Detlef Junker

Detlef Junker is a German historian. He taught modern history at Heidelberg University from 1975 to 1994 and held the Curt Engelhorn Chair in American History there from 1999 to 2004. From 1994 to 1999, he was director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.; he was also a founding director of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. Junker studied history, political science, philosophy, and German studies in Kiel and Innsbruck, and completed a postdoctoral year at Yale University in 1970–71. Before beginning his university studies, he trained as a journalist and editor. His research has focused on the history of U.S. foreign policy and German-American relations, twentieth-century German history, and the theory of historiography.