Matthias Pohlig

Matthias Pohlig is Professor for Early Modern European History at the Humboldt-Universität at Berlin.

He studied history, German literature, and philosophy in Göttingen, Strasbourg, and Berlin. He received his doctoral degree at the HU Berlin with a thesis about Lutheran historiography and confessional identity (1546–1617). From 2010 to 2018, he worked as an associate professor at the University of Münster. There, he was and still is leading a research project on the early German reformation with a special focus on the question of religious decisions and decision-making. During his time in Münster, he completed his Habilitation about the processes, structures, and functions of British information-gathering in the War of the Spanish Succession, published as a monograph in 2016 as »Marlboroughs Geheimnis. Strukturen und Funktionen der Informationsgewinnung im Spanischen Erbfolgekrieg«.

Since 2018, he holds the chair for Early Modern European History at the HU Berlin. His research interests include the Reformation and the Age of Confessionalization; diplomacy and espionnage in the early modern period; history of historiography and theory of history. Besides being a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, he is also member of the editorial board of the book series »Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation (SMHR)« published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen, and board member of the Verein für Reformationsgeschichte.