Matthew Hockenos

Professor of History 

Matthew D. Hockenos has taught at Skidmore College since 1998. He is a historian of modern Europe with a particular focus on Germany’s Nazi past, postwar reckoning, and the political role of the Protestant church. His scholarship explores themes of complicity, memory, and resistance.

Hockenos is the author of Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis (Basic Books, 2018), a biography of the German pastor whose postwar confession — “First they came…” — has become an iconic expression of political and moral responsibility. The book traces Niemöller’s evolution from a nationalist and early Nazi supporter to one of the regime’s most outspoken Protestant opponents. His earlier book, A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past (Indiana University Press, 2004), investigates how postwar German Protestant leaders struggled with their churches’ complicity in the Third Reich.

He is currently completing a third book, First They Came For: A History of Martin Niemöller’s Famous Quotation, which uncovers the surprising history of how Niemöller’s words became a widely known warning against political passivity and persecution.

A respected voice in both scholarly and public-facing discussions, Hockenos has published essays in The Christian Century and contributed chapters to major academic volumes, including the Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His work has been supported by fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Fulbright Program, and the DAAD. He also serves on the Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He earned his Ph.D. in history from New York University.