Kyle Jantzen

Biography

I'm not sure when I first became interested in history. Perhaps it was when my junior high teacher drew a diagram of Hadrian's Wall on the chalkboard, then play-acted Roman soldiers sword-fighting. Maybe it was when my parents took me to see the film The Hiding Place, the story of how Corrie Ten Boom and her Dutch family rescued Jews during the Holocaust. And it might have been when I read Robert K. Massie’s massive biographies of Peter the Great and other Russian tsars during my high school years. At any rate, after a year at Bodenseehof (Capernwray Bible Institute in Friedrichshafen, West Germany), I ended up at the University of Saskatchewan, where I completed a BA (high honours) in history. I remained in Saskatoon to study for an MA degree in history under Dr. Peter Bietenholz, an eminent Erasmus scholar whose seminar courses I had enjoyed immensely. (Dr. Bietenholz held several of his courses in his charming old home, where a handful of us would sit among his five-hundred-year-old books, drink coffee and read Dante or Erasmus!). Anyway, my MA thesis (Guilds and Reformation: Basel in the 1520s) examined the relationship between the religious and political aspects of the Protestant Reformation in the Swiss city of Basel. It traced events from the infiltration of Lutheran ideas into local monasteries and churches before 1520 to the heated and sometimes violent debates about religion and politics throughout the 1520s, culminating in the eventual victory (at cannon point!) of the Reformation in Basel in early 1529. Along the way, I began to grow interested in the "German Church Struggle," the conflict between church and state (and within the churches) of Nazi Germany. As a result, I completed a PhD in history at McGill University in Montreal, under the guidance of Dr. Peter Hoffmann, FRSC, a leading authority on the German Resistance to Hitler. In my dissertation, I examined the relationship between religion and nationalism in National Socialist Germany "from the bottom up," analyzing the upheaval in numerous parish churches through the eyes of pastors and parishioners in three different regions of Hitler`s Germany. Eventually, that grew into my first book: Faith and Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler's Germany (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). At Ambrose, I teach various courses in European, world, and religious history. One of my favourite (though difficult) courses to teach is on the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust. My goal is to introduce students to the long and complex history of antisemitism and to help them understand the detailed process through which Hitler and his Nazi regime moved from the policies of persecution to an organized quest to annihilate the Jews of Europe. I'm convinced that when we study those events, the students and I also learn more about the ways in which political extremism operates in our world today, through political violence, the violation of human rights, and even so-called "ethnic cleansing." In courses like "Antisemitism and the Holocaust" or "Racism and Genocide in the Modern World," there's more to studying history than just explaining the past--we also want to become compassionate, principled, responsive advocates for justice in our world today. Outside of academics, my wife and best friend Colleen and I have been married almost 30 years. We have four children: three have graduated from high school and one is still in high school. I watch sports of all kinds (football, Euro soccer, hockey, etc.) and play some too, listen to all kinds of music (U2 is at the top of the list), serve in my local church, lead history trips to Europe, and (try to) play bass. For more information about my academic life, including historical travel and my blog, please visit my website.

Research Interest

History