Willy Brandt Prize for Contemporary History Award presented to historian Joey Rauschenberger

The Commission justifies its decision as follows: "The work sheds light on the social practice of compensation, the experiences of Sinti and Roma in the process of redress, and focuses on an area that often appears particularly opaque: government offices and administrative authorities, as well as the interaction between applicants and administrative officials. Rauschenberger understands this history of social practices and emotions as a special form of ‘contact zone’. The study goes far beyond the regional context and exemplarily links the history of antiziganism with the post-war history of the Federal Republic of Germany." The award ceremony will take place on January 20, 2026, in Berlin

Joey Rauschenberger worked as a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism between 2020 and 2024. His dissertation was written as part of the externally funded project Continuities of Antigypsyism in Baden-Württemberg after 1945. The Baden-Württemberg Foundation funded the research project as part of the joint project Reintegration, Blame, and Compensation: Coping and Not Coping with the Nazi Past in Baden-Württemberg and its Predecessor States from 1945 to 1952, based at the Universities of Heidelberg and Stuttgart. The dissertation will be published in mid-2026 in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte series. As co-editor, Joey Rauschenberger will also publish an English-language anthology on reparations for Nazi injustice in the RCA series Interdisciplinary Studies in Antigypsyism in spring 2026.