He was a research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris and teaches now at the Freie Universität Berlin,[1] where he has held an honorary professorship since 2001.
[1] He has also translated Fernand Braudel and has explored and popularized the work of Lucie Varga, the first woman member of the Annales group of historians.
Schöttler has taught at different German and Austrian universities and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS).
At the 1998 Deutscher Historikertag Schöttler, Götz Aly and Michael Fahlbusch were involved in the debate concerning the role of German historians during the Third Reich.
The trio suggested that Theodor Schieder, Werner Conze and Karl-Dietrich Erdmann were complicit with the Nazi regime rather than inwardly withdrawn intellectually through inner emigration.