Gottfried Korff is a professor emeritus of Empirische Kulturwissenschaft at the University of Tübingen, where he served as director of the Ludwig Uhland Institute from 1994-2002. He received his Ph.D. in 1970 in Tübingen and became assistant professor, then left to work at the folklore museum in Kommern from 1975-78 and to serve as general secretary of the the Prussia exhibition in Berlin from 1978-1982 before returning to the institute as a full professor. He was a visiting professor in Graz, Vienna, and Zurich. His research interests include the history of symbols, cultures of memory, and museum theory. Publications include: “Spies, Shell Games, and Bananas: Everyday Symbols and Metaphors in the Process of Cultural Integration of East and West Germany,” in Transformations of the New Germany, edited by Ruth A. Starkman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); “Fremde (the Foreign, Strange, Other) and the Museum,” in the Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe (2002); “From Brotherly Handshake to Militant Clenched Fist: On Political Metaphors the Worker’s Hand,” in International Labor and Working-Class History (1992); “Change of Name as a Change of Paradigm. The Renaming of Folklore Studies Departments at German Universities as an Attempt at ‘Denationalization,’” in Europaea (1996); with Utz Jeggle, “On the Development of the Zillertal Regional Character. A Contribution to Cultural Economics,” in German Volkskunde. A Decade of Theoretical Confrontation, Debate, and Reorientation (1967-1977), edited by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Indiana University Press, 1986); and “Les Maisons de Poupées. Miroir de l’habitat bourgeois,” in Urbi. Arts, histoire, ethnologie des villes (1979).
