Dr Nicholas Courtman

Nicholas Courtman joined King’s in October 2021, after completing his PhD in German Studies from the University of Cambridge earlier in the year. Between January and September 2021 he was a researcher at the Berlin policy thinktank SVR (Expert Council on Integration and Migration), where he worked on questions related to contemporary naturalisation practice and citizenship law policy in Germany.

Nicholas’ current position is funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation in connection with the Alfred Landecker Lecturer programme.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• The History of the Federal Republic of Germany, especially the History of Citizenship and History of Migration
• German-Language Literature and Culture since 1945
• Post-War History and Culture of German-Speaking Jews
• The History and Culture of the GDR

Nicholas Courtman’s current research project is entitled ‘Citizenship after Hitler: Continuity and Change in the Citizenship Law and Naturalisation Practice of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949’. The project will examine the development of citizenship law in the wake of National Socialism into the present day. To do this, it will on the one hand examine the files of German state and federal ministries as well as the lower administrative authorities responsible for interpreting and applying citizenship law and the records of legislative processes relating to citizenship. On the other, it will put these into conversation with ego-documents of individuals who went through the naturalisation process and the papers of civil society organisations involved in the public and political contestation of the regulation of citizenship.

By combining these perspectives, the project will address the legal, political, and social history of citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany. A particular emphasis will be placed on the treatment of groups persecuted under National Socialism in relation to citizenship after 1949, and the differential experiences of these groups. The largest and most prominent of these groups is that of the Jews, both those who were German citizens before 1933, and those who lived on Germany territory prior to the Nazis’ rise to power without being German citizens. Other groups examined in the project in relation to the persecution and discrimination they suffered in citizenship law, both during and after National Socialism, included the disabled and the Sinti and Roma.

The project also explores how West Germany naturalised foreigners who collaborated with Nazi Germany after 1949, both through existing legislation, and through specific legal provisions created by the Bundestag specifically with Waffen-SS soldiers and other collaborators in mind.

Selected publications

(with Jan Schneider): Erfolgsfaktoren einer gelingenden Einbürgerungspraxis: Expertise des wissenschaftlichen Stabs des Sachverständigenrats für Integration und Migration im Auftrag der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration, Berlin 2021.

‘Reforged or Deformed? Forced Labour, Human Instruments, and the Critique of the Gulag System in Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel’, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies2 (2021): pp. 134-154

‘Besser spät als nie. Die Mühlen der staatsangehörigkeitsrechtlichen Wiedergutmachung in der BRD seit 1949’, Jalta. Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart 7 (2020): pp. 71-77

Expertise and public engagement

Nicholas Courtman has worked with numerous German, British, and international media outlets about German citizenship law in relation to victims of National Socialist persecution and their descendants, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Guardian, and Deutschlandfunk Radio. He is open for working with media on any aspects of the history of citizenship law and current citizenship policy in the Federal Republic of Germany.

He has also served as an expert witness in two hearings relating to citizenship law reform in the Domestic Affairs select committee of the German Bundestag. The hearings can be viewed here and here.