Birgit Aschmann (born 8 January 1967) is a historian, originally from Hamburg in West Germany.[1] Since April 2011 she has held a teaching chair in nineteenth century European History at the Humboldt University of Berlin.[2] One focus of her work is on Spanish History in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
On leaving school, Aschmann embarked on a study course in Medicine, which lasted from 1986 till 1989.[2] It was only then that she enrolled at the Christian-Albrecht University in Kiel for a study course that combined History, German and Spanish.[1] Her student career included significant periods studying at Madrid, Málaga und Guayaquil (in Ecuador).[2] She concluded her undergraduate studies in 1995 and spent the next three years working on a doctorate.[1] Her doctorate, also from Kiel, addressed the relations between West Germany during the "Wirtschaftswunder years" and Spain under Franco. It was subsequently adapted for publication under the title "Treue Freunde...?: Westdeutschland und Spanien 1945 bis 1963".[3] Between 1998 and 2000 she worked as an academic researcher at the Kiel University Institute for Modern and Contemporary History, having obtained a lectureship in 1998.[4] She remained at Kiel as an academic counsellor ("Akademische Rätin") till 2003, after which she was a senior academic research assistant. Between 2004 and 2010 she was increasingly focused on her habilitation which she received for a dissertation entitled "Prussia's Glory and Germany's Honour: The Discourse on National Honour in the build-up to the Franco-Prussian War" ("Preußens Ruhm und Deutschlands Ehre. Der nationale Ehrdiskurs im Vorfeld der preußisch-französischen Kriege im 19. Jahrhundert").[5] Another work published during this period concerned the balance between Calculation and Emotion in driving the politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[6]
Birgit Aschmann received a teaching chair in Modern and Contemporary History at Kiel in 2010.[1] She moved the next year, however, taking the teaching chair in European Nineteenth Century at the Humboldt University of Berlin on 1 April 2011[2] in succession to .