Texas Tech University

Richard Lutjens

Associate Professor
Modern Germany

Email: richard.lutjens@ttu.edu

Office: 412 Humanities

Ph.D., Northwestern University

Richard Lutjens specializes in modern German history with a focus on the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, and his research examines the experiences of historically and socially marginalized groups during these periods. His first book, Submerged on the Surface: The Not-so-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941 - 1945, examines the daily experiences of life in hiding for the 1,700 Berlin Jews who survived the Holocaust by fleeing deportation and living in the shadows of the capital of Nazi Germany." Through an examination of survivor testimony spanning the decades (both written and oral), his research argues for a reexamination of hiding as a category of Holocaust analysis, demonstrating that contrary to popular opinion Jews in Berlin did not hide in the traditional sense of the word but were constantly on the move and actively engaged in securing their own survival.

His current research project focuses on the role played by perpetrators of so-called “ordinary crime” in the exploitation of Jewish-Germans in the years from the Nazi seizure of power until the end of the last major deportations from Germany in March 1943. In particular, he examines how the Nazi persecution of Jews created new avenues for criminal activity, avenues which the Nazi State could not tolerate and yet which were the direct result of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda and legislation.

Professor Lutjens has presented his research both at home at the biennial Lessons & Legacies conference on the Holocaust as well as abroad in Berlin at a workshop titled "Everyday Approaches to the Persecution of Jews of Greater Germany and the ‚Protectorate', 1941-45.” His research on the daily experience of hiding – “Vom Untertauchen: “U-Boote” und der Berliner Alltag” was published in 2013 in the volume Alltag im Holocaust: Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941 – 1945 (Löw, Bergen, Hájková, eds.), and a second article on the demographics of hiding in Berlin will appear in 2017 in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He received his B.A. in History and German from Middlebury College in 2003 and his Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University in 2012.

Professor Lutjens teaches courses on Western Civilization, Modern Germany, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and Comparative Genocide but is always looking to expand his teaching interests with the development of new courses.



Richard Lutjens

Select Publications

Submerged on the Surface: The Not-so-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941-1945


Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.

Learn more at Berghahn Books.