Prof. Dr. Kiran Klaus Patel is professor of European and global history at Maastricht University and this year’s Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at the Department of International History at the LSE. His lecture "Welfare in the Warfare State: Nazi Social Policy on the International Stage" investigates the international debates triggered by the social welfare measures the Third Reich introduced in the 1930s and 1940s. Job creation schemes, marriage loans, eugenic measures, and much more were part of Nazi propaganda abroad. What were the regime’s aims? And how did other societies respond?
The Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship is a co-operation of the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the German Historical Institute London (GHIL), and the Gerda Henkel Professor’s home university. Its purpose is to promote awareness in Britain of German research on the history of the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic, and to stimulate comparative work on German history in a European context. The first professorship was awarded in 2009.