Matthias Waechter teaches the course History of European Integration, one of the compulsory course of the first year of the Executive Master programme. He is CIFE Director General.
Matthias Waechter was born in Bonn in 1965. After his studies of History and Philosophy at the Universities of Bonn, Freiburg, Paris, and Rochester, he took his PhD at the University of Freiburg in 1994. In the same year, he joined the faculty of the history department of the University of Freiburg, where he received his Habilitation in 2004. He was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute Paris in 1997/98 and a Fulbright Fellow at New York University in 1999. In 2000, he joined CIFE, first as a DAAD Visiting Professor and since 2006 as Director of the Institut européen. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Freiburg and teaches international relations at EDHEC Business school. In 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Since 2013, he serves as Director General of CIFE. He specialises in U.S. history, contemporary France, Franco-German relations and European integration. In his research, he focuses on problems of collective identity, historical consciousness, political myths and transnational intellectuals. For his book "Die Erfindung des amerikanischen Westens. Die Geschichte der Frontier-Debatte" (1996), he received the Gerhard Ritter Prize. His book "Der Mythos des Gaullismus. Heldenkult, Geschichtspolitik und Ideologie" (2006) was awarded with the Franco-German Parliamentary Prize and the DaimlerChrysler Services Prize.