Staff profile

Kay Schiller is a historian of 20th-century Germany. He has published articles and books on German cultural and sports history, including on the history of football, on modern German-Jewish history and on the history of the Federal Republic and the GDR.

He has co-edited volumes on German sport history and the history of the FIFA World Cup, co-authored a monograph on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, the award-winning The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, and written a monograph on the 1974 FIFA World Cup in West Germany. His most recent book (2022) is a biography of the 1920s Jewish-German sprinter, antifascist activist, emigre to Britain and post-war journalist and writer Alex Natan (1906-71).

He is currently researching the history of German Zionist athletics, including (with Udi Carmi) the influence of German sports models on sports in Palestine and Israel, with a special focus on the activities of the Zionist sports functionary Emanuel Ernst Simon (1898-1988). He is also a Co-I on the British Academy funded project Expanding the History of Sport: Leisure, Health and the Body in Africa.

In 2010-11 he was a Senior Research Fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin and during 2012-13 DAAD Visiting Professor in Contemporary History at Technical University Dresden. In 2018-19 he led the Durham IAS sponsored project Masculinities in Martial Sports: West, East and Global South. In 2018-19 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich and Honorary Fellow at Historisches Kolleg Munich. In 2019-20 he was a Research Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

From 2018 to 2023 he was editor-in-chief of Sport in History (Taylor & Francis). He is a member of the international editorial boards of Stadion. International Journal of the History of Sport, Sport und Gesellschaft - Sport and Society and Sport in History.

He is also a keen runner and England Athletics qualified running coach and used to officiate amateur football games as a FA qualified referee.

Doctoral Supervision

Kay Schiller welcomes inquiries from potential postgraduate students in modern German history and modern European sport history.

• Sports history, especially the history of football and athletics
• Post-1945 Germany
• Modern German cultural and intellectual history
• German-Jewish history

Authored book

• Schiller, K. (2022). Der schnellste Jude Deutschlands“. Alex Natan (1906-1971). Eine Biografie. Wallstein Verlag
• Schiller, K. (2014). WM 1974: Als der Fußball modern wurde. Rotbuch Verlag
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2012). München 1972. Olympische Spiele im Zeichen des modernen Deutschland. Wallstein Verlag
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2010). The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany. University of California Press
• Schiller, K. (2000). Gelehrte Gegenwelten. Über humanistische Leitbilder im 20. Jahrhundert. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag

Chapter in book

• Day, D., & Schiller, K. (2022). The Sport in History Journal. In M. Phillips, D. Booth, & C. Adams (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sport History (353-359). Routedge
• Schiller, K. (2022). Willy Meisl’s “German Football Nation”: Internationalism, Austrian Patriotism, and Jewish Pride in Interwar Sports Writing. In R. Dawson, B. Heinsohn, O. Knabe, & A. McDougall (Eds.), Football Nation: the Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society (83-101). Berghahn Journals. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800736818
• Schiller, K. (2022). Landscape, Architecture, and Democracy: Planning, Appropriating, and Experiencing the Munich Olympic Park and Village. In S. Dümpelmann (Ed.), Landscapes for Sport: Histories of Physical Exercise, Sport, and Health (367-391). Harvard University Press
• Schiller, K. (2017). Social Climbing, Cultural Experimentation and Trailblazing Metrosexual: Franz Beckenbauer in the 1960s and 1970s. In Football and the Boundaries of History. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95006-5_11
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2015). Material, Cultural and Political Consequences of the 1972 Olympics. In R. Holt, & D. Ruta (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sport and Legacy (351-362). Routledge
• Schiller, K. (2014). The 1974 World Cup in West Germany: A Non-Event?. In S. Rinke, & K. Schiller (Eds.), The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010 : politics, commerce, spectacle and identities (220-239). Wallstein Verlag
• Schiller, K. (2014). Fußball und Politik im Münchner Olympiastadion. In S. Rinke, & C. Peters (Eds.), Global play : football between region, nation and the world in Latin American, African, and European history (85-108). Heinz Verlag
• Schiller, K. (2013). Bundesligakrise und Fußballweltmeisterschaft 1974. In W. Pyta (Ed.), Geschichte des Fußballs in Deutschland und Europa seit 1954 (139-155). Kohlhammer
• Schiller, K. (2011). Communism, Youth and Sport: the 1973 World Youth Festival in East Berlin. In A. Tomlinson, C. Young, & R. Holt (Eds.), Sport and the Transformation of Modern Europe : States, Media and Markets 1950-2010 (50-66). Routledge
• Schiller, K. (2008). Death in Munich. The 1972 Olympics. In A. Confino, P. Betts, & D. Schumann (Eds.), Between Mass Death and Individual Loss. The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (129-50). Berghahn Journals
• Schiller, K. (2006). Historismuskrise und 'Dritter Humanismus': Werner Jaegers Beiträge zum Humanitätsdiskurs. In G. Hartung, & K. Schiller (Eds.), Weltoffener Humanismus : Philosophie, Geschichte und Literaturwissenschaft in der deutsch-jüdischen Emigration (71-89). transcript Verlag
• Schiller, K. (2005). Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernst Cassirer and the 'humanistic turn' in American emigration. In D. Kettler, & G. Lauer (Eds.), Exile, science and bildung : the contested legacies of German intellectual figures (125-138). Palgrave Macmillan
• Schiller, K. (2003). Made 'fit for America': the Renaissance historian Hans Baron in London exile 1936-1938. In S. Berger, P. Lambert, & P. Schumann (Eds.), Historikerdialoge : Geschichte, Mythos und Gedächtnis im deutsch-britischen kulturellen Austausch 1750-2000 (345-359). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Edited book

