Jonathan R. Zatlin is Associate Professor of History at Boston University. He has written widely on the history of German communism, from Marxist economic theory, Soviet‐style economic planning, socialist consumer policy, the East German automobile industry, and women’s lingerie to popular opinion under communism, the East German secret police, racism in Soviet‐style regimes, the politics of German unification, the German mezzogiorno, the creation of the euro, and German advertising. He is the author of The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which was named a finalist for the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association in 2006. He also co‐edited Selling Modernity: German Advertising in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2007) with Pamela E. Swett and S. Jonathan Wiesen.

Zatlin is currently in Berlin working on a book entitled Jews and Money: Economic Change and Cultural Anxiety in Germany, 1870‐1990. The book draws on behavioral economics to analyze the link between race and economy in modern European history and trace the fortunes and misfortunes of Jews and their detractors in Germany. He is also writing a short history of the German Democratic Republic entitled State of Paranoia: The East German Dictatorship, 1949‐1989. His work has been supported by a number of institutions, including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, Earhart Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Social Science Research Council.

Every year, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) awards the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies in recognition of exceptional work in one of the Institute’s three major areas of research: Foreign & Domestic Policy Studies; Business & Economics; and Society, Culture, & Politics. The central aim of this prize is to foster a new generation of American scholarship on Germany and encourage innovative contributions to the interdisciplinary scope of German Studies. Awardees must be members of a university faculty or research institute staff in the United States at mid‐career and be nominated by a peer. They must also be American citizens or residents. American candidates who received their doctorate in Germany may also be nominated. This year, candidates from the fields of Economics, Political Economy, and Economic History may be nominated. The chief criterion for selection is an outstanding publication record on German domestic economic issues or European economic issues as they relate to Germany’s deepening integration with its EU partners.