Dr. Mark Spicka

Professor of History and Department Chair

Degrees

• D, Ohio State University (History)
• MA, Ohio State University (History)
• BA, Lehigh University (History)

Research Interests

• Post-War Germany
• Political, Economic, and Immigration History

Courses Taught

• History 105: Historical Foundations of Global Cultures
• History 106: Modern World History
• History 330: History of Germany Since 1919
• History 356: History of 19^th-Century Europe
• History 357: The Holocaust
• History 397: Seminar in Comparative History

Major Publications

Monograph:

• Selling the Economic Miracle: Economic Reconstruction and Politics in West Germany, 1949-1957. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.

Articles and Book Chapters:

• “West German Cities and the End of Guest Worker Recruitment, 1973–1978.” German Politics & Society 41, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 64–85.
• “Guest Workers, Social Order, and West German Municipalities, 1960-1967.” Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 3 (July 2019): 619-639.
• “Adolf Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1918-1933.” In Teaching the Holocaust. eds., Laura J. Hilton and Avinoam Patt, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019.
• “The Devil’s Chemists on Trial: The American Prosecution of I.G. Farben at Nuremberg.” In Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg, edited by John J. Michalczyk, 232-245. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.
• “Cultural Centres and Guest Worker Integration in Stuttgart, 1955-1975.” Immigrants and Minorities 33, no. 2 (June 2015): 117-140.
• “City Policy and Guest Workers in Stuttgart, 1955-1973.” German History 31, no. 3 (September 2013): 345-365.
• “Selling the Economic Miracle: Public Opinion Research, Economic Reconstruction, and Politics in West Germany, 1949-1957.” German Politics and Society 20, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 49-67.
• “Gender, Political Discourse, and the CDU/CSU Vision of the Economic Miracle, 1949-1957.” German Studies Review 25, no. 2 (May 2002): 305-332.
• “The Devil’s Chemists on Trial: The American Prosecution of I.G. Farben at Nuremberg.” The Historian 61, no. 4 (Summer 1999): 865-882.

Profile

Dr. Spicka has taught at Shippensburg University since 2002 and serves as the Chair of the Department of History and Philosophy. He grew up in northern New Jersey and received his Ph.D. in German history from the Ohio State University. His teaching interests focus on modern European history, and he has published on various topics dealing with postwar Germany. Dr. Spicka has won several Fulbright Scholarships, a German Academic Exchange Grant, and a Gerda Henkel Foundation Award, among other grants, to support his research in Germany. He is currently researching the relationship of sport fishing, German identity, and the conservation movement in postwar Germany. He is married and has two children. In his spare time, Dr. Spicka is an avid fly fisher and is president of the Big Spring Watershed Association.