• Schiller, K., & Rinke, S. (Eds.). (2014). The FIFA World Cup 1930 - 2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities. Wallstein Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2015.1093381
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (Eds.). (2009). Sport in German History. German History Society
• Hartung, G., & Schiller, K. (Eds.). (2006). Weltoffener Humanismus. Philosophie, Geschichte und Literaturwissenschaft in der deutsch-jüdischen Emigration. transcript

Journal Article

• Schiller, K. (2019). Der schnellste Jude Deutschlands“ – Sport, Moderne und (Körper-)politik im bewegten Leben Alex Natans (1906–1971). Stadion, 43(2), 185-218. https://doi.org/10.5771/0172-4029-2019-2-185
• Schiller, K. (2015). ‘When Saturday Comes’: New Books on German and International Sports History. Bulletin - German Historical Institute London, 37(1), 57-72
• Schiller, K. (2015). Siegen für Deutschland? Patriotism, Nationalism and the German National Football Team, 1954-2014. Historical social research. Supplement (Köln), 40(4), 176-196. https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.40.2015.4.176-196
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2013). Munich '72: Selling the Games to Foreign Audiences and at Home. Sport in History, 33(3), 373-392. https://doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2013.822411
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2012). Fanmeile im Grünen. Zur Ästhetik von Münchens Olympiapark als Public Viewing-Kulisse. Forum Stadt, 39(2), 121-132
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2010). Motion and landscape: Otl Aicher, Günther Grzimek and the graphic and garden designs of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Urban History, 37(2), 272-288. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963926810000350
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2009). The history and historiography of sport in Germany: social, cultural and political perspectives. German History, 27(3), 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghp029
• Schiller, K. (2006). Palimpsests of memory
• Schiller, K. (2004). The presence of the Nazi past in the early decades of the Bonn Republic. Journal of Contemporary History, 39, 285-294
• Schiller, K. (2003). Political militancy and generation conflict in West Germany during the 'red decade'. Debatte (London. Online), 11(1), 19-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965156032000104044
• Schiller, K. (2000). The refugee historian Hans Baron and the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning
• Schiller, K. (1998). Hans Baron's humanism. Storia della storiografia (Testo stampato), 34, 151-199
• Schiller, K. (1990). Dante and Kantorowicz: medieval history as art and autobiography. Annali d'italianistica, 8, 396-411

Other (Print)

• Schiller, K. (2023). The Olympic Park in Munich as a Planned and Lived Utopia. Berlin
• Schiller, K. (2023). Rezensionsessay: Scharfe Kontraste. Eine Rückschau auf das Olympia-Jubiläum München 1972 / 2022
• Schiller, K. (2023). ALEX NATAN’S PHOTO PRINT OF THE 1929 4X100 METER RELAY SQUAD OF SC CHARLOTTENBURG (BERLIN, GERMANY)
• Schiller, K., & Young, C. (2020). Werner Ruhnau and the “Avenue of the Games” (Spielstraße) at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games