Norbert Finzsch

The title of the dissertation was The Gold miners of California: Conditions of Work, Standards of Living, and Political System in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century.

In 1988 Finzsch passed his Habilitation (qualification for a professorship) and award of the Venia Legendi (right to teach) with a study of the social history of the Rhineland during the late 18th and early 19th century.

In 1992 he received the chair of Modern History at the University of Hamburg as the successor of Günter Moltmann.

2014/2015 he was received a fellowship at the International Research Center re:work at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

At the end of the 1990s, Finzsch broadened his interests by researching the history of genocides and female genital mutilation in Western Europe between 1600 and 1950.