur S. Link-Warren F. Kuehl Prize for Documentary Editing, Honorable Mention
The Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo
Fellowship, February - July 1999
DAAD Article Award of the German Studies Association
Best Article in German Studies (History), 1994-1996, for “Keeping the Pot Simmering,”1996
Institute for the Study of World Politics, New York
Dissertation Grant, 1995
Harry S. Truman Library Institute, Independence, MO
Dissertation Year Fellowship, 1995-1996
Eastern Germany Studies Association
Berlin Research Grant, 1995
Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations
Stull Holt Dissertation Grant, 1994
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.
Travel Grant, 1994
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY
John G. Winant Research Grant, 1994
German Historical Institute, London
Dissertation Grant, 1994
John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University of Berlin
Research Grant, 1994
Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations
Stuart L. Bernath Dissertation Grant, 1993
Gerda-Henkel-Foundation for Historical Scholarship, Düsseldorf
Two-Year Dissertation Grant, 1993-1995
The German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington/Berlin
Research Fellowship, 1993
Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO
Research Grant, 1993
German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Summer Archives Program, 1993
German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Dissertation Grant, 1992
Gerda-Henkel-Foundation for Historical Scholarship, Düsseldorf
Travel Grant, 1992
German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Dissertation Grant, 1991
Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, St. Augustin
Academic Scholarship, 10/84 -6/91
The German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington/Berlin
Travel Grant, 1990
John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University of Berlin Research Grant, 1989
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Bonn/New York
Full Academic Scholarship, 1986-1987

Cold War International History Project
Woodrow Wilson Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004-3027
Email: coldwar@wilsoncenter.org
Tel: 202/691-4110