Johannes von Moltke

Johannes von Moltke's research and teaching focus on film and German cultural history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Professor von Moltke studied in Germany, France, and the US, and has previously taught at the University of Hildesheim in Germany. He is the author of The Curious Humanist: Siegfried Kracauer in America (2015), a Choice Outstanding Academic Title; and No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (2005), winner of the MLA Scaglione Prize for Best Book in German Studies. Combining his interests in German, Film, and Cultural Studies, he has published articles in New German Critique, October, Screen, Cultural Critique, Cinema Journal, Germanic Review and other journals, as well as in numerous edited volumes in the U.S. and Germany. Together with Gerd Gemünden Johannes is founding editor for Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual at Camden House, which he now co-edits with Mary Hennessy. 

Moltke's work on Kracauer has also led to the publication of essays by and about this key cultural critic, respectively: together with Gerd Gemünden (Dartmouth College), he edited an interdisciplinary anthology of essays entitled Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer (University of Michigan Press, 2012); and together with Kristy Rawson, who received her PhD in Screen Arts & Cultures at Michigan, he compiled Siegfried Kracauer's American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture (University of California Press, 2012). A further anthology, Siegfried Kracauers Grenzgänge: Zur Rettung des Realen, co-edited with Helmut Lethen and Sabine Biebl, appeared in German with Campus Verlag.

Professor von Moltke is the President of the American Friends of Marbach, and he is a past president of the German Studies Association. At Michigan, he has been a member of the Society of Fellows, served as the organizer of the biannual German Film Institute. His research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study (FRIAS), and the American Academy in Berlin.

In his most recent work, Professor von Moltke has been studying right wing media cultures. He has been following the tactics of the populist right on both sides of the Atlantic, with a particular focus on the notion of "Metapolitics" - the topic of his his Birkelund Lecture in the Humanities on "The New Right's Cultural Politics" at the American Academy Berlin, as well as the 2025 Mosse Lectures, which you can watch here.

Over the past few years, von Moltke also devoted time to the English edition of the last letters exchanged in 1944/45 between his grandparents, Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke. The resulting book, which he co-edited with Helmuth Caspar and Dorothea von Moltke, provides a profoundly personal record of resistance, love and faith in the face of Fascism and death.

Professor von Moltke enjoys teaching a wide variety of courses, which range from the Introductory course "Film, Television, and New Media" (FTVM 150) and "Fascist Cinemas" (FTVM/GER333), to a course on "Cinema and Migration" (FTVM485/GER449) and courses in German ("Film and Media After Fascism" [GER416]), to advanced graduate seminars in critical theory and media studies.

Affiliation(s)

• Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
• Department of Film, Television, and Media

Award(s)

• Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin
• Choice Outstanding Academic Title for The Curious Humanist
• FRIAS Senior Fellow, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
• Humboldt Research Fellowship, Berlin (Germany)
• John Dewey Teaching Award, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, University of Michigan
• Steelcase Research Professor Fellowship, Institute for the Humanities, University of Mchigan
• MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Best Book in German Studies for No Place LIke Home

Field(s) of Study

• 20^th and 21^st century film, literature, and culture
• Right wing media cultures
• Critical Theory
• Film theory
• German film history

Teaching Interests

• Film and Media Theory
• Fascist Cinemas
• Cinema and Migration / Refugees
• Critical Theory
• Melodrama and Affect

Works-in-Progress

• Metapolitik: Cultures of the New Right