Frank Stern studied at the Free University Berlin, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and received his PhD from Tel-Aviv University where he taught Modern History and Culture. From 1997 to 2004 Professor for Modern German History and Culture and director of the Center for German Studies and the Austrian-German Studies Program at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, and 2002 Acting Chair at the Department of Film and Television at Sapir College, Sederot. Visiting Professor at Columbia University in the City of New York, at Georgetown University, Washington DC, at Humboldt University Berlin, and at Vienna University. Since 2004 teaching cinema and cultural history at the Institute for Contemporary History at Vienna University.
He published widely on postwar Germany, on problems of philosemitism and anti-Semitism (“the Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge”), on American-German-Israeli relations, on German-Jewish issues, and particularly on German, Austrian and US-American film.
He was academic consultant for exhibitions on Jewish life and antisemitism in Vienna and Berlin, and curated a number of film retrospectives on German, Austrian, Israeli and Jewish films in Israel and Austria. In 2002, he published “Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht. Ein Jahrtausend jüdisch-deutsche Kulturgeschichte,” in February 2003 he coedited “Die deutsch-jüdische Erfahrung. Beiträge zum kulturellen Dialog, and in October 2004 he coedited „Ludwig Börne – Deutscher, Jude, Demokrat“ with the Aufbau Publishing House in Berlin.
Recent publications include articles and chapters on
• the Holocaust in film,
• Challenges of historical film analysis,
• German-language films from 1930 to 1950: propaganda and entertainment,
• Gender and film in the 1920s and 1930s,
• Problems of the Representation of Jewish topics on the screen.
• Arthur Schnitzler and film: the poet of acculturation Course taught: Being Jewish in European and American Cinema 1914 to 2006
Courses Taught:
Being Jewish in European and American Cinema 1914-2006